The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Opdyke-belle Rive Grade Sch
Opdyke-Belle Rive Grade School serves a tiny rural community in Jefferson County in southern Illinois, combining Opdyke and the neighboring village of Belle Rive into a single public school district. The school holds all grades from pre-K through eighth in one building, making it the civic anchor of both towns. Enrollment is small, with under a few hundred students distributed across the full K-8 span.
The school's test results paint a complex picture. In English language arts, the school shows unevenness: third grade reaches proficiency at a solid rate, while fourth grade drops sharply. Sixth grade recovers to high proficiency; seventh grade falls again; eighth grade rises to moderate proficiency. The pattern suggests that language and literacy instruction may be stronger in some grades than others, or that student composition shifts as cohorts move up. Math proficiency is consistently low across the board. Third grade sits just under a third of students meeting proficiency; by fourth grade that fraction collapses to single digits. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades all report low double-digit proficiency rates. Science results are sparse—grade five has no reported data, and eighth grade shows very low proficiency. A parent should ask the school directly about what accounts for the sharp differences in ELA proficiency between adjacent grades and why math proficiency is so persistently low. Testing was fully administered and all students participated, so these are not artifacts of low test-taking rates.
Across all tested subjects and grades, the school's overall proficiency sits below the midpoint compared to other districts in Jefferson County, placing it among the weaker performers regionally in raw academic measurement. This is a straightforward weakness. The school does not serve high school grades, so no graduation rate applies here.
The student body is predominantly white, with very few students of color enrolled. Demographic data on students receiving free or reduced-price meals or identified as English learners was not available, so the school's economic context and English learner population cannot be assessed from the data provided. No information about special education enrollment or school discipline was in the records.
Opdyke is a very small, predominantly owner-occupied residential rural community of a few hundred people. It sits about seven to eight miles southeast of Mount Vernon, and residents typically commute there for work. The town has no downtown commercial center and no public library or transit within its boundaries. The school campus sits on its own grounds rather than in a walkable neighborhood. The broader Mount Vernon area is the economic and social anchor; the state's I-57 corridor expansion, underway through 2028, is reshaping the region nearby. Opdyke's own population has declined modestly over recent years, and the CDP itself is only about a half-square-mile in area. Nearby Wayne Fitzgerrell State Recreation Area on Rend Lake offers boating, fishing, and hiking within a short drive.
The district itself is single-school and very small. No major recent policy changes, referendums, facility expansions, or curriculum shifts were reported in publicly available sources, suggesting stability but also limited institutional activity or growth.
A family considering this school should understand that it is primarily a neighborhood school for a rural microcommunity with very low academic proficiency in math and highly variable results in reading. The setting is quiet and small-scale, with limited urban amenities. If stronger test results in core subjects are a priority, the school's performance is below average for its county. If a child thrives in a tight-knit, car-dependent rural environment and has strong support at home, it may work. For clarity on why math proficiency is so low and whether the school has active intervention plans in place, direct conversation with school leadership would be valuable.
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