Best Public Schools in Cambridge, IL

Cambridge, Illinois, has two schools in Cambridge CUSD 227: Cambridge Community Grade School serves PK–5, and Cambridge Junior/Senior High School serves grades 6–12, with 459 students combined. In 2025–2026, both schools’ all-grades IAR results were above state figures: the grade school scored 72% in ELA and 54% in math, while the high school scored 71% and 53%. Because they serve different grades, these all-grades scores are not like-for-like comparisons. The most important area-wide finding is that both schools outperformed the state in both subjects, though results vary by grade.

Grade-level results show particular strengths at each school, alongside narrower margins. At the grade school, fifth-grade ELA was 79%, 25 points above the state, and fifth-grade science was 68%, 20 points above; its narrowest listed margin was fourth-grade ELA, at 4 points above the state. At the high school, sixth-grade ELA reached 80%, 21 points above the state, while sixth- and seventh-grade math were 20 and 22 points above. Its narrowest listed IAR margin was seventh-grade ELA, just 2 points above the state. The high school’s 11th-grade ACT results were mixed: science was 9 points above the state, but ELA and math were 7 points below.

Recent trends favor the high school in IAR growth, while the grade school’s math result fell. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, the high school rose 10 points in ELA and 9 in math; the grade school rose 1 point in ELA but declined 7 points in math. SchoolDigger’s statewide percentile moved up from 58 to 73 for the high school and down from 91 to 74 for the grade school; these are rankings, not test-score changes. The schools have similar enrollment and 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligible shares—237 students and 48% at the high school, versus 222 students and 46% at the grade school. Student-teacher ratios were 11.2 and 12.9, respectively. Chronic absenteeism was lower than the state’s 24% at both schools: 12% at the high school and 8% at the grade school.