Sangamon Sun

Ball-Chatham Community School District 5 Student Success Committee met Aug. 11

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

In attendance:

Becca Lamon

Carrie Jeffries

Lisa Lipe

Kelvin Coburn

The following items were discussed at the meeting:

Student Test Performance

While the committee asked to discuss student performance scores for the 24-25 school year, ISBE has not released the updated cut scores for the IAR test. The cut scores are being adjusted by ISBE to better reflect the national norms and place Illinois in alignment with other states. The adjustment should result in low benchmark scores for English and math and thus higher percentage of proficiency in those areas and a higher benchmark score in Science with a projection of lower proficiency in that content area. Dr. Lamon provided the committee with examples of how the test questions have changed over the past 20 years to dispel the idea that public education is not adequately supporting the needs of our students.

Senior Class Survey

Dr. Lamon provided the results of the 2025 senior class survey which highlights the post-secondary plans for those seniors who responded to the survey. Dr. Lamon shared the misconception that BCSD students are only 4-year college bound. 15% of juniors and seniors partake in opportunities at CACC on an annual basis.

Class size: 311

4 year colleges (In state): 80

4 year colleges (Out of state): 67

2 year colleges (LLCC): 87

2 year colleges (In state besides LLCC): 7

2 year colleges (Out of state): 1

Work force: 7

Trade Schools: 8

Military: 8

Undecided: 4

Did not respond to Senior Exit Survey: 41

Top 4 year colleges (In State)

Illinois State: 10

Southern IL Edwardsville: 14

University of Illinois at Springfield: 11

University of Illinois at Champaign: 5

Illinois College: 7

Greenville University: 5

Top 4 year colleges (Out of State)

University of Iowa: 6

University of Mizzou: 7

Discipline Data

Dr. Lamon prepared discipline data on OSS and ISS discipline rates by race and gender. Dr. Lamon was asked to expand the data set to include grade level and the number of infractions per type.

Grading and Finals

As part of the Strategic plan, work is beginning on grading practices, particularly in grades 5-12. A look at grading reform is intended to provide assurances that an “A” in class is representative of a mastery of the state/national standards for a course and not a student’s ability to gain points from participation, bringing in Kleenex boxes, or food for a food drive. Conversely, an “F” should represent a lack of mastery of the content vs. issue with executive functioning skills. Concerns were shared that grade reform might be misconstrued as lowering the expectations for students. This is not the goal or intent of the work.

https://go.boarddocs.com/il/cusd5/Board.nsf/Public