Despite improving scores in both English Language Arts and math, Oak Park and River Forest High School still barely missed the highly sought-after exemplary designation on the annual Illinois School Report Card that was released Oct. 30. OPRF’s final summative score, which is based on a variety of factors, fell less than one full point below the cutoff for the exemplary rating. The top 10% of public high schools in Illinois according to the state index are designated as exemplary. Instead, OPRF received the commendable rating for the second consecutive year. Most public high schools in Illinois are ranked commendable. To receive the commendable rating, a school must have no underperforming subgroups and a graduation rate of at least 67% OPRF had a 95 percent graduation rate last year. “We’re less than one index score point away from exemplary,” said OPRF District 200 Superintendent Greg Johnson. “We’re moving in the right direction.” Johnson was happy with the progress that was made last year in a number of areas. “I think there is a lot to be proud of in this school report card,” Johnson said. “We had improvements in some of our achievement gaps, and we’re happy to see those. We have improvements in our SAT scores, climate survey participation has gone up. With all these, there is still work to do, but we had some improvements in our English Language Learners as well.” Scores in English Language Arts improved at OPRF last year as they did across the state. For the 2023-24 school year 63.6% of OPRF juniors were rated as proficient in ELA compared to 60.7% the year before. Illinois has the fourth toughest proficiency standards in the nation according to Tony Sanders, the state school superintendent. Statewide, only 39.4% of juniors in Illinois public high schools were rated as proficient in ELA. “Proficiency does not mean a student is reading at grade level, it’s much more than that,” Sanders said during a call with reporters to discuss the school report card. In math 54.7% of OPRF juniors were rated proficient in math compared to 50.1% a year ago. Across Illinois only 27.9% of high school juniors were rated as proficient in math. Wide racial disparities remain at OPRF but the gap was reduced as the number of Black students at OPRF rated as proficient in ELA jumped a full 10 percentage points. “We’re happy to see the improvements in the gap from last school year,” Johnson said. “Particularly what we see last school year is that the gap Is closing in the right way,” Johnson said, meaning that the test scores of Black students are improving. “We’re happy about that. This is an issue that public schools and educators have been working on for decades and I anticipate we’re going to continue to work on this hard for the years to come to continue to see progress.” OPRF’s low income students significantly improved their scores last year in both ELA and math. Last year 31.8% of low income were rated as proficient in 2024 compared to just 19.4% in 2023. In math 19.6% of low income OPRF students were rated as proficient in 2024 compared to just 10.9% in 2023. The low income cohort made a more modest improvement in Science improving to 42.1% being rated as proficient in 2024 compared to 40.4% in 2023. Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.