ELMHURST, IL – Elmhurst School District 205's elementary and middle schoolers ranked highest in math proficiency among demographically similar school districts.
On Friday, the state released last school year's numbers for Illinois' 850 school districts.
Last school year, 81 percent of third through eighth graders met standards on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness' math section. That was up from 78 percent a year earlier.
In math, 71 percent made the grade, compared with 69 percent the previous year.
District 205 typically compares itself in presentations to statewide averages. Given its relatively wealthy student body, Elmhurst has long far outperformed the state.
So Patch compares Elmhurst's numbers to demographically similar districts that school officials used to include in their presentations (chart below). All of them are kindergarten-through-12th-grade districts.
They are Barrington District 220, Batavia District 101, Geneva District 304, Indian Prairie District 204, Naperville District 203, St. Charles District 303 and Wheaton District 200.
Elmhurst topped the comparison districts in math, with 71 percent considered proficient. Naperville finished second with 70 percent, with Batavia last at 61 percent.
In English language arts, Elmhurst's 81 percent was second only to Naperville, which was at 82 percent. Batavia was last at 69 percent.
Elmhurst surpassed Geneva in both categories, even though Geneva's low-income student rate of 5 percent was less than a third of Elmhurst's.
In a news release, Elmhurst noted that the state rated all but one of its schools as "exemplary."
Conrad Fischer Elementary School was rated "approaching exemplary." It has the highest low-income student rate, by far, of all the local schools, at 50 percent.
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