Summary:
The Mount Vernon School District 80 in Illinois has only one middle school, Zadok Casey Middle School, which serves students in grades 6-8. The school's performance has consistently ranked in the bottom half of Illinois middle schools over the past three school years, with test scores well below the state averages in core subject areas.
Zadok Casey Middle School has struggled academically, with only 29.8% of students proficient or better in English Language Arts and 9.9% proficient or better in math, compared to state averages of 53.1% and 38.5%, respectively, in the 2024-2025 school year. The school's science proficiency rate for 8th grade students was also significantly lower than the state average, at 27.2% versus 45.4%. Despite these challenges, the school has a relatively small class size, with a student-teacher ratio of 12.2, and higher-than-average per-student spending of $15,161 in the 2023-2024 school year.
The high percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, at 80.1% in the 2023-2024 school year, suggests that the student population comes from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, which could be a contributing factor to the school's low academic performance. Further investigation would be needed to understand the root causes of the school's struggles and identify strategies for improvement to better support the students and community.
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