Summary:
Galena, Illinois, has two schools serving grades PK–12: Galena Elementary and Middle School (PK–8) and Galena High School (9–12), both in Galena Unified School District 120. Their results offer families a picture of the schools across the city, but the strongest takeaway is that both are above Illinois in many reported achievement measures, with a notable 9th-grade science exception at the high school.
Galena Elementary and Middle School stands out for its strong state-relative elementary results: in 2025–26, all-grades math proficiency was 61%, 21 percentage points above the state, while ELA was 69%, 12 points above. Fifth-grade science was 70%, 22 points above Illinois. At Galena High School, eight of nine reported ACT and PreACT comparisons were above state results; the exception was 9th-grade science, at 33% versus 47%, or 14 points below. SchoolDigger’s current rankings place the elementary/middle school at the 78th percentile with four stars and the high school at the 69th percentile with three stars; these are separate ranking pools, not direct test-score comparisons.
Recent trends are mixed. The elementary/middle school’s ELA advantage over the state stayed about 12 points from 2024–25 to 2025–26, while its math advantage widened from 17 to 21 points and its 5th-grade science advantage grew from 2 to 22 points. At the high school, 11th-grade ACT math fell from 52% to 44%, and its state advantage narrowed from 13 to 4 points; 9th-grade PreACT science dropped from 51% to 33%, shifting from just above the state to 14 points below. SchoolDigger rankings were steady for the elementary/middle school (77th–79th percentile over three years), while the high school fell 12 percentile points from 2023–24. In 2024–25, student-teacher ratios were 12.0 and 11.6, respectively; free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 31% and 35%. These are contextual figures, not explanations for results.
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