ILLINOIS 

Pleasantdale School District 107 is a PreK-8 district, with 830 students.  The district has always been strong, but several years ago, as they began to work on local assessments, they realized they had problems with their curriculum.  That curriculum was based on the “introduce, continue, master” format and teachers and administrators alike realized this made their curriculum vague and basically not assessable.  District leaders contacted CLI, and we helped them rewrite their language arts and social studies curriculums.  The revised curriculums were so valued by district educators that CLI was asked to help rewrite curriculum for every grade level of every subject, and these efforts were completed in 2008.
In 2010 District 107 was awarded the Bright A+ Award for being ranked among the top five percent of 871 Illinois school districts.  The award was given by the SchoolSearch organization that ranks school districts nationally according to academic performance.  To be eligible for the award, over 93.3 percent of students needed to score in the “meets” or “exceeds” category of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT).  Pleasantdale ISAT scores have improved every year since the inception of strategic planning in 2003.  Standardized test scores in 2007-08 were the highest in the history of the District.
In both 2007-08 and 2008-09, more than 90% of students in grades 3-8 met or exceeded standards for the ISAT in both reading and math (with the exception of grade 5 in 08-09, with 89.5% in reading and 89.6% in math).  Students in grades 4 and 7 also were given assessments in science, with more than 90% meeting or exceeding standards both years.

Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 is one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation.  At the start of the 1990-91 school year, the preK-12 enrollment was 3,324.  The enrollment is now 28,870.  CLI began to work long-term with Plainfield in 2005-06.  The following chart shows gains in reading and math over a five-year period (2003-2008), by subgroup.

In 2009, a total of 15,005 students in grades 3-8 and 11 tested in reading and math.  In reading, 82.4% met state standards; in math 87% met state standards.