Summary:
The elementary-school list for Gower School District 62 contains one school, Gower West Elementary School, serving prekindergarten through grade 4 and enrolling 531 students. In 2025–2026, the school’s all-grades proficiency was 80% in English language arts (ELA) and 71% in math, compared with 56% and 40% statewide. Its results were about 24 percentage points higher in ELA and 31 points higher in math, making its substantial advantage over state results the clearest finding.
Gower West is both the top- and bottom-ranked school in this list simply because it is the only one, so there is no meaningful school-to-school comparison. SchoolDigger gives it 5 stars and ranks it 167th of 1,737 Illinois schools, in the 90th percentile. Grade-level results also exceeded state rates: in grade 3, proficiency was 78% in ELA and 80% in math, about 30 and 31 points above state results; in grade 4, it was 82% in ELA and 64% in math, about 26 and 22 points above. Math is a pattern to watch: the school’s grade 4 rate was 16 points below its grade 3 rate, while the state’s grade-to-grade decline was about 7 points.
Results improved from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, but the school’s lead moved differently by subject. ELA rose by about 1 point, while the state rate rose by about 3 points, narrowing the school’s lead by about 2 points; math rose by about 1 point, and its lead widened slightly from 30.8 to 31.0 points. Chronic absenteeism was 12% at the school, below the district’s 13% and the state’s 24%. The school’s student–teacher ratio was 14.2 in 2024–2025, and 9.8% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible in 2021–2022. Because the list includes only one school, these figures describe Gower West but cannot show how it compares with other local schools.
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