Beasley Elem Magnet Academic Ctr, Chicago IL

Original Research by School Decision on Beasley Elem Magnet Academic Ctr

Beasley Elementary Magnet Academic Center is a PreK-8 school serving a mostly Black student body in the Bronzeville area of Chicago's South Side. The school draws from a neighborhood that sits within the city's broader South Shore community, which combines residential blocks with retail corridors and lakefront access.

With an enrollment spread across pre-K through eighth grade, Beasley functions as a full pipeline school. The student body is nearly entirely Black, with a handful of Hispanic and Asian students and very small numbers in other groups. Free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility data was not available, so a parent would need to ask the school directly about economic profile and support. Special education and English learner enrollment counts were also missing, which is typical for schools that don't yet report those figures as standard public data.

The school's magnet designation in its name signals an academic focus, though what specific magnet theme or program Beasley runs is not detailed in the available data. A parent would want to contact the school to understand what "Magnet Academic Center" means in practice—whether there are specialized tracks, application requirements, or curricular emphases that shape daily instruction and student experience.

Recent state test results show proficiency that sits below the midpoint among the county's districts. In English language arts, results are uneven across grades. Third grade students show stronger outcomes, while performance in grades four and five hovers around the middle range. Results dip in grade six and seven, then recover in grade eight. Math proficiency is lower across the board, with third and fourth graders around the same level as in ELA, but performance drops sharply in grades five through seven before stabilizing somewhat in eighth grade. In science, where only grades five and eight were tested, fifth-grade proficiency was low but eighth-grade results were notably stronger. The testing participation rate was very high, close to full participation in most grades, so these results reflect the bulk of the student body taking the exams.

Test results alone do not tell the whole story of a school. Beasley sits within Chicago Public Schools, which has undergone significant shifts. The district replaced its old numeric ratings with new accountability dashboards in December 2024, so the way schools are evaluated and compared has just changed. The district is also transitioning to a fully elected school board—first-time elections for all 21 seats will happen in November 2026—which will reshape who sets policy and budget priorities. Chicago Public Schools has also adopted Skyline, a unified PreK-12 curriculum in English language arts, math, science, and other subjects, available at no cost to all district schools. This standardization has been a major shift for a district where schools once chose their own curriculum.

The broader policy context matters: Chicago is moving strategically toward strengthening neighborhood schools as the primary enrollment pathway, stepping back from the school-choice emphasis of recent decades. For families choosing Beasley, this suggests the district is investing in its base of neighborhood schools and expecting families to engage with them.

The housing market around Bronzeville shows modest home values and rental costs substantially below both state and national benchmarks. The area is actively listing and turning over, with affordability relatively accessible compared to the metro as a whole. This is consistent with a neighborhood-serving school on the city's South Side.

A parent considering Beasley would benefit from visiting the school, learning what its magnet program entails, understanding how it serves students performing below proficiency levels, and exploring what supports it offers in math, where performance is a particular soft spot. The school's position as part of a large district in transition—with new governance, new curriculum, and shifting enrollment philosophy—means that conditions may evolve. Direct conversation with school staff about student supports, classroom composition, and concrete measures to raise proficiency would ground a family decision better than test scores alone.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 38% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 438%

School 38% · District 29% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 24% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 615%

School 15% · District 23% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 720%

School 20% · District 27% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 827%

School 27% · District 23% · ▲ 4 pts above district

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

English language arts

Grade 357%

School 57% · District 36% · ▲ 20 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 19 pts above county median

Grade 442%

School 42% · District 39% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 542%

School 42% · District 43% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Grade 656%

School 56% · District 45% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 14 pts above county median

Grade 739%

School 39% · District 46% · ▼ 7 pts below district

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

Grade 843%

School 43% · District 48% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Science

Grade 528%

School 28% · District 29%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 847%

School 47% · District 31% · ▲ 16 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 20 pts above county median

This schoolChicago Public Schools Dist 299, 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.