Mount Greenwood Elem School, Chicago IL

Original Research by School Decision on Mount Greenwood Elem School

Mount Greenwood Elementary School serves a student body of about a thousand students from pre-K through eighth grade in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side. The school is part of Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest district. The student population is predominantly white, with smaller shares of Hispanic, Black, and Asian students. The school's enrollment is fairly stable and well-distributed across grade levels.

On state assessments administered in spring 2025, Mount Greenwood's performance reveals a clear pattern: strong results in the early elementary grades that decline notably as students progress through the upper grades. In third-grade English language arts, roughly a large majority of students achieved proficiency. Fourth graders performed similarly well in reading. By fifth grade, performance held firm in ELA, though math began to soften. The decline accelerates in the middle grades. In eighth-grade math, fewer than half of students met the state's proficiency threshold. Science results also show a gap: fifth graders achieved about half proficiency in science, while eighth graders performed substantially better there. Overall, across tested subjects and grades, the school's proficiency index places it in the top quartile among districts in Cook County, a position rooted largely in the strong early-elementary performance that elevates the average even as upper-grade math results drag it down.

The pattern reflects a persistent challenge in American elementary schools: teaching multiplication, fractions, and algebra to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students who enter those grades with gaps in foundational skills. A parent considering this school might want to look into how the school addresses that transition and what supplemental support or intervention structures exist for students in grades six through eight, particularly in mathematics. The school's participation rates on state testing are consistently high and near-universal, especially in eighth grade, suggesting the school is testing most of its students rather than excluding lower-performing ones from assessment.

Early elementary reading is a clear strength here. English language arts proficiency in grades three through eight is generally solid, remaining above the two-thirds mark in every grade tested. That may reflect the district's 2021-2022 rollout of Skyline, a new comprehensive curriculum in ELA that applies across CPS schools.

The Mount Greenwood neighborhood itself is a stable, moderately affluent residential community on the south side. Housing values in the 60655 zip code are modest but stable, and the rental market is accessible. The broader Cook County housing market, while showing cooling in some measures over the past year, remains moderately supplied and not acutely constrained. For families coming from areas with higher housing costs, the area offers reasonable entry points. The neighborhood has good access to Chicago's parks and transit, including the CTA 'L' and bus service.

Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education enrollment, English learner enrollment, and discipline were not available, so the full socioeconomic and support-service profile remains incomplete. The school has no available graduation rate because it serves only through eighth grade. These gaps make it harder to assess the breadth of student needs the school is addressing or how well resourced it is relative to peer schools.

Chicago Public Schools is in the midst of substantial governance and policy change. The district transitioned from a mayor-appointed board to a hybrid one in 2024, with all 21 seats to be elected in November 2026 for the first time. The district's strategic plan, adopted in 2024, signals a shift away from the choice-driven model that has defined CPS and toward strengthened neighborhood schools. This shapes resource allocation and enrollment patterns. The district also replaced its previous numeric school ratings with holistic dashboards in December 2024, changing how schools are publicly evaluated and compared.

For a family weighing Mount Greenwood, the school offers solid early elementary instruction, stable neighborhood context, and a strong relative position among Cook County schools overall. The upper-grade math challenge is the substantive concern worth probing directly with the school administration.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 378%

School 78% · District 38% · ▲ 40 pts above district

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 39 pts above county median

Grade 466%

School 66% · District 29% · ▲ 37 pts above district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 38 pts above county median

Grade 563%

School 63% · District 24% · ▲ 39 pts above district

▲ 33 pts above state median · ▲ 42 pts above county median

Grade 659%

School 59% · District 23% · ▲ 36 pts above district

▲ 35 pts above state median · ▲ 42 pts above county median

Grade 760%

School 60% · District 27% · ▲ 32 pts above district

▲ 31 pts above state median · ▲ 38 pts above county median

Grade 848%

School 48% · District 23% · ▲ 24 pts above district

▲ 25 pts above state median · ▲ 30 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 384%

School 84% · District 36% · ▲ 47 pts above district

▲ 40 pts above state median · ▲ 47 pts above county median

Grade 489%

School 89% · District 39% · ▲ 51 pts above district

▲ 41 pts above state median · ▲ 49 pts above county median

Grade 584%

School 84% · District 43% · ▲ 41 pts above district

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 38 pts above county median

Grade 682%

School 82% · District 45% · ▲ 37 pts above district

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 39 pts above county median

Grade 784%

School 84% · District 46% · ▲ 38 pts above district

▲ 33 pts above state median · ▲ 39 pts above county median

Grade 884%

School 84% · District 48% · ▲ 36 pts above district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 37 pts above county median

Science

Grade 550%

School 50% · District 29% · ▲ 22 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 23 pts above county median

Grade 870%

School 70% · District 31% · ▲ 38 pts above district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 43 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.