The top reported proficiency rate is 79% in Math. The lowest is 68% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Patterson Elementary School
Patterson Elementary School is a regular public K-5 elementary school in Naperville serving a student body of roughly five hundred. The school sits within Indian Prairie CUSD 204, a larger suburban district in Will County that covers Naperville and surrounding communities.
The school's student demographics reflect a suburban, relatively affluent area. White students make up just over half the enrollment, with Asian students comprising roughly a third—a notably higher-than-typical Asian representation for suburban Illinois. Hispanic, multiracial, and Black students together account for a small but meaningful share. Enrollment is stable and distributed fairly evenly across all grades from kindergarten through fifth.
On the most recent state assessments, Patterson's performance is mixed. In mathematics, students in third and fourth grade showed strong proficiency, with the majority reaching proficient levels on the state test. Fifth grade mathematics proficiency dropped notably, with about seven in ten students meeting the standard. In English language arts, third and fifth graders performed comparably to their math cohorts, but fourth graders showed a steeper drop in ELA than in math, with roughly two-thirds proficient. In the one science assessment available, fifth-grade students reached proficiency at rates slightly below ELA. Across all tested grades and subjects, Patterson's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile among the county's districts—a strength the field broadly agrees is meaningful.
A reader looking at these results will notice the pattern: third-grade students perform strongest, fourth and fifth grades show attenuation, and the decline is steeper in ELA than math by grade four. This is not an uncommon arc in elementary schools, but a parent may want to look into further with the school whether there are specific instructional or student-support practices they are implementing to address the transition to upper elementary grades.
Naperville itself is a large suburban city about half an hour west of Chicago, the state's third-largest city. The community has a strong civic infrastructure: a nationally ranked public library system, an active park district centered on the Riverwalk and downtown, and Metra commuter rail access. Downtown Naperville is genuinely walkable, with pedestrian-friendly shopping, dining, and recreation concentrated around the DuPage River. The city is growing steadily, with new housing developments and infill projects, particularly in and near downtown. The housing market reflects suburban affluence: typical home values are well above both state and national benchmarks, and monthly rents are modest but meaningfully higher than the national median. This is a community where families are investing in permanence.
Indian Prairie 204, Patterson's district, recently passed a substantial bond referendum to fund safety upgrades, infrastructure modernization, and learning-space expansions across its 33 schools over roughly a five-year period. The bond maintains the current property tax rate rather than allowing taxes to decrease when existing debt rolls off—a structural choice that locks in long-term funding for district priorities. At the middle school level, the district has also adopted a new, writing-intensive English language arts curriculum built around CommonLit, signaling a shift in pedagogy that will touch students as they progress through grades 6 and 8.
Because Patterson serves only through fifth grade, no graduation rate or high school pathway data are available. Special education and English learner enrollment figures are not reported in the data provided. Free-or-reduced-price-lunch status is also missing, so it is not possible to characterize the school's economic diversity directly from the figures on hand.
Patterson is a solidly proficient elementary school in an affluent, growing suburban district with active civic life and strong long-term infrastructure investment. The school sits in one of the state's well-resourced suburban markets, and the district's recent bond referendum and curricular adoption signal ongoing intentionality around both facilities and instruction. The pattern of performance invites a closer look at how the school supports students as they move into upper elementary, but the overall position is one of academic strength relative to the region.
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