Summary:
High schools in Zion-Benton Township HSD 126 include two public schools serving grades 9–12: Zion-Benton Township High School, with 2,114 students, and Zion-Benton East High School, with 419. The most important difference is consistent across the results: East had higher proficiency than Zion-Benton Township in all nine reported subject-and-grade comparisons for 2025–26.
Zion-Benton East stands out, with leads of about 10 to 27 percentage points over its district counterpart. Its strongest result was grade 10 science, where 49% were proficient; this was just above the state’s 48.4%. East was below the state in its other eight results, but by less than Zion-Benton Township each time. The latter’s strongest result was grade 9 ELA: 37% proficient, still 24 points below the state and 18 points below East. SchoolDigger ranked East 390th of 620 schools (37th percentile, 2 stars), compared with Zion-Benton Township at 542nd (13th percentile, 1 star).
Recent changes favor East overall, though neither school improved everywhere. East’s proficiency rose in six of nine results from 2024–25 to 2025–26, including grade 10 science by 14 points and math by 12; its notable setback was grade 9 ELA, down 9 points. Zion-Benton Township’s math results increased in all three grades, while ELA and science fell in all three. Other reported measures also favor East: its 2025–26 graduation rate was 97%, versus 92% at Zion-Benton Township, and chronic absenteeism was 23%, versus 35%. Both schools reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares for 2024–25—62% at Zion-Benton Township and 61% at East—and similar 2024–25 student-teacher ratios of 15.4 and 15.5. These are contextual comparisons, not explanations for the differences in results.
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