Summary:
Island Lake has two listed schools serving prekindergarten through grade 8: Cotton Creek School serves PK–5, and Matthews Middle School serves grades 6–8; both are part of Wauconda CUSD 118. In 2025–26, Cotton Creek’s all-grades proficiency was 64% in ELA and 44% in math, compared with 54% and 29% at Matthews; the state results were 56% and 40%. The clearest concern is Matthews’ math: its all-grades result was 10 points below the state, and its sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade results were each below the state by 5 to 11 points.
Cotton Creek stands out in all-grades ELA and math, exceeding state results by 8 and 5 points, respectively. Its strongest grade-specific results were in fourth grade: ELA proficiency was 78%, 22 points above the state, and math was 55%, 13 points above. However, its fifth-grade results were weaker: ELA was 1 point below the state, and math was 8 points below. Matthews’ notable exception is eighth-grade science, at 66% proficient—15 points above the state—even as its all-grades ELA and math results were 3 and 10 points below. These schools serve different grades, so their all-grades results are not same-grade comparisons.
Recent changes were mixed: from 2024–25 to 2025–26, ELA rose from 61% to 64% at Cotton Creek and from 50% to 54% at Matthews, while math fell from 51% to 44% at Cotton Creek and rose from 26% to 29% at Matthews. SchoolDigger’s reported percentile fell from 69 to 54 at Cotton Creek and from 50 to 39 at Matthews over the same year, even as both schools’ ELA scores rose. As context, the 2024–25 student-teacher ratios were 12.0 at Cotton Creek and 11.4 at Matthews; both report free/reduced lunch eligible for 2024–25, at 36% and 44%, respectively. These differences describe the schools but do not explain their results.
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