The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in English language arts. The lowest is 39% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Dakota Elementary School
Dakota Elementary School serves grades pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in a rural setting in northern Stephenson County, Illinois, about ten miles north of Freeport. The school is part of Dakota Community Unit School District 201 and enrolls a small student body in a village of about three hundred residents with deep agricultural heritage and a significant food-manufacturing presence anchored by Berner Food & Beverage.
The school's academic performance shows mixed results on recent state assessments. In math, proficiency declines as grade level rises, beginning at a somewhat higher level in third grade and dropping notably in fourth through sixth grades, particularly in fifth grade where fewer than a third of students tested meet proficiency. English language arts performance is similarly modest but slightly steadier across grades three through six, ranging from the low to mid-40s and reaching its highest point in sixth grade. Fifth-grade science proficiency sits below 40 percent. The school achieved full participation rates in nearly all tested grades, indicating consistent test administration. No data was reported for seventh and eighth grades, consistent with the fact that the school serves through sixth grade. State assessment criteria changed in 2025, making historical trend comparison unavailable. Among the five other districts in Stephenson County that reported comparable data, Dakota Elementary's overall proficiency index sits above the midpoint, placing it in the upper half of county performance, though the absolute proficiency levels across subjects remain modest.
Enrollment is small but steady, with roughly four hundred students distributed across pre-K through sixth grade plus one student in tenth grade. The student body is predominantly white, with most other students scattered across multiple racial and ethnic groups in very small numbers. The school did not report a free-or-reduced-price-lunch count, special education enrollment, or English learner population, so family economic need and support-service demand cannot be characterized from available data. Staff size, teacher credentials, curriculum scope, and school-wide support programs were not available.
Dakota is a tightly knit village with minimal growth. The housing market is extremely thin, with almost no residential inventory turning over. The village center consists of a short Main Street with basic services. Employment is dominated by Berner's operations; the broader regional job market centers on Freeport. The Jane Addams Trail, a seventeen-mile rail-trail connecting Freeport to the Wisconsin border, offers regional recreation. A parent considering Dakota Elementary would be choosing a small, stable neighborhood school in a rural setting where academic achievement sits above the county average but absolute proficiency remains in the 40 to 60 percent range. The school's modest enrollment and rural character mean that program breadth, specialized services, and extracurricular depth may differ from larger district schools, though specific detail on those dimensions was not available. A parent may want to look into the school's reading intervention approaches and math support structures, given the performance patterns in the tested grades.
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