Summary:
Havana, Illinois, has three schools serving kindergarten through grade 12: New Central Elementary School (K–4), Havana Junior High School (grades 5–8), and Havana High School (grades 9–12). Together they enroll 819 students, with 249 to 286 at each school. The clearest overall finding is that results vary sharply by grade: junior-high ELA was 15 points below state in grade 5 but 10 points above in grade 6.
New Central stands out in All Grades math, with 46% proficiency compared with 40% statewide, a 6-point advantage; its ELA result was 54%, 3 points below state. The junior high had the area’s strongest All Grades ELA result at 57%, 1 point above state, but its 36% math result was 3 points below. High-school results also warrant attention: grade-11 ACT science was 27%, 21 points below the state’s 48%, and graduation was 87%, 3 points below state. Chronic absenteeism was highest at the high school, at 26%, compared with 15% at New Central and 19% at the junior high; the state rate was 24%.
Recent math trends are encouraging: All Grades math rose 9 points at New Central and 5 at the junior high from 2024–25 to 2025–26. New Central ELA rose 8 points, while junior-high ELA was nearly unchanged (57.0% to 57.1%) as the state result rose 3 points. At the high school, 10th-grade PreACT Secure results improved by 11 points in ELA, 12 in math, and 15 in science, though all remained below state levels. SchoolDigger’s 2025–26 percentiles were 49 for New Central, 55 for the junior high, and 39 for the high school; since 2023–24, the high school’s percentile fell 16 points. For context, 2024–25 student–teacher ratios ranged from 11.4 to 13.8, and free/reduced lunch eligible shares that year ranged from 47% at the high school to 56% at New Central; these school characteristics do not explain the achievement differences.
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