Summary:
Five Coal City schools in ZIP code 60416 serve 2,129 students from prekindergarten through grade 12: Coal City Early Childhood Center (437 students), Coal City Elementary School (302), Coal City Intermediate School (294), Coal City Middle School (454) and Coal City High School (642). The strongest broad academic results are at Middle and Intermediate: both were well above state rates in all-grades reading and math in 2025–26. That is the clearest overall finding, though results vary considerably by school, grade and subject.
Coal City Middle School and Coal City Intermediate School stand out against the state: Middle was 21 percentage points above in both all-grades IAR ELA and math (77% versus 56%, and 61% versus 40%); Intermediate was 21 points above in ELA (77% versus 56%) and 15 points above in math (54% versus 40%). Elementary has a more mixed picture: all-grades ELA was 5 points below the state, while math was 13 points above; third-grade results were above state levels in both subjects. High School was above state rates in all three 11th-grade ACT subjects, but 10th-grade PreACT ELA and science were 6 and 11 points below. No proficiency figures are reported for the Early Childhood Center.
Recent results offer both encouraging gains and cautions: across 17 matched school-to-state comparisons, the gap narrowed in 11, with an average change of about 2 points toward a smaller advantage. At High, ninth-grade PreACT scores rose from 2024–25 to 2025–26, while tenth-grade scores fell in all three subjects. Intermediate’s ELA result rose 4 points. SchoolDigger percentiles fell over three years at High (80th to 71st), Middle (93rd to 84th) and Intermediate (86th to 78th); Middle’s rating also shifted from five stars to four. Other context: Middle’s student–teacher ratio was 12.5, compared with Intermediate’s 15.6, and the schools’ free/reduced lunch eligible rates in 2024–25 ranged from 28% to 34%. All five schools had chronic absenteeism below the state rate in 2025–26.
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