Summary:
ZIP code 61854 has one middle school, Blue Ridge Intermediate-Junior High School, serving grades 4–8 with 232 students. Its 2024–2025 student–teacher ratio was 11:1. The most important finding is a sharp difference by subject: in 2025–2026, the school’s all-grades ELA result was above Illinois, while its math result was substantially below.
There is no local top or bottom school to compare because this ZIP code has only one listed middle school. Against Illinois, Blue Ridge’s all-grades ELA proficiency was 63%, about 6 percentage points above the state’s 56%; math was 29%, 11 points below the state’s 40%. Results also differed by grade: ELA in grades 7 and 8 was 13 and 16 points above the state, respectively, while grade 4 was 7 points below. In math, grade 7 was 4 points above Illinois, but grade 4 was 21 points below. These comparisons show that the overall results do not describe every grade equally well.
Blue Ridge’s ELA results improved, and science became a comparative strength, while math remained behind. All-grades ELA rose from 50% in 2024–2025 to 63% in 2025–2026, shifting from 3 points below the state to 6 points above. Math edged up from 27% to 29%, but remained about 11 points below Illinois. In science, the school moved from below the state in both tested grades to above it in 2025–2026: grade 5 was 7 points above and grade 8 was 3 points above. SchoolDigger gives Blue Ridge 3 stars and a 2025–2026 rank of 477th out of 1,126 schools, at the 58th percentile, up 7 percentile points from the prior year. As additional context, 48% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible in 2024–2025.
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