The top reported proficiency rate is 31% in Math. The lowest is 21% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Greenwood Elem School
Greenwood Elementary is a kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school in Waukegan serving a community with a substantial enrollment. The school's student body is predominantly Hispanic, with meaningful representation of Black, Asian, and white students, plus a small number of multiracial and Native American students. The school does not serve students with measurable free-or-reduced-price-lunch or special-education counts in the available data.
The most recent state test results show proficiency levels that are markedly low. In mathematics, Greenwood's proficiency rates for grades three through five range in the low-to-mid range, with fifth-grade math the weakest at under a quarter of students proficient. English language arts proficiency is similar or slightly lower, with third-grade ELA at around a quarter of students proficient and other grades in the low-to-mid range. Fifth-grade science proficiency is even lower. These results place the school in the bottom quartile for proficiency among the school's comparison set of districts in Lake County. A parent should note that the assessment itself changed its scoring criteria this year, so prior-year comparisons are not reliable; the data represents a single year in this new scale.
The school serves a small total population for the grade band. Kindergarten and first through fourth grades each have between the low-to-mid forties in enrollment, while the kindergarten cohort is in the low-to-mid forties. Prekindergarten is also offered, with enrollment in the high forties. This is a manageable school size for early elementary.
The school sits at 1919 North Ave in Waukegan, an industrial port city about a short distance north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. Waukegan is the Lake County seat and functions as a mid-sized regional employment hub, with a workforce concentrated in manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and administrative services. The downtown core includes walkable blocks, galleries, and the Genesee Theatre, with lakefront civic amenities including the harbor, municipal beach, and park system. Schools in the district are distributed across campuses rather than concentrated in the downtown. The city has been pursuing a long-term lakefront and downtown revitalization for more than a decade, though implementation has been slowed by environmental remediation and economic cycles.
The school is part of Waukegan Community Unit School District 60, which currently faces high-profile operational changes. The district is restructuring its sole comprehensive high school, including redistribution of students between its Brookside and Washington campuses and reexamination of the administrative structure. This affects secondary placement for every Waukegan family moving into middle and high school. The district has also renamed two of its five middle schools in recent years, with Thomas Jefferson Middle School now called John R. Lewis Middle School and Daniel Webster Middle School now called Edith M. Smith Middle School. Additionally, the district has expanded out-of-state and international teacher recruitment to fill vacancies in bilingual education, diverse-learner support, and hard-to-fill positions, which reflects ongoing teacher supply challenges that may affect classroom stability and staffing continuity.
A family considering Greenwood should understand that the current proficiency data reflects achievement substantially below the county median and warrants closer conversation with the school about academic support, remediation, or supplemental instruction, particularly in mathematics and literacy. The school's small size creates a potentially close community environment for early elementary, and the neighborhood itself is part of a working-class Waukegan with distinct character and proximity to lakefront and civic resources. The district context is in transition, which may create opportunity or uncertainty depending on how the high school restructuring and recruitment initiatives unfold.
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