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Test scores

Ball Elementary School · Chatham, IL
See how it ranks: all Illinois schools by score · Sangamon County schools by score

IAR + ISA + HS Assessment, SY 2024-25

All grades, all students. % Proficient (Levels 4-5).
English Language Arts
73.2%
State avg 51.0%
District avg 68.0%
County avg 48.2%
+23.9pp since 2023-24
Mathematics
67.9%
State avg 37.9%
District avg 56.6%
County avg 33.5%
+19.1pp since 2023-24
Science
N/A
State avg 40.3%
District avg 51.9%
County avg 37.4%

What this means: On the IAR + ISA + HS Assessment, Illinois's statewide test, about 73 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 68 of 100 do math at grade level. Across all Illinois schools, those numbers are about 51 and 38. Reading and writing scores are up about 24 points since 2023, while math scores are up about 19 points.

BeatsExpectations

Demographically-adjusted score · methodology
Tier
AS EXPECTED
Performing as predicted given the school's student profile
Actual proficiency
65.6%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
58.3%
based on IL schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+7.3pp
above demographic expectation

What this means: About 66% of students here test proficient in math and reading, compared with the roughly 58% typical for Illinois schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations measures results against demographically similar schools rather than by raw scores, and this school falls within the typical range, neither among Illinois's top nor bottom 10%.

BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual. How this is calculated →

2-year history

All grades, all students. Ball   Illinois avg

English Language Arts

38492023-2451732024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2573.2%68.0%48.2%51.0%
SY 2023-2449.3%47.7%34.9%38.5%

Mathematics

27492023-2438682024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2567.9%56.6%33.5%37.9%
SY 2023-2448.8%40.4%23.7%27.3%

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How to read these scores

What is IAR + ISA + HS Assessment?
Illinois public-school students in grades 3 through 8 take the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) in English Language Arts and Math each spring. The Illinois Science Assessment (ISA) is administered at grades 5, 8, and 11. High school students take the SAT (or PreACT in current administrations) as the state accountability assessment.
What does "% Proficient (Levels 4-5)" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school who scored at Level 4 ("Met Expectations") or Level 5 ("Exceeded Expectations") on the IAR 5-level scale. Levels 4 and 5 signal the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 73.2% mean for English Language Arts at Ball Elementary School?
It means about 73.2 percent of students tested at Ball Elementary School performed at grade level or above on the IAR + ISA + HS Assessment English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Illinois that year was 51.0%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Illinois, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), Report Card Public Data Set. Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) for grades 3-8 ELA + Math, Illinois Science Assessment (ISA) at grades 5, 8, 11, plus the SAT / PreACT high-school assessment. Headline metric is the cumulative "Proficient" rate (Levels 4 + 5 on the IAR 5-level scale).
How often is it updated?
IAR + ISA + HS Assessment is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.

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