Harvard CUSD 50

The four schools in Harvard CUSD 50, in Harvard, Illinois, serve students from kindergarten through grade 12: Crosby Elementary serves K–3, Jefferson Elementary serves grades 4–5, Harvard Junior High serves grades 6–8, and Harvard High School serves grades 9–12. The central concern is that every supplied 2025–2026 proficiency result is below its state comparison: elementary and middle school IAR results trail by 21–33 percentage points in ELA and 20–28 points in math, while Harvard High is below state results in each supplied ACT and PreACT subject-grade result.

Among the three schools with IAR All Grades results, Harvard Junior High leads in ELA at 36%, compared with Jefferson at 33% and Crosby at 23%; the top-to-bottom gap is 12 points. Math has a different leader: Crosby scores 19%, Jefferson 18%, and Harvard Junior High 12%, an 8-point range. Harvard High’s strongest supplied result is ninth-grade PreACT Secure ELA at 52%, 10 points below state; its lowest is eleventh-grade ACT math at 8%, 32 points below state. These schoolwide results are useful context, but the schools serve different grades, so they are not same-grade comparisons.

Recent IAR results improved at all three elementary and middle schools: their average rose 7 points in ELA and 5 in math from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, compared with state increases of 3 and 1 point. Harvard High’s pattern is mixed: ninth-grade ELA and math improved relative to the state, while eleventh-grade ACT ELA and math fell further behind. SchoolDigger ranks the district 730th of 738 districts, at the 1st percentile; its school histories also show recent declines for Harvard Junior High, from the 19th to 6th percentile, and Jefferson, from the 16th to 7th. As context, 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligible figures range from 45% at Harvard High to 64% at Crosby; student-teacher ratios range from 9.3 at Jefferson to 11.6 at Harvard Junior High.