Streator Education Service District 44

Streator Education Service District 44 has three schools serving 1,511 students from preschool through grade 8: Kimes Elementary School (PK–2), Centennial Elementary School (K–4), and Northlawn Junior High School (grades 5–8). In 2025–2026, chronic absenteeism was higher at all three schools than the state’s 24%: 27% at Northlawn, 31% at Centennial, and 32% at Kimes. The clearest academic divide is mathematics: Centennial’s all-grades result was 33%, compared with 16% at Northlawn, a 17-point gap.

Northlawn led the schools with reported all-grades ELA results at 42%, ahead of Centennial at 39%; both were below the state’s 56%. In mathematics, Centennial led at 33%, while Northlawn was at 16%; those results were 7 and 24 points below the state, respectively. Northlawn’s science results also differed by grade: its 2025–2026 fifth-grade score was 15 points below the state, while its eighth-grade score was 6 points below. Kimes’s 2025–2026 ELA and mathematics results were state-suppressed, so no score is available for comparison.

Recent score changes were mixed. Centennial’s ELA result rose 9 points from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, but its math result fell 3 points; Northlawn gained 2 points in each subject, though its ELA result did not keep pace with the state’s improvement. SchoolDigger’s 2025–2026 rankings placed Northlawn in the 15th percentile and Centennial in the 21st; both fell from the prior year. In 2024–2025, free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 79% at Centennial, 72% at Northlawn, and 71% at Kimes. Student-teacher ratios that year ranged from 15.0 at Kimes to 15.9 at Centennial, and per-student spending ranged from $14,339 at Centennial to $18,222 at Kimes. These figures provide context, but do not explain differences in results.