Hickory Creek Middle School, Frankfort IL

Original Research by School Decision on Hickory Creek Middle School

Hickory Creek Middle School sits in Frankfort, a residential Chicago suburb about half an hour southwest of the city. The school serves grades six through eight and enrolls about mid-range size. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller shares of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students, and a two-person-or-more multiracial group as well.

On state testing, Hickory Creek shows solid results across the grades it serves. In language arts, proficiency runs high in the upper grades. Seventh and eighth graders both show proficiency well above the baseline on the state assessment, while sixth grade shows strong performance too. Math proficiency varies slightly by grade: sixth graders perform slightly below the seventh-grade cohort, and eighth graders are at a similar level to sixth graders, while seventh graders show the strongest results. Science testing occurs only at grade eight, where proficiency appears solid. The school's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile among the county's districts, a strength worth noting for families prioritizing academic outcomes.

The one data gap here is the free-or-reduced-price lunch count, which the state did not report. This means the socioeconomic profile is not fully visible from the available information.

Frankfort itself is a planned suburban landscape of single-family homes and newer subdivisions radiating outward from a historic downtown core around Breidert Green. The housing market there has appreciated steadily; home values rest in the mid-range for the region. Civic life concentrates downtown, where a farmers market, outdoor concerts, and seasonal festivals draw residents, and the 22-mile paved Old Plank Road Trail passes through town. The village has no public transit of its own; commuters to Chicago rely on cars or drive to neighboring Metra stations. Current residential growth includes several new planned communities and townhome developments underway. Employment is diversified across industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors, with named employers including Borg-Warner and Pactiv, plus the school districts themselves.

The school sits on a campus away from the historic downtown, as do the other schools in the village. The district, Frankfort CCSD 157C, has made no major recent operational or curriculum changes that have been publicly documented at a scale or timeframe that shifts the parent landscape, though statewide policy (full-day kindergarten starting in 2027-28) will eventually touch all Illinois districts.

For families weighing Hickory Creek, the core picture is a middle school with strong tested performance, particularly in language arts and in the upper-grade cohorts, positioned in a stable and growing suburban residential community with good housing stock and parks. A parent may want to look into the socioeconomic composition of the school with the district directly, since that metric was not publicly available.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 681%

School 81% · District 81%

▲ 57 pts above state median · ▲ 46 pts above county median

Grade 786%

School 86% · District 86%

▲ 57 pts above state median · ▲ 46 pts above county median

Grade 881%

School 81% · District 81%

▲ 58 pts above state median · ▲ 42 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 691%

School 91% · District 91%

▲ 41 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Grade 795%

School 95% · District 95%

▲ 43 pts above state median · ▲ 24 pts above county median

Grade 894%

School 94% · District 94%

▲ 41 pts above state median · ▲ 25 pts above county median

Science

Grade 881%

School 81% · District 81%

▲ 42 pts above state median · ▲ 29 pts above county median

This schoolFrankfort CCSD 157C, 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.