Best Public Schools in Cobden, IL

Cobden, Illinois, has three schools serving prekindergarten through grade 12: Cobden Elementary School, Cobden Junior High School and Cobden High School. Together, they enroll 454 students. Each school reported a high share of students eligible for free/reduced lunch in 2024–25: 93% at Elementary, 94% at Junior High and 96% at High School. The clearest takeaway is that results vary by school and subject: Elementary and Junior High are above the state in broad ELA results, while High School’s current comparable test results are below state rates.

Junior High stands out in ELA, scoring 67% in All Grades IAR—11 points above the state and 7 above Elementary’s 60%. Its eighth-grade results are especially strong: 82% in ELA, 19 points above state; 46% in math, 11 above; and 61% in science, 9 above. Elementary leads in All Grades math, at 40% versus Junior High’s 35%, and is about 1 point above the state. Its fifth-grade science result, however, is 41%, 6 points below state. High School has the weakest current tested comparisons: 10th-grade PreACT ELA is 36%, 18 points below state, while 10th-grade PreACT science is 47%, just 1 point below. Its graduation rate is slightly above state: 90.2% versus 89.8%.

Recent broad IAR results moved closer to state in math and farther above it in ELA: the two lower schools’ average ELA advantage grew from 3 to 7 points between 2024–25 and 2025–26, while their average math result improved from 5 points below state to 2 points below. Science trends diverged: Elementary fifth-grade science fell from 57% to 41%, while Junior High eighth-grade science rose from 19% to 61%. SchoolDigger’s 2025–26 statewide rank percentiles are 61 for Junior High, 50 for Elementary and 38 for High School; since 2023–24, Junior High rose 9 points and High School fell 23. Student-teacher ratios range from 9.8 at High School to 11.6 at Junior High, but the supplied figures do not show that any one school measure explains the differences in results. Because the schools serve different grade spans and are relatively small, results are best considered by school and grade.