Best Public Schools in Salem, IL

Salem, Illinois, has four schools serving 1,878 students from prekindergarten through grade 12: Salem Community High School, Franklin Park Middle School, Hawthorn Elementary School and Selmaville Elementary School. The clearest shared strength is ELA: both elementary schools were above the state in grade 3, and in grades 4–8 Selmaville and Franklin Park averaged 73% and 71% proficient, compared with 58% statewide.

Selmaville leads the matched-grade ELA results, averaging 73% across grades 4–8 versus 71% at Franklin Park; both were well above the state average. In grade 3, Selmaville also led Hawthorn in math, 71% to 50%, while their ELA results were 63% and 59%. Franklin Park stands out in grade 8 science at 62%, versus 52% statewide. At the high school, graduation was a strength: 95% versus 90% statewide. However, grade 11 ACT math and science were weaker, at 29% and 36%, compared with 40% and 48% statewide. Hawthorn had the strongest reported all-grades math summary at 50%, but those summaries cover different grade spans and are not a fair school-to-school ranking.

All three schools’ all-grades ELA results rose from 2024–25 to 2025–26: Selmaville gained 26 percentage points, Hawthorn 12 and Franklin Park 4. SchoolDigger’s statewide ranking percentile rose from 30 to 66 for Selmaville over three years, while it fell from 77 to 61 for Franklin Park and from 69 to 33 for Salem Community High. Attendance is better than the state figure at all four schools: chronic absenteeism ranged from 12% to 19%, versus 24% statewide. As context, all four report free/reduced lunch eligible for school year 2024–25, ranging from 45% to 63%, and student-teacher ratios range from 12.2 to 15.9. These figures describe differences between schools but do not explain their results.