Round Lake CUSD 116 board hears mixed iReady, preACT results; administrators point to targeted interventions

ROUND LAKE, Ill. — District administrators presented winter iReady and preACT results at the Round Lake Community Unit School District 116 Board of Education meeting on Feb. 3, 2025, showing pockets of strong growth in reading and uneven results in math across grade levels and buildings.

District instructional leaders explained how iReady reports three measures — overall placement (on or below grade level), progress toward a district’s annual typical-growth median and progress toward a higher “stretch” growth target — and reviewed fall-to-winter movement for each school. They also summarized preACT baseline scores from the high school and changes to assessment and grading practices meant to support college readiness.

Administrators said intermediate buildings showed especially strong median progress in reading, naming Village and Indian Hill among schools with medians above the expected midpoint. Kindergarten reading data were reported separately because kindergarten reading was not adaptive in the fall test window. The district noted visible student movement from lower placement tiers into higher ones in several elementary schools.

At the same time, administrators cautioned that math gains lagged reading in many places. They described iReady placement as a year-long measure that flags students ‘‘one grade level below’’ or ‘‘three or more grade levels below’’ the end-of-grade expectation and urged staff to focus interventions on students in the deeper-need categories. The presentation included a district-level “tier movement” report comparing MAP percentiles from last spring to current iReady percentiles to help schools target MTSS (multi-tiered system of supports) interventions.

Board members and staff discussed notable discrepancies between two middle schools. The presenters said John T. McGee Middle School and Round Lake Middle School showed very different median progress in some grade bands — for example, one school’s eighth-grade median progress was reported near 47% while the other’s was above 90% in the same metric — and said the district will investigate classroom usage of the individualized learning pathway, minutes logged in the platform, teacher assignments, lesson completion rates and other implementation variables to explain the gap.

At the high school, Associate Principal Jeff Deese presented preACT results used as a baseline for ACT targets. He reported composite preACT averages of roughly 14.4 (freshmen), 14.5 (sophomores) and 15.5 (juniors), with a district three-year improvement goal of reaching a composite of 20 by school year 2026–27. Deese described subsection gaps (notably in the ACT science section, which he said is more interpretation of data and charts than the district’s previous Illinois science assessment) and announced four in-school ACT-prep workshops for February and March. He also credited higher final-exam participation and a new cell-phone policy with improved student engagement and a rise in freshmen-on-track percentages.

Administrators described next steps: continued cross-district PLCs for teacher collaboration, targeted MTSS work using branching-minds and tier movement reports, additional teacher training on the individualized learning pathway, deeper middle-school-level audits of platform usage, and continued alignment of high-school curriculum and test-prep resources (including work to align applied math and college placement platforms used by College of Lake County).

The board did not take formal action on curriculum or assessment policy at the meeting but several members asked for follow-up briefings; administrators offered to schedule deeper, small-group sessions for trustees who want to review building-level data or the iReady and preACT reporting dashboards in detail.

Experts’ words from the meeting: “The iReady assessment is a web based adaptive test,” an instructional presenter explained when introducing the platform. “We’re looking at overall placement and then we’re looking at their annual, typical and stretch growth.”

Ending: Administrators said they will return with more granular, school-level implementation metrics and recommended interventions so the board can track whether increases in platform use and targeted interventions translate into consistent gains on iReady and future state measures.