Sawyer Elem School, Chicago IL - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Sawyer Elem School

Sawyer Elementary School is a neighborhood school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in the Marquette neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, about a mile inland from Lake Michigan. The school's enrollment sits around mid-size for its grade band, with an enrollment distributed across all ten grades from pre-K through eighth.

The student population is overwhelmingly Hispanic, reflecting the surrounding area's demographics. Demographic data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and English learner status were not available from the reporting sources used.

The school's state assessment results on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) and Illinois Science Assessment show persistently low proficiency rates across grades and subjects. In mathematics, proficiency ranges from a low point in fifth grade to higher results in third and eighth grades, though even the highest marks represent a minority of tested students. English language arts shows a similar pattern, with third-grade proficiency slightly higher than math but proficiency dropping sharply in fourth and fifth grades before recovering in eighth. Science proficiency, assessed in fifth and eighth grades, sits below mathematics and ELA across both grade levels. In the context of the county's public school districts, Sawyer's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile among the county's school-serving schools.

The data does not include information about disciplinary incidents, chronic absenteeism, graduation rates (since the school serves only through eighth grade), staffing levels, course offerings, or special education and English learner identification rates. Whether the school has a school website or dedicated programs could not be determined from the available sources.

Chicago's housing market in the area is moderate. Rental prices have risen steadily, and home values sit below state and national benchmarks. The neighborhood sits within one of the city's well-established residential areas with pedestrian-friendly commercial corridors and good public transit access via CTA bus and rail. Chicago has resumed population growth after nearly a decade of decline, and the broader metro region continues expanding; housing approvals across the city have increased year over year, though development remains concentrated downtown and along the lakefront rather than in residential South Side neighborhoods where Sawyer sits.

Chicago Public Schools is undergoing structural change. The district has transitioned from a fully mayor-appointed board to a hybrid model with elected members, moving toward full electoral governance by 2027. The board adopted a strategic plan in 2024 that shifts priority toward neighborhood schools and away from the school-choice model that shaped CPS for decades. The district rolled out Skyline, its first comprehensive PreK-12 curriculum, to standardize instructional materials across hundreds of schools that previously chose their own. The district also replaced its longtime numeric school ratings with new holistic accountability dashboards, altering how parents evaluate school performance.

A parent may want to look into further with the school what instructional supports are in place to address the lower proficiency results and what specific steps the school is taking to improve outcomes in the grades and subjects where performance is weakest.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 326%

School 26% · District 38% · ▼ 11 pts below district

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

Grade 421%

School 21% · District 29% · ▼ 8 pts below district

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

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 24% · ▼ 14 pts below district

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

Grade 616%

School 16% · District 23% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

Grade 715%

School 15% · District 27% · ▼ 12 pts below district

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

Grade 829%

School 29% · District 23% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 328%

School 28% · District 36% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 10 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 528%

School 28% · District 43% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

Grade 626%

School 26% · District 45% · ▼ 19 pts below district

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

Grade 724%

School 24% · District 46% · ▼ 23 pts below district

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

Grade 837%

School 37% · District 48% · ▼ 11 pts below district

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

Science

Grade 514%

School 14% · District 29% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

Grade 825%

School 25% · District 31% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 2 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.