Summary:
Carthage, Illinois, has three schools serving prekindergarten through grade 12, with 754 students across the Carthage Primary School, Carthage Middle School, and Illini West High School. In 2025–26, results varied by school, grade, and subject. The clearest area-wide concern is math: all-grades results were 22% at Primary and 30% at Middle, compared with 40% statewide, while Illini West was 25% on grade 11 ACT math, 15 points below the state.
Carthage Middle stands out for ELA in grades 6–8, where results exceeded state rates by 6 points in grade 6, 12 in grade 7, and 15 in grade 8; its all-grades ELA result was 65%, 9 points above the state. Illini West also had a bright spot: grade 9 ELA was 70%, 9 points above the state, despite weaker math results. Carthage Primary had the lowest SchoolDigger ranking, at the 28th percentile, and its all-grades ELA and math results were 10 and 18 points below state rates. SchoolDigger ranked Middle highest, at the 63rd percentile, with Illini West at the 38th.
Recent changes show improvement in some subjects, not across the board. Primary’s all-grades ELA rose 10 points from 2024–25 to 2025–26, while math fell 4 points. At Illini West, grade 11 ACT ELA rose 14 points and science rose 6, but math fell 2 points and its state gap widened to 15 points. SchoolDigger rankings fell between 2023–24 and 2025–26 at all three schools: 19 percentile points at Primary, 4 at Middle, and 16 at Illini West. For context, all three reported free/reduced lunch eligible figures for 2024–25: 43% at Primary, 50% at Middle, and 54% at Illini West; student–teacher ratios ranged from 13.9 at Middle to 15 at Illini West. Because Primary and Middle serve different grades, their all-grades results are not direct same-grade comparisons.
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