The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in Math. The lowest is 36% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Blackhawk Primary Center
Blackhawk Primary Center is a small school serving kindergarten through third grade in Park Forest, a planned post-WWII suburb about thirty miles south of downtown Chicago. The school sits within Park Forest SD 163 and serves a student body that is predominantly Black, with a Hispanic minority and very small numbers of other students. The enrollment is small and skews toward the early elementary grades, with kindergarten through second grade at near-equal capacity and third grade slightly smaller. A small number of fourth-graders are also enrolled, which sits slightly outside the stated grade band.
In the most recent state testing data available, third-grade students at Blackhawk took the Illinois Assessment of Readiness in both mathematics and English Language Arts. In math, about a mid-range share of third-graders met or exceeded proficiency. In ELA, the proficiency rate was lower, with less than half of third-graders meeting the standard. Testing data for grades four through eight do not appear in the school's results, which aligns with the fact that Blackhawk is designated as a primary center serving only the early grades. All students who were tested participated in both assessments, indicating full testing attendance.
State assessment proficiency rates alone tell one part of the story. When Blackhawk's overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades is placed against all districts in Cook County, the school sits below the midpoint of district performance in the county. A parent may want to look into this further with the school itself to understand what instructional supports are in place, how the school approaches literacy and numeracy in the early grades, and what the trajectory looks like as students move to intermediate grades.
The school draws from Park Forest's housing market, where homes are priced around the lower-to-middle range for the Chicago region, and rents fall in the mid-range as well. The community is a planned residential suburb with abundant parks, a small downtown core undergoing infill development, and easy access to commuter rail. Housing market activity in Cook County shows moderate supply and softer demand compared to broader trends. New single-family construction in Park Forest itself has been modest.
No data on free-or-reduced-price lunch rates, special education enrollment, English learner enrollment, chronic absenteeism, or discipline practices was available for this school. No information on staffing, curriculum design, extracurricular programs, or parent involvement was provided in the school's available data.
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