The 104th General Assembly is well underway, recently passing the March 21 deadline for lawmakers to move bills out of committee. With many bills targeting challenges in education and the workforce, we took a look at movement this legislative session through the lens of our new Policy Agenda.
Within EdSystems’ Policy Agenda, we outline four key pillars to delineate our vision for Illinois’ preschool to college and career (i.e., P-20) pipeline: Leadership, Governance and Vision; Student Experience and Conditions; Policy Evaluation and Continuous Improvement; and Future Readiness. Within these pillars is a commitment to align local college and career readiness efforts to state policy while elevating local experiences to the forefront in order to ensure equity for marginalized populations. Several of the key challenges and opportunities outlined in our Policy Agenda appear in bills in this legislature. While all of the bills noted below may not pass into law, they serve as a valuable signal to understand the primary concerns that legislators are seeking to elevate and resolve.
Leadership, Governance, and Vision
As detailed in our Policy Agenda, Illinois lacks a statewide vision to drive cross-system initiatives for college and career success. Students slip through the “leaky pipeline” of unaligned secondary and postsecondary institutions, missing out on opportunities for academic and career growth. High turnover in the instruction, administration, and policymaking spaces exacerbates this incohesion.
With turbulence and uncertainty at the federal level, state legislators are introducing initiatives to strengthen system-wide coherence and address core challenges in the P-20 pipeline in Illinois. Most notably, HB1581, the Adequate and Equitable Funding Formula for Public Universities Act, builds on recommendations from the Commission on Equitable Public University Funding to use a data-driven approach to adequately, equitably, and stably fund our public universities across Illinois.
To support partnerships between high school districts and community colleges as the bedrock of successful dual credit experiences for students, a proposed amendment to the Dual Credit Quality Act seeks to tighten up timelines, credentialing requirements, and supports available. Introduced by Senator Castro, SB1960 has the potential to support the scaling of Dual Credit coursework statewide. While this bill does not appear to be moving forward this session (much like the very similar HB5020 did not pass in the 103rd General Assembly), this signals continued interest in addressing some of the core challenges to strategically and equitably scaling dual credit in the state.
Leading critical pathways work to bridge education and workforce, Senator Belt’s SB58 amends the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Law to create a technical assistance program for emerging regional manufacturing partnerships connecting employers with secondary and postsecondary students. This system would mirror the work the IMA Education Foundation and EdSystems have driven through our Scaling Transformative Advanced Manufacturing Pathways (STAMP) initiative. We’ve compiled learnings from districts engaging in these types of supports across the state and would bring those learnings to bear if this legislation ultimately passes.
Student Experience and Conditions
We know students experience systems differently based on demographic factors such as poverty, geography, trauma, and lack of accessibility: policy must address students’ unique contexts to close gaps in the continuum.
Lawmakers in Springfield are proposing legislation to address the multifaceted and often inequitable ways in which students experience statewide systems and pathways, building on several successful bills in recent years to address transfer challenges. Senator Castro has introduced SB1958, amending the Student Transfer Reform Act to put the onus on universities to facilitate the seamless transfer of credits for students. This bill would also support university and college partnerships by placing a timeline on agreements articulated and modeled in the Illinois Articulation Initiative.
Recognizing the scheduling and resourcing challenges we’ve laid out in our Policy Agenda, HB2451 aims to allow students to replace two years of foreign language courses with two years of career-focused coursework in a pathway aligned to the College and Career Pathway Endorsement. This bill addresses both sides of the high school graduation and college admissions coin, requiring public universities not to use foreign language coursework as a condition of acceptance. We will see how negotiations continue in the House, as there have been several attempts to eliminate or replace this requirement over recent years.
Finally, many of the leaks in our P-20 pipeline occur at transitional junctures in a student’s journey. HB3522, the Public University Direct Admission Program Act, intends to smooth the postsecondary transition by facilitating direct admission to all public universities statewide. Using university-defined GPA standards and targeted outreach campaigns to qualifying students, advocates hope to encourage advancement along the higher education continuum. As this initiative was highlighted in Gov. Pritzker’s FY2026 Budget Address in February, we will be keeping a close eye on the progress of negotiations in the House.
Policy Evaluation and Continuous Improvement
Our strongest policy levers aimed at strengthening college and career pathways are only effective if coupled with rigorous evaluation and continuous improvement – but evaluative data are hard to come by for Illinois stakeholders.
After recent cuts to the data-driven functions of the U.S. Department of Education, state policymakers nationwide are looking for ways to build local systems of transparency and accountability. Senator Villanueva has sponsored SB2039, which seeks to establish a state data dashboard for all public and private postsecondary institutions in collaboration with the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Community College Board, and the Illinois State Assistance Commission. This bill is also designed to complement the accountability framework of the aforementioned Adequate and Equitable Funding for Public Universities Act.
Future Readiness
Within our Policy Agenda, we articulate a focus on designing education and workforce policies that are responsive to evolving educational and workplace conditions, including technological shifts.
The emerging paradigm of artificial intelligence (AI) has already had significant impacts on education, from preschool to postsecondary. Building on research and analysis from Teach Plus Illinois, HB2503 addresses Illinois’ lack of guidance and policy for educators and administrators by creating a State Instruction Technology Advisory Board. In collaboration with ISBE, this board would provide guidance, oversight, and evaluation of education technologies while establishing standards for safety, data privacy, and educational quality in AI tools. This bill exemplifies a key lever of our Future Readiness pillar: Proactive Research and Guidance.
Adapting to technological impacts on the labor market will require innovation in how best to equip students with the tools to succeed. Seeking to expand access to four-year degrees at the community college campus, HB3717 would support Illinoisans pursuing jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. While this bill was a hallmark of Gov. Pritzker’s Budget Address, discussions around tailoring to specific geographic regions or focusing on select career pathways have kept it in committee.
Looking Forward
As the legislative session continues through the end of May, we will keep a close ear to the ground on these policy initiatives, particularly in analyzing their potential impact on our work with district, college, and university partners throughout the state to improve student experiences and success. As changes to the federal education policy landscape threaten student progress, a focus on local work is more critical than ever.
