Summary:
ZIP code 53532 is served by a single public high school: De Forest High, the only high school in the De Forest Area School District. Located at 815 Jefferson St in DeForest, it serves grades 9–12 with an enrollment of 1,137 students. Because it is the only high school in this ZIP code, there is no local comparison to make — the most useful benchmarks are the district (which largely mirrors the school) and the state of Wisconsin.
De Forest High's strongest results are in completion. Its graduation rate of 96.8% is 4.8 percentage points above the state's 92.0%, and its dropout rate of 0.1% is a full point below the state's 1.1%. Test performance is also mostly above state: in 2025–2026, Science was 6.11 points above the state, Mathematics 5.51 points above, and Social Studies 5.24 points above. English Language Arts is the exception, at 47.40 versus the state's 48.47 — 1.07 points below. Contextually, 16.18% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, per-student spending is $15,231, and the student-teacher ratio is 14.1.
Three areas are worth watching. First, the school's relative standing has slipped: it was rated 4 stars at the 77th percentile in 2023–2024, but 3 stars at the 64th percentile in 2025–2026. Second, test scores fell in all four subjects year over year — Social Studies dropped from 60.28 to 53.49 and ELA from 52.90 to 47.40, while state scores stayed nearly flat, suggesting school-specific declines rather than a statewide shift. ELA is the clearest academic weak spot, swinging from 4.28 points above state to 1.07 points below. Third, chronic absenteeism at 15.6% is better than the state's 17.3% but noticeably higher than the district's 9.3%, making attendance a local priority.
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