The top reported proficiency rate is 26% in English language arts. The lowest is 11% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Grigsby Intermediate School
Grigsby Intermediate School serves grades five and six in Granite City, a working-class steel town on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, about ten miles northeast of St. Louis. The school sits in the Wilson Park area of the city, where Granite City High School and other district buildings cluster on separated campuses rather than downtown. The school is part of Granite City CUSD 9, which in 2025-26 reconfigured its attendance zones into a K-6 elementary, 7-8 junior high structure. That reconfiguration is a structural matter worth understanding: a child's home address determines which K-6 school and which Pre-K they attend, and Grigsby Pre-K now aligns with Grigsby, Maryville, and Mitchell elementary zones, feeding into Grigsby Intermediate.
The school's enrollment is typical for an intermediate school of its grade band, with the majority of students identifying as white, followed by substantial shares of Black and Hispanic students, and smaller enrollments of students in other racial and ethnic categories. Free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility data was not available, so a reader cannot assess what proportion of the student body qualifies for meal assistance based on income.
State testing results are a soft spot. In grade five English language arts, about a quarter of students scored proficient or above on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness. Math results in grade five were considerably lower, with roughly one in seven students proficient. Grade six English language arts performance was modestly higher, near the quarter mark, but grade six math proficiency fell to roughly one in twelve students. Grade five science proficiency was around one in five students. These are genuinely weak results. The school's overall proficiency index, which averages performance across tested subjects and grades, places it in the bottom quartile among Madison County school districts. A parent evaluating this school would want to look into what the school and district are doing to address math proficiency, particularly at the sixth grade level, and whether there are supplemental supports or interventions underway.
Test participation rates were strong, above ninety-nine percent for the grades tested, so the results reflect genuine performance rather than sampling effects.
The broader context shapes what the school sits within. Granite City's economy centers on U.S. Steel's Granite City Works mill, which underwent major layoffs in 2023 but has announced plans to restart a blast furnace in 2026 with expectations of bringing back manufacturing jobs. The city is pursuing infill and revitalization in neighborhoods like Lincoln Place and downtown, where an entertainment venue called The Mill opened in 2022 and restaurants have followed. Housing is affordable by national standards, with median values well below state and national benchmarks. In late 2023, the district issued working-cash bonds without a referendum vote, using an Illinois mechanism that allows borrowing against future property-tax revenue. The district committed that the bond debt service would not raise the overall tax rate. That expansion of long-term debt without a public ballot is a financial consideration a taxpayer in the district should know about.
Civil rights data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so the makeup of those populations at Grigsby is unclear from the data on hand.
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