Hamline Elem School, Chicago IL - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Hamline Elem School

Hamline Elementary School sits on Chicago's South Side, serving prekindergarten through eighth grade as a neighborhood public school in a heavily Hispanic community. The school enrolls a small but complete cohort spanning nearly a decade of grades, with a student body that is substantially Hispanic, a small share Black, and very few white or Asian students. Free-or-reduced-price lunch status was not available in the data.

The 2024-25 state assessment results show weak performance across all tested subjects and grades. In English language arts, proficiency ranges from around 11 percent in grades 6 and 7 to about 24 percent in grade 3. Math proficiency is similarly low, with grades 6 and 8 near single digits and grades 3 and 4 around 20 percent. Science proficiency in grade 5 is about 12 percent and in grade 8 drops to about 6 percent. Across these measures, Hamline sits in the bottom quartile among Cook County school districts on overall proficiency. State testing data does not include average scale scores for this school.

The proficiency gap widens in the upper grades. Students who enter in elementary grades show slightly higher proficiency rates, but by grade 6 and beyond, very few students meet state standards. This trajectory suggests either significant learning losses as students progress or that instruction in the middle grades is not meeting students' needs. A parent may want to look into this further with the school: what supports exist for students moving from elementary to middle school, and what additional or targeted interventions the school has in place to address the drops in grade 6 and beyond.

Participation rates in both ELA and math testing are high, generally at or near 100 percent, indicating that the low proficiency figures reflect actual student performance rather than opt-out patterns. The state changed its proficiency cut scores for 2024-25, so trend comparison across years is not yet reliable.

The school's grades span early childhood through the early teens, a wide band for a single building. Enrollment is modestly stable across grade levels, with most grades enrolling between roughly 50 and 70 students. The school is not a charter, selective-enrollment, or magnet school; it is a regular public school serving its attendance boundary.

Chicago itself is a large, dense city with a major downtown, extensive public transit, and a broad mix of residential neighborhoods. The zip code where Hamline is located has a housing value in the low-to-mid range regionally and a rental cost that has risen notably over the past year. Housing availability in Cook County is ample.

The district, Chicago Public Schools, is in the midst of significant governance and instructional changes. The Board of Education is being elected rather than appointed, a shift completed by November 2026. The district has signaled a move back toward neighborhood schools and away from the choice-based model that dominated for decades. A new accountability dashboard replaced numeric school ratings, and a district-developed universal curriculum called Skyline is available to all schools, though take-up varies. These changes reshape how families relate to CPS, the kinds of schools the district invests in, and what resources are available.

For a family considering Hamline, the key issue is the consistently low proficiency across tested grades. The school serves a community where English may not be a home language, and the district's curriculum resources are available, but the results suggest that current instructional practices, interventions, or school conditions are not bringing most students to grade-level in reading and math. Whether this reflects staffing, materials, early literacy gaps, student mobility, family circumstance, or other factors would require a closer conversation with school leadership. The school does show stable enrollment and near-universal test participation, both signs of steady operations, but proficiency is where the real conversation needs to begin.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 320%

School 20% · District 38% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 20 pts below county median

Grade 420%

School 20% · District 29% · ▼ 9 pts below district

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

Grade 512%

School 12% · District 24% · ▼ 12 pts below district

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

Grade 63%

School 3% · District 23% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 711%

School 11% · District 27% · ▼ 16 pts below district

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

Grade 84%

School 4% · District 23% · ▼ 19 pts below district

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

English language arts

Grade 324%

School 24% · District 36% · ▼ 12 pts below district

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

Grade 420%

School 20% · District 39% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 28 pts below state median · ▼ 20 pts below county median

Grade 523%

School 23% · District 43% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

Grade 615%

School 15% · District 45% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 35 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 711%

School 11% · District 46% · ▼ 35 pts below district

▼ 40 pts below state median · ▼ 33 pts below county median

Grade 816%

School 16% · District 48% · ▼ 32 pts below district

▼ 38 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Science

Grade 512%

School 12% · District 29% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 86%

School 6% · District 31% · ▼ 26 pts below district

▼ 34 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below 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.