Sherman Elem School, Chicago IL - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Sherman Elem School

Sherman Elementary School serves students from prekindergarten through eighth grade on Chicago's South Side, in the Englewood neighborhood. The school is small, with a total enrollment distributed across ten grade bands. The student body is predominantly Black, with a smaller Hispanic population and very few students from other racial or ethnic groups. Free-or-reduced-price lunch status data is not available, but the school's location in a historically under-resourced neighborhood suggests substantial economic need among families.

The most pressing finding from recent state testing is that academic proficiency is very low across all tested grades and subjects. In math, proficiency ranges from zero in sixth grade to roughly one-fifth in fifth grade, with most grades falling in the single digits to low teens. In English language arts, performance is similarly weak, with proficiency under one-third in every tested grade except fourth grade, where it reaches the mid-thirties. Science proficiency, tested in fifth and eighth grades, hovers around one-sixth. These results place Sherman at the bottom quartile of proficiency among schools in Cook County.

The picture here differs substantially by grade level. Lower elementary grades (third and fourth) show somewhat better performance in English language arts than in math, suggesting emergent literacy strength that is not translating to math mastery. Grades five through eight show a wider gap between ELA and math, with particularly steep declines in math proficiency at the sixth and seventh grades. By eighth grade, both subjects are weak. Most grades maintain test participation rates in the mid-nineties or higher, indicating that absences during testing are not explaining the pattern; the low proficiency figures represent actual performance.

The school's physical location is stable. It sits at 1000 West 52nd Street in the Englewood community, an area with modest housing values and rental costs well below citywide medians. The neighborhood has seen population decline over decades, though Chicago as a whole has resumed growth after years of loss. This is a working-class residential district with a long history of disinvestment, and it lacks the vibrant commercial or institutional anchors of neighborhoods closer to downtown or the lakefront. Public transit is available through the CTA, though service frequency and reliability vary by route.

Chicago Public Schools has undergone significant structural change in recent years. A new elected school board began taking office after citywide elections in November 2024, replacing the previous mayor-appointed model; this shift means parents now have direct democratic input on governance and will vote on all 21 board seats in November 2026. The district also adopted a five-year strategic plan called "Together We Rise" that prioritizes neighborhood schools over school choice, a reversal of decades of CPS policy favoring selective enrollment and magnet schools. Additionally, CPS has replaced its old numeric school ratings with new holistic dashboards launched in late 2024, so the way schools are evaluated and communicated to families has changed. The district has introduced Skyline, a comprehensive PreK-12 curriculum available to all schools at no cost, standardizing instructional materials across hundreds of campuses.

For a parent considering Sherman, the central reality is that this school is currently not delivering grade-level proficiency to most students in either math or literacy. The testing results are not borderline; they represent a school where fewer than one in five students meet state standards in most grades, and where entire grade levels show zero or near-zero proficiency in some subjects. A parent may want to look into further with the school whether there are intervention programs, tutoring, or reading initiatives targeting these gaps, and what recent changes in instructional practice or staffing have occurred. The school serves a neighborhood where many families do not have easy access to private alternatives, and it is part of a district that is actively rethinking how it supports neighborhood-based education. Whether Sherman will be the site of improvement or will remain persistently under-resourced is a question that the district's recent policy shifts could influence, but the current evidence does not point toward strength.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 313%

School 13% · District 38% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Grade 414%

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

▼ 22 pts below state median · ▼ 14 pts below county median

Grade 521%

School 21% · District 24% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 60%

School 0% · District 23% · ▼ 23 pts below district

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

Grade 75%

School 5% · District 27% · ▼ 22 pts below district

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

Grade 812%

School 12% · District 23% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 313%

School 13% · District 36% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Grade 436%

School 36% · District 39% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

Grade 543%

School 43% · District 43%

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

Grade 66%

School 6% · District 45% · ▼ 39 pts below district

▼ 44 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

Grade 720%

School 20% · District 46% · ▼ 26 pts below district

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

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 48% · ▼ 28 pts below district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Science

Grade 514%

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

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

Grade 816%

School 16% · District 31% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median · ▼ 11 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.