Yeah that bit does sound rather suspicious. Unless he's one of those starfish English teachers that assign nothing but essays and projects, then he'd have plenty of time to piddle around not grading papers while the students write stuff.
Schools require you to teach the correct stuff, and you have to send your papers to state to get saved so the state can see how well that the school is doing. In other words, he'd have to hand out essays and assignments, or get fired.
I personally don't know about IL, but thats how it worked in Florida and over here in Australia.