Illinois State Board of Education

See how Illinois students performed on standardized tests in reading, math, and science. The data shows what percentage of kids scored at each level, broken down by school, grade, and student groups like race, family income, or whether English is their first language. You can look at results over time to spot trends, though be aware that testing didn't happen in 2020 and scoring standards changed in 2025, so direct comparisons across those breaks aren't meaningful.

Want to know what teachers and principals in Illinois actually make, not just their salary but the full package including bonuses and benefits? This is public payroll data with one line per person per year. You can see someone's base pay, what they got as a bonus, the value of their sick days and vacation days if cashed out, retirement boosts, and other perks. It goes back four years and covers roughly 750,000 educator records. Unlike datasets that show district averages, this is the real individual payroll data.

How many students attend each Illinois school, how often they show up, how many graduate, and how many teachers staff the building. The data goes back 30 years, so you can see how a school's size and performance have changed over time. Before 2018, some metrics like teacher ratios were only tracked at the district level, not individual schools. Since then, the state reports the same numbers for individual schools, districts, and statewide.

Every October 1st, Illinois schools report how many students they have. This dataset shows those counts broken down by grade level, race, gender, and whether students receive free/reduced lunch, have special education plans, are learning English, or are experiencing homelessness. The interesting part: each student is counted twice. Once in the district where they live, and once in the district where they actually go to school. If those numbers don't match, it means students are crossing district lines to attend school elsewhere. That gap is your clearest signal of which districts are losing students and which are gaining them.

Illinois schools submitted SAT test results to the state education board every year from 2018 to 2024. This dataset shows how students performed at each school, broken down by subject (reading and math). You can see average scores, what percentage of students hit proficiency benchmarks, and how low-income students fared compared to the overall student body. The state also tracked what share of students scored at each performance level (from struggling to advanced) and how many actually took the test. Note that 2020 is missing because schools closed for COVID, and after 2024 Illinois switched to a different test (the ACT).

Illinois schools get rated on five things that research shows matter: whether the leadership is strong, if teachers work together well, if families are involved, if the school feels safe and supportive, and if instruction is ambitious. These scores come from surveys of principals, teachers, and families at each school. You can see how schools compare on these five dimensions and track how they've changed year to year.