Sangamon Sun

For the Springfield School District, a recent state report card was an occasion to reflect on past accomplishments and the work that still needs to be complete, said Nicole Moody, the district's assistant superintendent of teaching, learning and school culture.

"We want to take a minute, just to pause and celebrate," she said. "We know in our work that it's hard and there's a lot that happened, so as I co-lead our teaching and learning efforts, we always encourage you to pause and to celebrate what's going right before we talk about what we need to do next." 

The district reviewed results of the report card at a recent school board meeting. The superintendent reminded the board that the district, along with most other districts in the state, were using this year’s data as a sort of baseline data to their recovery after COVID-19, since the pandemic caused a lot of dips and changes in scores for each school and district. 

The assistant superintendent went through the data for the district with the school board, sharing that 22 of the district schools have received a designation of commendable, four earned a designation of targeted and four earned a designation of comprehensive. The goal is to have all schools in either the commendable or exemplary designations, which the district is heading toward, with some schools on the edge of being exemplary. 

One of the most important indicators of academic success and school quality is the attendance data. As a district, Springfield has a 59.6% rating in chronic truancy, which is students having nine days of unexcused absences. The district has 57.6% rate of chronic absenteeism, which includes excused and unexcused absences. The other indicator they look at is if their ninth grade students are on track. Though the pandemic saw a huge drop, mostly in LHS and SSHS, all three high schools have started increasing again and are nearing the state levels.