Best Public Schools in Altamont, IL

Altamont, Illinois, has two schools: Altamont Grade School, serving prekindergarten through eighth grade, and Altamont High School, serving grades 9–12. The supplied data show schools serving different grade bands, with no other local schools available for comparison. The clearest overall result is that Grade School was above state results in both all-grades subjects, while High School’s 11th-grade ACT results were mixed.

Altamont Grade School stands out most consistently: in 2025–2026, its all-grades English language arts result was 63%, 7 percentage points above the state’s 56%, and math was 43%, 3 points above the state’s 40%. Its upper-grade ELA results were especially strong—76% in sixth grade, 17 points above the state, and 76% in eighth grade, 13 points above—while third-grade ELA was 40%, 8 points below the state. Altamont High School was above the state in 11th-grade ACT ELA by 1 point (51% versus 50%), but below in math by 6 points and science by 3. PreACT results also varied: ninth-grade science was 55%, 8 points above the state, while ninth-grade ELA was 50%, 12 points below.

Recent changes were mixed, not uniformly better or worse. Grade School’s ELA rose by less than a point from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, but its state advantage narrowed from 9 points to 7; math fell by 3 points, and its advantage narrowed from 7 points to 3. A notable exception was eighth-grade science, which rose 13 points. At High School, 11th-grade ACT math fell 14 points, shifting from a 9-point state lead to a 6-point deficit. SchoolDigger ranked Grade School 829th of 1,737 (52nd percentile, 3 stars) and High School 280th of 620 (55th percentile, 3 stars) in 2025–2026; both rankings declined from the prior year. Grade School’s student–teacher ratio was 12.0, compared with 10.8 at High School. In 2024–2025, free/reduced lunch eligible students were 62% at Grade School and 51% at High School; these figures describe context, not a cause of results. Because the schools serve different grades and take different assessments, their results are not a like-for-like school ranking.