Summary:
ZIP code 60085 has 15 schools—10 elementary, four middle and one high school—with grades spanning kindergarten through grade 12; one charter school serves K–8, while most elementary schools serve K–5. The most striking contrast is in English language arts: LEARN John and Kathy Schreiber Charter School had 76% proficiency across grades, compared with a 25% average at the nine K–5 schools and 56% statewide. The clearest finding for families is how widely reported achievement varies from one school to another.
Among K–5 schools, Andrew Cooke Magnet Elementary School led in both ELA (52%) and math (45%); North Elementary School had the lowest results, at 14% in ELA and 16% in math. At the middle-school level, John R Lewis Middle School led with 39% ELA and 22% math—17 and 13 percentage points above the other three schools’ averages, respectively. Even so, it remained below state proficiency levels; Edith M Smith Middle School had the lowest middle-school results, at 20% in ELA and 8% in math. At Waukegan High School, grade-11 ACT proficiency was 22% in ELA, 15% in math and 22% in science—25 to 28 points below state results.
Recent changes were mixed: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, the K–5 average fell by 1 point in ELA and was nearly unchanged in math, while middle-school ELA rose by 5 points and math by less than 1 point. SchoolDigger statewide percentile rankings fell for every listed school between 2023–2024 and 2025–2026, including a 27-point drop for Cooke and a 2-point drop for LEARN; rankings and test-score changes do not tell the same story. As context, free/reduced lunch eligible shares in 2024–2025 were 84% at LEARN and 57% at Cooke, and elementary student-teacher ratios ranged from 11.2 to 15.0—figures that do not sort schools into a simple performance order.
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