The top reported proficiency rate is 67% in Math. The lowest is 60% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Lincolnwood Elem School
Lincolnwood Elementary is a small, established school serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Evanston, with an enrollment of around three hundred students. The student body is racially and ethnically diverse, with roughly equal shares of white students and Black students, plus meaningful populations of students identifying as Hispanic or multiracial, and a smaller Asian enrollment. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available, so a parent cannot determine the school's socioeconomic profile from the information at hand.
The school's state assessment results from 2024-25 show proficiency that varies by grade and subject. In math, third graders performed above the middle of the pack among Cook County schools; fourth-grade proficiency dropped notably; and fifth-grade math proficiency fell further still. Reading proficiency in third grade was below the midpoint in the county. Fourth-grade reading landed closer to the middle, and fifth-grade reading performance recovered somewhat. Science proficiency in fifth grade sat near the midpoint countywide. The school achieved full participation in all tested grades and subjects. Results for grades six and seven were not reported, which reflects the fact that the school serves only through fifth grade; testing data simply does not exist for those grades at this school.
Taken as a whole, Lincolnwood's proficiency index places it in the top quartile among schools in Cook County, a genuine strength. The pattern across grades suggests that younger students perform more solidly than older elementary students, a profile a parent may want to explore directly with the school to understand whether it reflects classroom practice, curriculum alignment, transition, or other factors.
The school does not report a graduation rate, which is expected because it does not serve high school students. Similarly, chronic absenteeism data was not available. Whether this reflects missing data or a school reporting gap is unclear from the available information.
Lincolnwood sits in Evanston, a lakefront city just north of Chicago. The area is notably walkable, with a median home value in the mid-five hundreds of thousands and monthly rents in the mid-twenty-seven hundreds. Housing growth is underway through new apartment and mixed-use projects near transit stations, though Evanston's overall population has remained relatively flat. The city is anchored by Northwestern University and regional health systems, with strong transit access via the CTA Purple Line and Metra Union Pacific North stations.
The broader context is Evanston/Skokie School District 65, which is navigating significant structural changes. At the end of the 2025-26 school year, the district is closing two schools: Kingsley Elementary and Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, the district's only entirely bilingual school. A new Foster Elementary is scheduled to open for the 2026-27 school year in the Fifth Ward, absorbing many displaced families and hosting a relocated Two-Way Immersion program. These closures and openings mean that elementary attendance boundaries and feeder patterns are being reshaped, affecting families across the district for years.
The district also adopted a new K-5 literacy curriculum in 2023, replacing the Lucy Calkins Units of Study after concerns that the prior program did not reliably teach foundational reading skills. This represents a district-wide shift in how reading is taught at the elementary level.
Additionally, the district restructured middle school mathematics starting in 2021, eliminating placement testing and accelerated tracks in favor of a single advanced sequence for all students using the Desmos curriculum. This change affects how students in the upper elementary grades will be prepared for middle school math.
Financially, District 65 is working through a multi-phase Structural Deficit Reduction Plan. Property tax levies were raised by the maximum allowable amount in both 2023 and 2024, yet the district continues to face a budget gap. The school board is considering placing an operating tax referendum on the ballot, likely for March 2026, to address the ongoing structural deficit. The outcome of any referendum will shape program stability and tax bills for families in the district going forward.
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