Butler School District 53

The two schools in Butler School District 53 serve 456 students from kindergarten through grade 8: Brook Forest Elementary School serves K–5, and Butler Junior High School serves grades 6–8; the district’s list has no high school. The strongest overall finding is that both schools’ 2025–26 all-grades results were well above state benchmarks: ELA proficiency was 92% and 96%, compared with 56% statewide, and math proficiency was 83% and 84%, compared with 40% statewide.

Butler Junior High School had the highest reported all-grades results, at 96% in ELA and 84% in math; those scores were 39 and 44 percentage points above the state, respectively. Brook Forest Elementary School had the lower scores of the two—92% in ELA and 83% in math—but still exceeded state results by 36 and 44 points. The reported school-to-school differences were small: 3 points in ELA and less than 1 point in math. SchoolDigger gives both schools five stars, ranking Brook Forest 27th of 1,737 schools and Butler Junior High 14th of 1,126. Because the schools serve different grade spans, these all-grades scores are not a grade-matched comparison.

ELA and math results rose at both schools from 2024–25 to 2025–26: ELA increased by 7 points at Brook Forest and 4 at Butler Junior High, while math rose by about 2 points at each. Science moved the other way: grade 5 proficiency at Brook Forest fell by 1 point, and grade 8 at Butler Junior High fell by 4, though both remained well above their grade-level state results. Butler Junior High also has a lower student-teacher ratio (6.0 versus 8.6) and lower chronic absenteeism (3% versus 5%). The reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares, from 2021–22, were 2% at Butler Junior High and 1% at Brook Forest; these are contextual figures, not explanations for school results.