The top reported proficiency rate is 15% in Science. The lowest is 7% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Edith M Smith Middle School
Edith M. Smith Middle School serves sixth through eighth grade students in Waukegan, a mid-sized industrial port city on Lake Michigan about halfway between Chicago and the Wisconsin border. The school, which was renamed from Daniel Webster Middle School in 2021, sits in a district where publicly reported recent changes include a restructuring of the sole comprehensive high school and an expanded national teacher recruitment effort to fill staffing gaps.
The school's recent state test results in mathematics and English language arts show persistently low proficiency. In mathematics, across the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, proficiency rates ranged from around five to ten percent. In English language arts, proficiency ranged from around nine to seventeen percent, with eighth grade showing the highest rate at around seventeen percent. In science, the eighth grade proficiency rate was around fifteen percent. For context, proficiency rates among other districts in Lake County median around fifty percent and climb as high as eighty percent, placing this school in the bottom quartile of its county peers on the proficiency index that averages across tested subjects and grades.
These results warrant direct conversation with the school about what academic support, intervention structures, and instructional approaches are in place. A parent may want to look into further what diagnostic work the school has done on why proficiency is low, what baseline assessments happen in sixth grade, what pathway decisions or differentiation exist as students progress through seventh and eighth grade, and what happens for students who are not meeting proficiency. The data does not clarify whether these results reflect recent changes in the state's proficiency criteria, which shifted in 2024-25, or longer-term performance trends; the school would be the best source on that.
The student body is predominantly Hispanic, making up roughly four in five students, with Black students forming the next-largest group at roughly one in seven. About a third of the student body is represented by Asian, white, and multiracial students and American Indian students combined. The enrollment sits at around five hundred students, with roughly equal representation across the three grade levels. State testing data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and on the share of English learners and students with individualized education plans were not available, so a parent should ask the school directly about socioeconomic composition and the breadth of specialized services.
Waukegan itself is a working-class city with a distinctive industrial and harbor character, home to manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and transportation employment. The downtown anchors around the Waukegan Public Library, the Genesee Theatre, and the historic Carnegie building, which houses the Waukegan History Museum. The lakefront hosts the Waukegan Municipal Beach and the Harbor and Marina. The city has been pursuing downtown and lakefront redevelopment since the early 2010s through a master plan developed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with progress restarted through a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant. Housing in the area is moderate in cost and supply relative to regional benchmarks, with median home values well below both Illinois and national benchmarks and rental rates in line with affordability measures for the area.
No state graduation rate data exists for this school because it serves only middle grades. No information about advanced placement, career pathways, specialized programs, extracurricular offerings, disciplinary climate, attendance, or staffing depth was provided, so interested families should contact the school and the district directly to understand what electives, clubs, sports, and support services are available to sixth through eighth graders and what pathways feed into Waukegan High School.
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