Bryan Middle School, Elmhurst IL

Original Research by School Decision on Bryan Middle School

Bryan Middle School serves grades six through eight in Elmhurst, a residential inner-ring Chicago suburb in DuPage County with a walkable downtown and strong community anchors like Wilder Park and the nearby Metra station. The school draws from a middle-class, predominantly white community with a meaningful Asian and Hispanic presence.

Testing data is available only for the three grades Bryan actually serves, so earlier grades do not appear in the state results. In English language arts, Bryan's proficiency is strong: sixth graders reached the high end of the scale, and seventh and eighth graders both performed solidly above the midpoint, with seventh grade showing the highest proficiency rate. Math proficiency tells a different story. Sixth graders performed well, but proficiency drops notably as students move to seventh and eighth grade. By eighth grade, less than two-thirds of students met the state standard in math, a meaningful gap. Eighth-grade science proficiency sat in the mid-range. Test participation rates were very high across the board, so these results reflect the actual student population.

Enrollment is small for a middle school, with roughly equal cohorts across the three grades. Racial and ethnic composition reflects the broader Elmhurst community: about four-fifths of students are white, with smaller but meaningful shares of Asian and Hispanic students. Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and special populations were not available, so a parent interested in that context would need to contact the school directly.

The district has recently restructured middle school scheduling so that science and social studies are now taken all year rather than one semester each, which affects the daily rhythm and pacing of Bryan's students. This was a system-wide change that took effect recently, so families new to the school should understand that the pace and structure differ from traditional semester-based models.

Among districts in DuPage County, Bryan's overall proficiency places it in the top quartile for tested subjects and grades combined, a noteworthy position. The school is part of Elmhurst School District 205, which has invested substantially in facilities (opening two new elementary buildings in the past few years) and has launched a growing dual-language Spanish-English program at the elementary and newly at the middle level, though Bryan itself has not been flagged as a dual-language school.

Elmhurst is a community with stable housing values well above national averages, a strong healthcare and education employment base, and transit access via the Union Pacific West Metra line. Families choosing Bryan would expect a smaller-scale middle school experience in an affluent suburb with above-average proficiency in reading and a notable opportunity to address the math-proficiency decline that emerges in the upper grades. A parent may want to look into further with the school what interventions or supports exist for eighth-grade math, given that trend.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 677%

School 77% · District 70% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 53 pts above state median · ▲ 26 pts above county median

Grade 768%

School 68% · District 66% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 39 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 863%

School 63% · District 57% · ▲ 6 pts above district

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

English language arts

Grade 690%

School 90% · District 81% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 40 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 783%

School 83% · District 79% · ▲ 4 pts above district

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

Grade 880%

School 80% · District 76% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 26 pts above state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

Science

Grade 875%

School 75% · District 71% · ▲ 3 pts above district

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

This schoolElmhurst SD 205, 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.