Summary:
Poplar Grove, Illinois, has five schools serving kindergarten through grade 12, with enrollments from 136 to 496 students. Results vary by school and grade, especially in math: the 2025–2026 all-grades IAR results range from 24% to 74% in math and 52% to 74% in ELA. The most encouraging finding is that both elementary schools exceeded the state in all four same-grade comparisons, with Manchester Elementary School leading each by 5 to 22 points.
Manchester Elementary School is the clearest standout: its all-grades IAR results were 74% in both ELA and math, 18 and 34 points above the state. Poplar Grove Elementary School also beat the state in all four same-grade comparisons. At the other end, North Boone Upper Elementary School had the lowest all-grades math result, 24%, 15 points below the state; its grade 5 and 6 math results were also below state levels. North Boone Middle School was above the state in all-grades ELA but 7 points below in math. North Boone High School was below the state in all three 11th-grade ACT subjects.
Trends are mixed: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, Manchester’s all-grades IAR rose 26 points in ELA and 15 in math, while North Boone High School’s ACT ELA fell 12 points and math fell 6; its 10th-grade PreACT Secure results improved in all three subjects. SchoolDigger ranked Manchester in the 87th statewide percentile in 2025–2026, compared with the 42nd for North Boone Middle and the 26th for North Boone High. Context differs too: all five schools reported free/reduced lunch eligible for 2024–2025, ranging from 42% at North Boone Middle to 47% at North Boone High; ratios ranged from 11.3 at North Boone Upper Elementary to 14.5 at the high school. Chronic absenteeism was below the state at four schools, but reached 28% at the high school, above the state’s 24%. All-grades results combine different grade spans, so same-grade comparisons are more directly comparable.
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