Good Question

But you'll never see actual answers about how to fix it:

• Illinois lowered its standards in 2025, but over half of third graders still couldn’t read at grade level. It’s a critical milestone. See how your students did.

  Even under loosened proficiency standards, over half of Illinois third graders couldn’t read at grade level in 2025.

  How well did your local public school prepare children to read by the critical third-grade milestone?

We can't reproduce the graph here (it's 243 pages) , but CPS on average seems to be around 80% of students are NOT proficient at the 3rd grade level. You can search for schools at the link up top.

Enrollment is down, scores are down, but taxes are up - massively.