The top reported proficiency rate is 60% in English language arts. The lowest is 38% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Antioch Upper Grade School
Antioch Upper Grade School serves grades six through eight in the small village of Antioch, which sits in Lake County north of Chicago as the gateway to the Chain O'Lakes recreation area. The school is one of five schools in Antioch CCSD 34, a district now working through a five-year strategic shift toward a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum with Essential Standards identified for every grade level. That district-wide change is shaping what teachers are expected to cover and how they assess students.
The school itself has an enrollment of roughly nine hundred students, with a student body that is predominantly white, with meaningful shares of Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian students. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available, so a reader cannot determine the economic profile from that measure. The grade breakdown shows the eighth-grade cohort is somewhat larger than sixth and seventh grade.
State assessment results are available for grades six, seven, and eight in English Language Arts and mathematics, and for eighth grade in science. The picture is uneven. In ELA, students show strongest proficiency in seventh grade, with a clear majority meeting proficiency standards; sixth and eighth graders perform somewhat lower, though still with solid participation rates. Mathematics tells a different story. Sixth-grade math proficiency is low, with less than a third of students meeting the standard. Seventh grade improves noticeably, with proficiency climbing to roughly mid-range. Eighth grade dips again to below sixth-grade levels. Science proficiency in eighth grade falls in the mid-range. Testing participation is consistently high across grades and subjects, suggesting the school is capturing a full picture of student performance rather than losing students to exemptions.
How to read these numbers: Antioch Upper Grade School's overall proficiency index places it below the midpoint among Lake County's school districts. A parent investigating the school would want to understand whether the notably low sixth-grade math results reflect the transition into the middle grades, whether seventh-grade improvement signals strong instructional support in that year, and what happens with students who struggle in math. The district's push toward Essential Standards and viable curriculum might be intended partly to address such variability, so asking the school about instructional coherence across grades would be fair ground.
Antioch itself is a mixed-use village with a walkable historic downtown anchored by shops, restaurants, and civic institutions like the District Public Library near the Metra commuter rail station. The village has a small-town lake-community identity and an industrial base along Anita Avenue. Median home values in the area have appreciated modestly, and rents are moderate. The housing market is reasonably balanced, with supply and demand both moderate. Employment is led by manufacturing, health care, and retail, and recent development includes a light-industrial business park and a townhome rental project in the downtown walkable area, suggesting modest growth momentum.
The school's location on Highview Drive is not in the downtown core but serves the broader residential community. State testing data was not available for grades three through five, which this school does not serve; Antioch Upper Grade School is a pure upper-middle-grades building. No federal free-lunch or English-learner enrollment data, special-education information, staff counts, attendance rates, or course-access details were available in the data provided, so a parent seeking those specifics would need to contact the school directly.
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