The top reported proficiency rate is 66% in English language arts. The lowest is 39% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Westchester Middle School
Westchester Middle School serves grades six through eight in this mature Cook County suburb roughly thirteen miles west of downtown Chicago. The school sits in a residential village that was originally planned as an English-style suburb in the nineteen-twenties and filled in during the postwar housing boom, giving it a built-out, tree-lined character with single-family homes and a median age near fifty-three. The village is car-oriented, bounded by interstates to the north and west, with civic functions dispersed along arterial roads rather than concentrated in a downtown. Most students live within walking distance or a short drive of the school, which occupies a campus-style cluster on Canterbury Street alongside the district's primary and intermediate schools.
The school draws from a diverse student body. Roughly two out of every five students identify as Hispanic, a similar proportion as white, about three out of ten as Black, and small shares as Asian or multiracial. The enrollment is small for a middle school, with a total near three-fifty across the three grades, divided nearly equally among sixth and eighth grades and slightly smaller seventh-grade cohorts. Free-and-reduced-price-lunch status data was not provided, so a parent may want to inquire directly about the school's economic composition if that matters to their search.
State test results for the current year show uneven performance by grade and subject. In English language arts, proficiency improves with grade level: sixth-graders showed about sixty percent proficiency, seventh-graders about sixty-eight percent, and eighth-graders about sixty-nine percent. Mathematics tells a different story. Sixth-grade math proficiency sat near twenty-eight percent, a notable soft spot. Seventh-grade math jumped to about forty-six percent proficient, and eighth-grade held roughly forty-three percent. Science proficiency in eighth grade was about sixty percent. Overall, the school's mean proficiency across all tested subjects and grades places it above the midpoint among districts in Cook County, but the mathematics results for sixth grade fall well below where parents might hope to see them, and a parent may want to look into whether the school has identified specific supports or interventions for sixth-grade numeracy.
The data provided does not include graduation rates, attendance or chronic-absenteeism figures, discipline data, special-education or English-learner breakdowns, staffing counts, or advanced-placement or career-pathway offerings. These gaps reflect the school's grade band; middle schools do not report graduation rates. For other details, such as program breadth, support services, or the school's response to the sixth-grade math results, families should contact the school or district directly.
The housing market in the immediate area reflects the village's mature, mostly built-out character. Home values are moderate, with median-priced properties in the low-to-mid three-hundred-thousands, up slightly year over year. Rentals are available at a modest share of the median household income for the region. The village is essentially developed except for protected open space, so new large-scale subdivisions are not in evidence; change is driven by infill and redevelopment rather than growth.
Westchester Middle School is a regular public school in a stable, established suburb with a socioeconomically and ethnically mixed student body. English language arts performance is respectable and shows improvement as students advance. Mathematics, particularly in sixth grade, appears to be an area where the school's results lag expectation, and parents evaluating this school should seek specific detail about how the school approaches the transition from elementary to middle-school math and what support structures exist for students entering at lower proficiency levels.
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