Summary:
Park Ridge CCSD 64 has two middle schools serving grades 6–8: Emerson Middle School and Lincoln Middle School. In 2025–2026, both were well above state proficiency in all-grades ELA and math: ELA was 80% at Emerson and 78% at Lincoln, compared with 56% statewide; math was 62.3% and 61.5%, compared with 40% statewide. The most important takeaway is that strong results against the state do not mean the schools match the district: both were below the district in all-grades ELA and math.
Emerson leads the pair in all-grades results, by 2 points in ELA and 1 point in math, but Lincoln stands out in 8th-grade science. Emerson’s largest lead is in 7th-grade ELA, where it scores 85% versus Lincoln’s 74%, a 12-point gap; it also leads 7th-grade math by 6 points. Lincoln leads 8th-grade ELA by 5 points, 8th-grade math by 2 points and science by 7 points. Lincoln’s 8th-grade science result is 80%, 4 points above the district, while Emerson’s 74% is 3 points below. Both schools are above the state in every reported grade-level result.
Results changed unevenly from 2024–2025: Emerson improved by 1 point in all-grades ELA and math, while Lincoln’s ELA fell by 1 point and math by 3 points. Lincoln’s 8th-grade science rose by 8 points, while Emerson’s fell by 1; despite the science gain, the schools’ average advantage over the state narrowed. SchoolDigger ranked Lincoln 129th of 1,126 schools (89th percentile) and Emerson 130th (88th percentile) in 2025–2026, down from the 93rd percentile for both the prior year. As context, free/reduced lunch eligible rates in 2021–2022 were 6% at Emerson and 3% at Lincoln; 2024–2025 student-teacher ratios were 11.5 and 12.3, respectively.
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