The top reported proficiency rate is 46% in English language arts. The lowest is 25% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on O W Huth Middle School
O W Huth Middle School serves seventh and eighth grades in Matteson, a largely auto-oriented south-suburban Chicago village. The school enrolls students from this predominantly residential community where daily commercial life clusters around shopping centers and retail corridors along Lincoln Highway and Cicero Avenue, about a short drive south of downtown Chicago.
The school's enrollment is small to mid-sized for a two-grade middle school, with seventh and eighth grades roughly balanced. The student body is predominantly Black, with a smaller Hispanic enrollment and very small numbers of Asian and multiracial students. White enrollment is minimal. Free-or-reduced-price lunch counts and special education and English learner enrollment data were not available; a parent may want to ask the school directly about these demographics if they are relevant to your family.
On Illinois state testing for 2024-25, the school shows uneven proficiency. In seventh-grade English language arts, roughly half of tested students met proficiency standards. Eighth-grade ELA performance was somewhat lower. Seventh-grade mathematics proficiency was notably weak, with fewer than a quarter of tested students proficient. Eighth-grade math improved to roughly a quarter meeting standards. Science proficiency in eighth grade was approximately a third. Across these tested subjects, the school's overall proficiency sits below the median among Cook County's districts. Illinois changed cut scores for proficiency in 2024-25, so trend comparability with prior years is not available.
One source of accessible data gap: The school appears to serve only grades seven and eight, so there are no state test results for the elementary grades (three through six) that appear in the data. Science testing occurs in grades five and eight; grade-five science results are missing, likely because the school does not enroll fifth graders.
The Matteson ESD 162 district, the school's parent district, recently completed a facilities shift worth noting. In late 2023 the district opened "The Annex," a converted former roller-skating rink in neighboring Richton Park that now houses a full-service commercial kitchen serving all seven district schools. For more than a decade the district had no in-house cooking kitchen; this change means meals are now prepared on-site rather than outsourced. The district financed this without raising taxes by selling surplus capacity to other districts.
Housing in the zip code is moderately priced relative to the region; the Matteson area is a place where families often own homes in older subdivisions or ranch-style developments built from the 1980s through early 2000s. The local commercial landscape is shifting, with a major mixed-use redevelopment planned for the former Lincoln Mall site.
See more original research from School Decision →