Jasper Elem School, Fairfield IL

Original Research by School Decision on Jasper Elem School

Jasper Elem School is a small K-8 public school in Fairfield, Illinois, serving a rural county-seat community in southeastern Illinois. The school enrolls a small student body drawn almost entirely from the immediate area, with a predominantly white demographic composition and a settled, homeowner-based community context.

The school's academic profile shows uneven but generally moderate-to-solid performance across tested grades. In English Language Arts, results are stronger in the middle and upper grades, with particularly strong performance in grade four and sustained proficiency in grades five through eight. Early grades, particularly grade three, show lower proficiency in ELA. Mathematics results are more scattered. Grade three and grade seven show weaker performance, while grades four, five, six, and eight show improved results. Science proficiency is limited to tested grades five and eight only; grade eight shows notably strong science performance, while grade five is considerably lower. Overall, the school's proficiency index across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile among the county's districts, a position that reflects reasonably solid academic outcomes relative to its peers.

Enrollment is small, typical of a rural elementary-middle school serving one town. The student body is economically and racially homogeneous, with families predominantly white and the vast majority owning homes in Fairfield. The town itself is a small county seat experiencing gradual population decline as part of broader rural Midwest depopulation trends. Housing values are modest compared to state and national benchmarks, making the area affordable for families seeking lower-cost homeownership.

The school sits in a stable but slowly contracting community. Fairfield's civic center remains its historic courthouse square and downtown, though the surrounding area is characterized as having a sparse suburban feel beyond the compact downtown core. The major employers include healthcare, automotive parts manufacturing, and regional retail, with Fairfield Memorial Hospital as a leading employer. The economy is anchored in health services, light manufacturing, and agriculture rather than rapid growth sectors.

State assessment results for grades three and four were affected by scoring changes in 2024-25, making direct comparison to prior years impossible. No data on free-or-reduced-price lunch rates, special education enrollment, English learner enrollment, chronic absenteeism, or graduation rates were available, as the school does not serve those tested grades (no high school) or does not report those metrics in accessible form.

For a family considering this school, Jasper Elem offers a small, tight-knit rural educational setting with moderate academic performance relative to district peers and an affordable, stable community context. A parent may want to look into whether the school's approach to mathematics instruction in the lower and middle grades aligns with family expectations, given the variation in those results.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 352%

School 52% · District 52%

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 460%

School 60% · District 60%

▲ 23 pts above state median

Grade 565%

School 65% · District 65%

▲ 35 pts above state median

Grade 671%

School 71% · District 71%

▲ 47 pts above state median

Grade 746%

School 46% · District 46%

▲ 17 pts above state median

Grade 873%

School 73% · District 73%

▲ 51 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 348%

School 48% · District 48%

▲ 4 pts above state median

Grade 487%

School 87% · District 87%

▲ 39 pts above state median

Grade 570%

School 70% · District 70%

▲ 18 pts above state median

Grade 677%

School 77% · District 77%

▲ 26 pts above state median

Grade 773%

School 73% · District 73%

▲ 21 pts above state median

Grade 873%

School 73% · District 73%

▲ 20 pts above state median

Science

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 18 pts above state median

Grade 893%

School 93% · District 93%

▲ 54 pts above state median

This schoolJasper CCSD 17, 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.