The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in English language arts. The lowest is 21% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lincoln-douglas Elementary School
Lincoln-Douglas Elementary School serves pre-K through fourth grade in Freeport, a small county-seat city in northwest Illinois with a walkable historic downtown and notably low housing costs. The school enrolls families across a mix of backgrounds: roughly a third Black, a quarter multiracial, about a tenth Hispanic, and about two-fifths white. The enrollment is small for its grade band, with roughly equal numbers across kindergarten through grade four and a smaller pre-K cohort.
Academic results on the most recent state testing (2024-25 Illinois Assessment of Readiness) show weak proficiency across both math and English language arts. In grade three, about one in six students met proficiency in each subject. In grade four, the rates rise modestly, to about one in four in math and roughly one in three in ELA. These results place the school near the bottom of its county comparison group in overall proficiency. State testing for grade five was not available; the school currently serves very few fifth-graders, as a district-wide grade reconfiguration scheduled for fall 2025 will shift elementary schools from a K-4 to a K-5 model, meaning Lincoln-Douglas's configuration will change. Science results were suppressed or not available, so a full academic picture across subjects cannot be drawn from the data.
The school sits in a Freeport real estate market marked by modest home values and affordable rents, well below state and national medians. Housing is accessible, which may broaden the range of families who can live in the district, but the wider economic context shows slow population decline in the city and employment concentrated in manufacturing and healthcare rather than high-wage sectors.
Freeport SD 145 is undergoing substantial structural change. Beginning in 2025, the district will consolidate preschool programs out of individual elementary schools into a new central Early Childhood Center. Elementary schools like Lincoln-Douglas will shift to serving K-5 rather than K-4, meaning older students will spend an additional year there before moving to middle school. In a separate move, the Jones-Farrar International Baccalaureate magnet school will expand to become a K-8 option. The district has also adopted OneGoal classroom practices and a career academy model at the high school level, signaling an explicit postsecondary planning focus. For a parent considering Lincoln-Douglas, these changes mean the school's grade composition and preschool operations will be different in 2025 and onward.
A parent evaluating this school should note the low academic proficiency results and may want to discuss with the school what supports are in place to address reading and math performance in the younger grades, and what the transition to K-5 configuration means for classroom staffing and resources. The school's peer environment reflects Freeport's demographic makeup. The housing market is a genuine asset for affordability.
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