Gavin South Middle School, Ingleside IL

Original Research by School Decision on Gavin South Middle School

Gavin South Middle School serves grades five through eight in Ingleside, an unincorporated lakeside community in Lake County. The school is small for its grade span, with an enrollment anchored by a cohort of roughly eighty fifth-graders and smaller cohorts in the upper grades.

The student body is ethnically mixed, with about half White students and a substantial share identifying as Hispanic. The school also enrolls small numbers of students of other backgrounds. Data on free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education counts, and English learner enrollment were not available, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the share of students receiving support services or qualifying for meal assistance.

Academic performance measured against state proficiency standards shows a clear pattern: the lower grades in the middle school (five and six) show markedly lower proficiency in math, while English language arts performance across grades five through eight climbs substantially. In seventh and eighth grade, about half or more of students meet proficiency in English language arts, and eighth grade science proficiency sits above half. Math proficiency remains a soft spot across all tested grades, with the strongest showing in seventh grade at roughly one-third proficiency. Fifth grade science was notably low. When proficiency rates across all tested subjects and grades are averaged together, the school's overall index falls in the bottom quartile among Lake County's school districts. The state changed proficiency cut scores in several subjects, which affects trend comparability, so year-to-year comparison is not straightforward.

Testing participation rates were consistently high, ranging between roughly ninety-seven and one hundred percent, suggesting the school's assessment data are a reliable snapshot of how students performed.

The school sits in Ingleside, a quiet, car-oriented residential community with a mixed blue- and white-collar workforce centered on the Chain O'Lakes waterway. Most residents commute elsewhere for work, many using the nearby Metra station. The housing market in the area has been stable, with home values around the mid-range for Lake County. This is not a rapidly growing area; demographic data point to modest, incremental development and a population that has declined slightly in recent years. Daily life is organized around homes and the lakes rather than around a walkable commercial center; the community has no incorporated downtown.

State testing data for third and fourth grades were not available, which typically reflects that those grades are not tested by Illinois state assessment in this school year, so the absence does not signal weak performance. The school's directory lists grades five through eight as served, though enrollment data show a single third-grader; a parent may want to clarify whether the school serves a specialized program for younger students or whether this represents a data entry variance.

No recent district-level changes affecting instruction or operations were confirmed through publicly available sources, and program offerings beyond core academics were not detailed in the available data.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 522%

School 22% · District 22%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Grade 624%

School 24% · District 24%

even with state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Grade 734%

School 34% · District 34%

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Grade 821%

School 21% · District 21%

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Grade 645%

School 45% · District 45%

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 760%

School 60% · District 60%

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

Grade 854%

School 54% · District 54%

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Science

Grade 517%

School 17% · District 17%

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Grade 851%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

This schoolGavin SD 37, 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.