Summary:
McHenry CHSD 156 has one public high school, McHenry Community High School, serving grades 9–12 with 2,214 students. In 2025–2026, the school’s graduation rate was 95%, above Illinois’s 90%, while its dropout rate was 1%, below the state’s 2%. Chronic absenteeism was 25%, compared with 24% statewide. The clearest academic finding is a strong science profile alongside consistently below-state math results.
With one school in the area, there is no school-to-school top or bottom; within the school, science stands out and math is the clearest weakness. Science proficiency was above the state by 3 points in 11th grade, 4 points in 10th grade, and 5 points in 9th grade. Math was below the state by 1, 5, and 3 points in those grades, respectively. Across the three reported grade-and-test comparisons, the school averaged 4 points above the state in science, but 3 points below in math and 2 points below in English language arts (ELA). ELA varied by grade: 9th grade was just above the state, while 10th and 11th grades were below.
Results changed unevenly from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: the school’s gap with the state improved in four of nine comparisons, but there was no consistent progress across subjects and grades. For example, 11th-grade ACT ELA moved from 5 points below the state to 2 points below, while 10th-grade PreACT Secure ELA fell from 54% to 50% as the state result moved from 55% to 54%. SchoolDigger’s statewide percentile was 64 in 2023–2024, 68 in 2024–2025, and 60 in 2025–2026—a decline of 8 percentile points in the latest year. For context, the student–teacher ratio was 15.4 in 2024–2025, and 38% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024–2025. Because the list includes only one school, it cannot show how the school compares with others in the area or explain what accounts for its results.
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