The top reported proficiency rate is 46% in Science. The lowest is 36% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Nashville Grade School
Nashville Grade School is a small public school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in a rural Illinois county-seat city, enrolling around six hundred students and sitting just outside downtown Nashville on Gorman Street. The school is part of Nashville CCSD 49, a single-school district, and operates as a regular public school with no charter or magnet designation.
The student body is predominantly white, with modest racial and ethnic diversity. Demographic data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and special education or English learner enrollment were not available, so a parent would want to reach out directly to the school for that context. The school's test participation rates are very high, with nearly all students tested in Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) exams across math and English language arts.
On state testing, Nashville Grade School's overall proficiency places it in the top quartile among the six districts in Washington County, though the school's performance is mixed across grades and subjects. In English language arts, proficiency is stronger in the middle grades. Grade 5 shows the highest ELA result, with a strong showing; grades 6 and 8 also perform better in reading than in math. In contrast, math proficiency is lower and declines noticeably in grades 5 and 6 before recovering slightly in grades 7 and 8. Grade 3 is the strongest in math, and grades 3 and 4 show relatively solid results compared to the school's later grades. In science, grade 8 shows substantially higher proficiency than grade 5, suggesting students may strengthen in that subject as they move through the school. A parent may want to understand what support is in place for the lower-performing grade levels, particularly grades 5 and 6, and what instructional changes occur between middle elementary and the upper grades.
The school sits in a small rural economy with stable but aging demographics. Nashville itself is the county seat, home to Washington County Hospital as a major employer along with county and municipal government, a handful of manufacturing and distribution operations, and the school systems themselves. The area has been roughly flat to slightly declining in population, with no recent large housing developments identified. Housing values in the Nashville zip code are modestly below state and national benchmarks, and mortgage affordability is reasonable relative to national medians. Unemployment is steady and median household income is solid for the region.
Nashville Grade School has no documented alternative programs, dual-credit pathways, or career-track offerings listed in available data, which reflects the nature of a pre-K-through-8 facility. The school feeds students into Nashville Community High School District 99, a separate single-school district that serves grades 9-12. The grade school and high school are administratively and physically independent from one another, so a family navigating the transition from eighth grade should plan to engage with the high school district separately.
For school choice and community context, Nashville is a walkable small town with civic anchors including City Park, a public library, and the historic courthouse square downtown, though the school campus itself sits outside that core. No fixed-route public transit was documented. The broader county faces no current major changes in its school system according to available recent reporting, with the district maintaining routine operations and fee structures over the past two years.
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