AURORA — A looming State Board of Education budget meeting Jan. 22 has discussion of tight times ahead for the next school year on its agenda.

State Rep. Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego) hosted a roundtable discussion Jan. 16 in Aurora with Illinois Superintendent of Education Dr. Christopher Koch, who talked about the underfunded system and the new common core standards in Illinois.

Kifowit said the state budget is “going to be a challenge” as legislators went into the meeting at press time.

Koch, who has been the Illinois Superintendent of Education since 2006, oversees all school code and federal laws impacting education in Illinois. His job includes licensing teachers, developing learning benchmarks for students, overseeing implementation of the state budget, and providing assessments of students.

He explained why Illinois joined 40 other states in the new Common Core State Standards Initiative — it aims to unify teaching throughout the state and country to better prepare students for challenges they may face later in life.

“Previously, there were entirely different things taught from district to district. Both within Illinois and other states, we decided to have a discussion to sit down and develop benchmarks that were best for the students,” he said. “Our students are getting prepared for a global environment.”

Koch said right now in Illinois, educators are field testing another new assessment test called Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC.)

“Over 400 districts are pilot testing this assessment, and over 800 schools. We’re trying it out. From that test we hope to learn what went well, and what didn’t,” he said.

Koch said one bit of information gleaned from the preliminary tests is the technology infrastructure of Illinois schools is “not where it should be,” which will place an additional challenge for next year’s already limited budget.

Online tests allow teachers to get instant feedback on how students are performing, and they can tweak their lesson plans accordingly. Koch said they are useful not just for accountability purposes, but to intervene in a student’s learning.

“About 25 percent of our schools can provide online instruction. We have a lot of work to do in building infrastructure in the state,” he said.