Summary:
In ZIP code 60091, three middle schools serve 1,767 students across grades 5–8: Highcrest Middle School serves grades 5–6, Wilmette Junior High School serves grades 7–8, and Marie Murphy School serves grades 6–8. Their 2025–2026 proficiency results are well above state rates, though the schools differ more in math than in English: all-grades ELA ranges from 84% to 93%, versus 56% statewide, while math ranges from 69% to 87%, versus 40% statewide. The most important finding is that every school exceeds state proficiency, but local math results are not equally strong.
Marie Murphy stands out at the top: its all-grades results are 93% in ELA and 87% in math, leading Wilmette Junior High by 9 and 18 percentage points, respectively. The difference also appears in shared grades: Marie Murphy leads Wilmette by 8 points in seventh-grade ELA and 20 in math, and by 11 in eighth-grade ELA and 22 in math. Wilmette Junior High has the lowest all-grades results, at 84% in ELA and 69% in math; Highcrest falls between the two. Science results are also notably high: eighth-grade proficiency is 90% at Marie Murphy and 83% at Wilmette, against 52% statewide.
Recent changes favor math overall, but not at every school: the three-school average rose 3 points in math from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, while the state gained 1; in ELA, the school average rose 1 point as the state gained 3. Marie Murphy improved most, including an 8-point math gain, while Wilmette declined 2 points in math and 1 in ELA. SchoolDigger gives Marie Murphy 17th place out of 1,126 schools and Wilmette 76th; both have five stars, while Highcrest has no ranking history provided. Ratios range from 9.4:1 at Marie Murphy to 11.8:1 at Wilmette. The reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares for 2021–2022 were 7.7% at Marie Murphy, 3.3% at Wilmette, and 2.8% at Highcrest; these are context, not an explanation for achievement. Chronic absenteeism was lowest at Highcrest, at 3%, compared with 7% at Marie Murphy and 8% at Wilmette.
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