Original Research by School Decision on Devry Advantage Academy High Schl
Devry Advantage Academy High School is a small high school serving grades eleven and twelve in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, near the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and major transit corridors. The school has a student body of about a hundred and thirty students, with roughly equal numbers in each grade. The school is part of Chicago Public Schools.
The student body is predominantly Latinx and Black, reflecting the surrounding neighborhood. A substantial share of students identify as Latinx, with a meaningful share identifying as Black. The remainder of the enrollment is split among white students, Asian students, and smaller numbers of students from other backgrounds. Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and the percentages of English learners and students with IEPs were not available, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the economic circumstances and language-support needs of the student population.
The school offers a pathway specifically to high school completion. Because it serves only grades eleven and twelve, it does not produce a four-year graduation rate, which is calculated for schools that enroll ninth graders. The school's role appears to be completing education for students in the final two years rather than shepherding a cohort from ninth grade through twelfth. State assessment results were not available in the data, so a reader cannot evaluate academic proficiency from testing. A parent interested in this school should ask directly about course offerings, transcript outcomes, college or career placement, and how the school measures whether students are achieving learning goals in their final years.
The housing market in the surrounding zip code has modest home values and rental costs relative to Cook County and the state. Rents are manageable, and home purchase prices, while not cheap, are below county and state medians. The neighborhood is part of a larger city that has resumed population growth after decline, with new housing approvals rising and development activity concentrated in downtown and lakefront areas.
Chicago itself is a dense, walkable city with an extensive public transit network including the eight-line 'L' train system and hundreds of bus routes, with 24-hour service on some lines. The city's economy is diversified across finance, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and trade, anchored by major public employers including Chicago Public Schools itself and major private employers including JPMorgan Chase, Exelon, Abbott, Boeing, and others. The Chicago Park District manages over a thousand parks with public beaches and lakefront access.
At the district level, Chicago Public Schools is undergoing governance change: a fully elected school board will be in place after November 2026, giving families direct voting power on district policy for the first time. The district has adopted a strategic direction favoring neighborhood schools over the school-choice model that shaped admissions for decades, though this is still rolling out. The district has also replaced its former school rating system with new accountability dashboards launched in late 2024 that measure school quality beyond test scores.
Because this school is a small, grades-eleven-and-twelve completion program rather than a traditional comprehensive high school, enrollment, course breadth, and the pathway it offers are its defining features. A parent considering this school should gather specific information about curriculum, how students transition in, what outcomes the school aims for, and how those outcomes align with the student's college or career goals.
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