Summary:
The 61101 zip code in Rockford, Illinois is home to a single middle school, Kennedy Middle School, which serves students in grades 6-8. Despite the school's relatively low student-teacher ratio and higher-than-average per-student spending, its academic performance has consistently ranked in the bottom 10% of Illinois middle schools over the past three school years.
Kennedy Middle School's proficiency rates on standardized tests are significantly below the district and state averages. In the 2024-2025 school year, only 10.6% of students were proficient or better in English Language Arts, compared to 32.8% for the Rockford School District 205 and 53.1% for the state. In Mathematics, the proficiency rate was just 1.7%, compared to 20.1% for the district and 38.5% for the state. The school's science proficiency rate for 8th grade students was also low at 6.7%, compared to 26.1% for the district and 45.4% for the state.
Despite the higher-than-average financial resources allocated to the school, with a per-student spending of $26,207 in the 2023-2024 school year, the academic performance at Kennedy Middle School remains poor. This suggests that simply increasing funding may not be the sole solution to improving student outcomes. The school serves a predominantly low-income population, with 90.98% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in the 2023-2024 school year, which may contribute to the challenges in academic achievement.
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