Mt Olive Elementary School, Mount Olive IL

Original Research by School Decision on Mt Olive Elementary School

Mt Olive Elementary School serves preK through eighth grade in a small rural Illinois city rooted in coal-mining and labor heritage. The school is one of two main district campuses, located at the center of town on Main Street alongside the Mother Jones Museum and other civic anchors. The enrollment is small, with the student body overwhelmingly white and drawn from a community experiencing long-term population decline and an aging housing stock.

Academic performance, measured by Illinois state testing, shows mixed results across grades and subjects. In English language arts, the school demonstrates relative strength in the upper middle grades: seventh and eighth graders show proficiency rates around the majority mark or higher. Fourth and fifth graders perform in the low to mid range, while third grade sits below that. In math, performance is lower and more consistently below proficiency across all tested grades. Sixth and fourth graders show especially low math proficiency, while third grade performs somewhat better. Science results in fifth and eighth grades hover near or slightly below the midpoint. When looked at as an overall proficiency index across all tested grades and subjects, Mt Olive Elementary sits above the midpoint among Macoupin County's school districts, a positioning that reflects particular strength in later-grade reading balanced against weaker outcomes in math.

The pattern suggests that students in the upper grades, particularly in language arts, are keeping pace with or exceeding benchmarks, while younger students and math learners across the span face headwinds. A parent may want to look into the school's approach to early math instruction and ask what support systems exist for students not yet meeting proficiency, especially in grades four and five where the gap widens.

Enrollment is distributed across the ten grade levels, with enrollment higher in the younger grades (preK and sixth grade) and lower in fifth, fourth, and second grades. Demographic data shows the student body is almost entirely white, with two students identifying as Black and two as multiracial. No data on free and reduced lunch eligibility, special education enrollment, or English learner status was available; these gaps make it difficult to assess the poverty or language-diversity context of the school. The school participates fully in state testing, with near-universal participation rates.

Mount Olive itself is a compact rural city of a few thousand residents shaped by its Route 66 heritage and monuments to labor history, but facing steady population loss and little new development. Housing values are modest and have declined slightly in recent years. The local economy is small and centered on retail, health care, and manufacturing, with larger employers in surrounding towns. Civic life orbits around the public library, parks, and the Mother Jones Museum. This is a tight-knit, aging community where the elementary school sits at the geographic and social heart of town.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 344%

School 44% · District 44%

▼ 2 pts below state median

Grade 426%

School 26% · District 26%

▼ 10 pts below state median

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 36%

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 38%

▲ 14 pts above state median

Grade 723%

School 23% · District 23%

▼ 6 pts below state median

Grade 830%

School 30% · District 30%

▲ 7 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 344%

School 44% · District 44%

even with state median

Grade 442%

School 42% · District 42%

▼ 6 pts below state median

Grade 552%

School 52% · District 52%

even with state median

Grade 658%

School 58% · District 58%

▲ 8 pts above state median

Grade 764%

School 64% · District 64%

▲ 13 pts above state median

Grade 857%

School 57% · District 57%

▲ 4 pts above state median

Science

Grade 544%

School 44% · District 44%

▲ 7 pts above state median

Grade 846%

School 46% · District 46%

▲ 6 pts above state median

This schoolMount Olive CUSD 5, 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.