Summary:
Murphysboro CUSD 186 has four schools serving kindergarten through grade 12 in southern Illinois: Gen John A. Logan Attendance Center (K–2), Carruthers Elementary School (3–5), Murphysboro Middle School (6–8), and Murphysboro High School (9–12). The schools enroll 1,813 students altogether, and chronic absenteeism ranges from 21% at Carruthers to 30% at the middle school. The clearest academic pattern in the 2025–2026 results is that every reported school score falls below its matched state result, with math the largest relative weakness on average.
The high school is closest to state performance among the listed results: its grade 11 ACT science score was 44%, about 4 points below the state, while ACT ELA was about 5 points below. In the all-grades IAR comparison, the middle school narrowly leads Carruthers in ELA (42.6% versus 42.5%), while Carruthers leads in math (25% versus 21%), a 4-point difference. The largest grade-specific shortfalls are the middle school’s eighth-grade ELA, 23 points below state, and Carruthers’ fifth-grade math, 21 points below. SchoolDigger ranks the high school 424th of 620 (32nd percentile, two stars); Carruthers ranks 1,412th of 1,737 (19th percentile, one star), and the middle school 950th of 1,126 (16th percentile, one star).
Recent progress is mixed: across 15 repeated school, subject, and grade comparisons, state gaps widened in 11 and narrowed in four, averaging 3 points wider. ELA improved in the all-grades results at Carruthers and the middle school, by 8 and 6 points, respectively; meanwhile, high school grade 9 and 10 PreACT ELA fell by 11 and 9 points. Carruthers’ student-teacher ratio is 14.6, compared with 12.1 at the middle school. In 2024–2025, free/reduced lunch eligible figures ranged from 93% at Carruthers to 97% at the high school; these are context, not an explanation of outcomes. Comparisons have limits because schools serve different grades and their results include different exams.
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