Bourbonnais schools noted for academic recovery from pandemic

BOURBONNAIS – In the almost five years since COVID-19 upended the world of education, one Kankakee County school district is considered to have made a full academic recovery, a new national data analysis shows.

Bourbonnais Elementary School District 53 was listed as one of 100 school districts across the U.S. to be performing above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading.

Eleven of the districts listed are from Illinois.

The list was part of the Education Recovery Scorecard, a comprehensive analysis of student learning across 8,719 school districts.

The scorecard is a collaboration among the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and faculty at Dartmouth College.

It combines the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a congressionally mandated test that provides data for the nation’s Report Card, with state test results for about 35 million third- through eighth-grade students between 2019 and 2024.

The findings of the third annual scorecard were announced Feb. 11 and reported in a recent NPR article.

District 53 Superintendent Adam Ehrman said the recognition was not only an honor but also a testament to the hard work, dedication and resilience of everyone involved in the students’ education.

“Every decision we made, every challenge we faced and every battle we fought was driven by one mission – not just to survive the pandemic, but to thrive through it,” he said. “Today, we can proudly say that we did exactly that.”

Bourbonnais school district’s data

The list of 100 recovered districts referenced data from the past half-decade.

The Bourbonnais school district had an average student enrollment of 2,416, with a decline of 102 students from 2019 to 2024, down to about 2,314 students.

The district’s average percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch was 47% from 2015 to 2019, a number that increased by 11% from 2019 to 2024.

District 53’s rate of chronic absenteeism, which is when students miss 10% or more of days in a school year, was at 15% in 2019; it jumped to 26% in 2022 and then declined to 19% in 2023.

From 2017 to 2019, the district’s math performance was 0.04 grade levels behind the national average. During the same time period, the district’s reading performance was 0.15 grade levels behind the national average.

In 2019, the district’s students performed more than one-quarter of a grade level behind the national averages in both math (0.27 grade levels behind) and reading (0.38 grade levels behind).

Things started to turn around in 2022, when the district’s students performed about one-tenth of a grade level ahead of the national averages in both math (0.11 grade levels ahead) and reading (0.08 grade levels ahead).

In 2024, the district’s students performed more than a quarter of a grade level (0.28) ahead of the national average in math and one-tenth of a grade level (0.1) ahead of the national average in reading.

Ehrman said it was through targeted instructional strategies, data-driven interventions and a “relentless focus on student achievement” that the district saw steady improvements.

“We did not just make it through the pandemic – we emerged stronger, smarter and more determined than ever,” he said.

Despite the positive movement in academics, Ehrman said chronic absenteeism is still a challenge. However, he is encouraged to see the rate decreasing, signaling a trend of reengagement with schools.

Ehrman began as Bourbonnais schools superintendent in the summer of 2020, starting his first full year with the district in the thick of the pandemic as school leaders everywhere navigated remote learning and shifting health protocols.

It was a time of “generational crisis,” with uncertainty around every turn, he reflected.

“We made thousands of decisions – some difficult, some unpopular – but every single one was made with our students at the center,” he said.

More national findings

Although no state scored above 2019 levels on the NAEP assessment in both math and reading, at least 100 school districts are scoring above 2019 levels in both subjects, the scorecard shows.

As of spring 2024, the average U.S. student remained almost half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in math and reading.

According to the findings, 17% of students in grades three to eight are in districts with average math achievement above 2019 levels; 11% are in districts that have recovered in reading, and 6% are in districts that have recovered in both subjects.

The highest income districts were almost four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading than the lowest income districts: 14.1% compared with 3.9%.

The disparity in math scores between students in affluent and low-income districts has grown by 11% since the start of the pandemic, and the disparity in scores between students in predominantly nonminority and predominantly minority districts has grown by 15%, according to the report.

The report concluded that a widespread rise in absenteeism is slowing the recovery, especially in high-poverty districts.

It also concluded that federal relief dollars prevented larger losses in the highest poverty districts.

Each dollar of federal relief improved student achievement by about as much as a general revenue increase, but it mattered how districts spent the money, according to the report.

Although districts were only required to spend 20% of relief funds directly on academic catch-up, more money spent on academic interventions, such as tutoring or summer school, generally resulted in greater growth in student achievement.