Summary
Oliver W Holmes Middle School serves 615 students in grades 6–8 in Wheeling, Illinois, and is compared with nearby middle and junior high schools. Its latest results show improvement in reading and math, but the clearest concern is that it scored below every nearby school in all three reported areas: English Language Arts (ELA), math, and eighth-grade science.
ELA is Holmes’s strongest result relative to the district and state, while science is its weakest: in 2025–2026, Holmes had 41% proficiency in ELA, compared with 51% in Wheeling CCSD 21 and 56% statewide; math was 22%, versus 37% and 40%; and eighth-grade science was 32%, versus 51% and 52%. Holmes was also well below the nearby-school averages of 76% in ELA, 63% in math, and 74% in science. In each subject, Jack London Middle School was the next-lowest nearby school. Within Holmes, eighth-grade ELA was a relative bright spot at 44%, but it remained below the state’s eighth-grade result of 63%.
Holmes’s scores have risen since 2023–2024: ELA increased by 19 percentage points, from 22% to 41%, and math by 11 points, from 11% to 22%. Still, SchoolDigger placed the school in the 13th statewide percentile and awarded it 1 star in 2025–2026, down from the 23rd percentile in 2023–2024. Context measures are not outliers locally: the 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligible rate was 71%, and the student–teacher ratio was 10.9, close to the nearby-school average of 11.3. SchoolDigger’s effectiveness ranking for White students was 30th percentile in 2025–2026, above the school’s overall ranking; its ranking for English Language Learner students fell from the 26th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 7th in 2024–2025, then rose to the 9th in 2025–2026.
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