Summary:
Pleasant Plains, Illinois, has three schools in Pleasant Plains CUSD 8, serving prekindergarten through grade 12: Farmingdale Elementary School (PK–4), Pleasant Plains Middle School (grades 5–8) and Pleasant Plains High School (grades 9–12). The latest reported test results are from 2025–2026, and each school is above the state in its reported results. The sharpest school-to-school difference is in all-grades IAR mathematics: Farmingdale scored 67.4% and the middle school 39.8%, a 28-point gap.
Farmingdale stands out in mathematics, scoring 28 points above the state; the middle school was only 0.2 point above it. In all-grades IAR ELA, the schools are effectively tied: 69.6% at Farmingdale and 69.7% at the middle school, each about 13 points above the state. The high school was above the state in every reported ACT and PreACT result, with its largest advantage in 11th-grade ACT ELA (20 points) and its smallest in 10th-grade PreACT mathematics (3 points). Attendance is a concern at the high school: chronic absenteeism was 25%, compared with 8% at Farmingdale and 13% at the middle school, and 24% statewide.
Recent results show mixed progress: the elementary and middle schools’ average advantage over the state was essentially unchanged in ELA, while their average mathematics advantage widened by about 1 point from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026. SchoolDigger’s 2025–2026 rankings place Farmingdale at the 82nd percentile and the high school at the 81st, versus the middle school at the 57th; the middle school’s ranking fell 22 percentile points from 2023–2024. Student–teacher ratios are fairly close, ranging from 13.4 to 15.1 in 2024–2025. The reported free/reduced lunch eligible figures are 3.9% at Farmingdale and 11.5% at the middle school for 2024–2025; the high school’s 14.1% figure is from 2021–2022, so it is not a same-year comparison.
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