A-c Central Middle School, Ashland IL

Original Research by School Decision on A-c Central Middle School

A-C Central Middle School serves grades five through eight in Ashland, a very small village in Cass County, Illinois about twenty miles west of Springfield. The school enrolls roughly ninety students across those four grades, making it a genuinely small learning environment in a rural farming community.

The school's academic performance shows substantial challenge. In mathematics, proficiency rates are very low across the grade band. Fifth-grade math proficiency stands in the single digits, sixth grade reaches only slightly higher, seventh grade is similarly low, and eighth grade shows proficiency at zero. English language arts results are less dire but still below half proficiency in most grades; fifth grade reaches about half proficient, sixth grade holds near half, seventh grade drops to about one-third, and eighth grade falls to roughly one-quarter. Science proficiency in fifth and eighth grades is similarly weak, in the low-to-mid thirties percentile range. On the proficiency index used to compare schools within Cass County, A-C Central Middle School sits below the midpoint among the county's districts. Student participation in state assessments is strong, generally near or at full rates, indicating the school is engaged in testing administration. A parent may want to look into the school's academic support and remediation strategies directly, given how consistently low these results are across grades and subjects.

The student body is nearly all white, with a very small count of Hispanic and multiracial students reported. The school has no students of Black or Asian descent. Demographic counts for free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and special education are not publicly reported; the state testing data does not break out English learner enrollment either.

Ashland itself is a quiet, slowly declining farming village with a population that has been shrinking for years. The school sits on the shared campus of A-C Central High School at East Buchanan Street, close to the village downtown and the public library. There is no major commercial activity in the immediate area; the broader economy rests on family agriculture, and most non-farm employment opportunities lie in the Springfield metro region. No recent major school district changes were documented in available sources. Housing values in the area are modest and have appreciated slightly in recent years, placing them well below state and national benchmarks. The community is stable but small and aging, without evidence of new population growth or housing development.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 10%

▼ 20 pts below state median

Grade 615%

School 15% · District 15%

▼ 9 pts below state median

Grade 715%

School 15% · District 15%

▼ 13 pts below state median

Grade 80%

School 0% · District 0%

▼ 23 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 552%

School 52% · District 52%

even with state median

Grade 650%

School 50% · District 50%

even with state median

Grade 735%

School 35% · District 35%

▼ 17 pts below state median

Grade 827%

School 27% · District 27%

▼ 26 pts below state median

Science

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 33%

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 829%

School 29% · District 29%

▼ 11 pts below state median

This schoolA-C Central CUSD 262, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 5Lower-income33%Higher-income64%30 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income8%Higher-income36%28 pp gap