The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in English language arts. The lowest is 45% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lincoln Elem School
Lincoln Elementary School serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in Chicago Heights, a post-industrial suburb about 30 miles south of downtown Chicago. The school sits in a community of established residential neighborhoods with vintage ranch homes and bungalows, anchored by a historic downtown and surrounded by industrial corridors reflecting the city's steel and manufacturing legacy. The enrollment is small, with roughly the same number of students in each of the elementary grades and smaller cohorts in the upper grades.
The student body is predominantly Black, with a meaningful Hispanic population and a very small Asian enrollment. The school does not report free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education enrollment, or English learner enrollment, so a parent may want to reach out directly to ask about these populations at Lincoln and what support systems exist.
In the most recent state assessments, Lincoln shows mixed results. In third grade, half of students tested at proficient levels in both math and English language arts. Fourth-grade proficiency drops notably, to just under half in math and about half in English language arts. Testing data was not available for fifth grade or higher grades, which reflects the school's elementary focus and the fact that only certain grades are assessed under Illinois' testing calendar. The school achieved full participation rates for assessed grades. On a proficiency index that averages results across tested subjects and grades, Lincoln sits above the midpoint among Cook County districts, a positioning anchored in those third and fourth grade results. A parent may want to ask Lincoln staff about instructional approaches in the fourth-grade transition and what grade-level support exists, particularly in mathematics.
Chicago Heights School District 170, of which Lincoln is part, has made two significant moves in recent years. The district opened a new, state-of-the-art Chicago Heights Middle School in 2020-21, consolidating all sixth through eighth graders into a single modern facility. The district has also built out a district-wide dual-language program using the Literacy Squared biliteracy model, with dedicated Spanish-English classrooms at several schools and active hiring through 2025 of bilingual teachers. This signals the district's intentional approach to its student population, which is roughly a third Hispanic and Latino. For families navigating bilingual education choices, this is a meaningful detail about where the district places its pedagogy.
Housing in the immediate area is moderately priced for the Chicago region. Homes in the zip code where Lincoln sits have a median value in the low hundreds of thousands, with median rents in the mid-range. The market has experienced slight value declines year-over-year, and there is more housing supply than demand, meaning the area is not under pressure from rapid appreciation. Property affordability relative to income is reasonable by national standards.
Chicago Heights itself is car-oriented. U.S. Route 30 and Illinois Route 1 serve as main thoroughfares. The nearest Metra commuter rail station is in Olympia Fields. Bus service comes through Pace, which provides regional transit connections. The city has a defined downtown with a public library and local parks including Thorn Creek's hiking and biking trails. Schools are distributed across the city on separate campuses rather than clustered in a downtown core.
The city's population has been declining in recent years. Recent development activity has centered on downtown infill, including an 82-unit affordable housing project for veterans called Otto Veterans Square that opened in 2024, and on industrial expansion rather than new residential growth. Established neighborhoods have seen little new housing development.
For a family considering Lincoln, the key questions are whether the fourth-grade proficiency dip represents a transition point needing attention, how the school supports students who enter below grade level, and what the school's relationship is with the district's dual-language and bilingual initiatives if that matters to your family. The school's small enrollment may mean closer relationships between staff and families and fewer anonymous large-class settings, or it may signal resource constraints depending on the school's staffing and budget. A direct conversation with school leadership about class sizes, reading interventions, math support, and how they are measuring and responding to the fourth-grade results would give you a clearer picture of what teaching and learning look like there.
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