Summary:
ZIP code 62035 has three elementary schools in Alton CUSD 11: North Elementary School serves grades 2–5, while Lewis & Clark Elementary School and Gilson Brown Elementary School serve kindergarten–grade 1. North is the only school with reported test scores: in 2025–2026, its all-grades results were 39% in ELA and 32% in math, above the district but below state results of 56% and 40%. The most important takeaway is that without test scores for the two K–1 schools, these data cannot identify which school is strongest academically.
For reported chronic absenteeism in 2025–2026, Lewis & Clark stands out for the lowest rate at 21%, compared with 24% at North and 33% at Gilson Brown. Gilson Brown has the highest rate and the smallest enrollment, with 176 students; North has the largest enrollment, with 549. Gilson Brown also has the lowest student-teacher ratio at 11.0 and the highest spending per student at $17,206, while North’s ratio is 16.1 and spending is $13,617. These are differences in school context, not evidence of differences in academic performance.
North’s reported scores improved from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: ELA rose from 35% to 39%, math from 26% to 32%, and grade 5 science from 24% to 40%. Its state gap narrowed in math, from 13 points to 7, and in grade 5 science, from 16 to 7; the ELA gap stayed nearly unchanged at about 18 points. At the same time, SchoolDigger lists North’s percentile ranking declining from the 38th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 23rd in 2025–2026. The schools’ free/reduced lunch eligible shares in 2024–2025 were 51% at North, 57% at Lewis & Clark, and 60% at Gilson Brown. SchoolDigger rates the district 702nd of 738, at the 5th percentile with 0 stars; that is a district rating, not a rating for each school.
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