Meadow Lane School, Merrionette Park IL

Original Research by School Decision on Meadow Lane School

Meadow Lane School is a small elementary school serving grades three through five in Merrionette Park, a dense residential village on Chicago's south side. The school sits in Atwood Heights School District 125, a tiny K-8 district that also serves the nearby villages of Alsip and Oak Lawn.

Enrollment is small, with just under two hundred students across its three grade levels. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with substantial representation from Black and white families and a small Asian population. Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and on students with IEPs or English learner status was not available.

State testing results from the 2024-25 school year show low proficiency across mathematics and English language arts. In math, third graders were proficient at roughly half the rate of fifth graders; fourth grade fell in between but markedly low. In ELA, results were similarly modest across all three grades, with fifth-grade ELA performing better than math. Science results for grade five were in the same ballpark as the reading and math numbers. The school achieved full test participation. When compared to other schools in Cook County, Meadow Lane's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile. A parent may want to look into further with the school what interventions are underway and how the school is tracking student progress toward proficiency benchmarks.

The school building is located on Meadow Lane Drive, embedded in the residential blocks of Merrionette Park. The village itself is built out and built up—about a small square-mile footprint with dense single-family homes, most from the 1950s era. Commercial life centers on Kedzie Avenue, where Walmart, Jewel-Osco, Planet Fitness, and a cluster of medical offices anchor a retail strip. The Alsip-Merrionette Park Library and a small municipal park serve the area. Transit is available through Pace bus service along the Kedzie corridor.

Housing in the area is relatively affordable by Cook County standards. Home values and rental rates in the zip code are below the county median, and the market shows modest price appreciation year-over-year. The neighborhood attracts first-time homebuyers looking for 1950s bungalows and established residential stability. The housing stock itself is one of Merrionette Park's defining characteristics: the village was largely built between the 1930s and 1950s, and turnover in recent years has been steady but not rapid.

No recent major district or school-level changes were found in public reporting, and no information about staffing, programs, attendance, or discipline was available in the data.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 316%

School 16% · District 16%

▼ 30 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

Grade 412%

School 12% · District 12%

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Grade 531%

School 31% · District 31%

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 325%

School 25% · District 25%

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 431%

School 31% · District 31%

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 39%

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Science

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 39%

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

This schoolAtwood Heights SD 125, 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.