Best Public Schools in Pecatonica, IL

Pecatonica’s three schools in Pecatonica CUSD 321 serve 889 students from prekindergarten through grade 12: Pecatonica Elementary School serves PK–4, Pecatonica Community Middle School serves grades 5–8, and Pecatonica High School serves grades 9–12. Attendance is a strong shared result: 2025–2026 chronic absenteeism was 10% at High, 12% at Elementary, and 13% at Middle, all well below Illinois’ 24%. High also reported a 91% graduation rate, slightly above the state’s 90%. The clearest area-wide positive is that all three schools had substantially lower chronic absenteeism than the state.

Pecatonica High School stands out against state benchmarks: its 2025–2026 ACT proficiency was 67% in ELA, 55% in math, and 62% in science—17, 15, and 14 percentage points above Illinois, respectively. Pecatonica Elementary School has the strongest reported all-grades IAR math result, 56% versus 40% statewide, a 17-point advantage; its grade 3 results were also notably high, beating state results by 23 points in ELA and 20 in math. Pecatonica Community Middle School leads the IAR schools in all-grades ELA, at 64% versus 56% statewide, and was 12 points above the state in grade 7 ELA. The main weaker spots are Elementary grade 4 ELA, 5 points below the state, and Middle all-grades math, 1 point below. The elementary and middle schools serve different grades, so their all-grades results are not direct same-grade comparisons.

Recent IAR trends are mixed but generally improved at Middle: its all-grades ELA rose 12 points and math 8 points from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026; Elementary ELA rose 4 points, while its math result fell 2 points. At High, 10th-grade PreACT results dropped notably year over year: 17 points in ELA, 16 in math, and 13 in science. SchoolDigger’s 2025–2026 rankings were at the 75th percentile for High, 64th for Elementary, and 54th for Middle, each lower than its prior-year ranking. Context measures are fairly close across schools: 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 31% at High, 34% at Middle, and 35% at Elementary; student-teacher ratios were 13.6, 14.1, and 11.8, respectively. These figures describe school context but do not explain differences in results.