Original Research by School Decision on Highland High School
Highland High School is the single comprehensive high school for the School Town of Highland, a public school district serving the town of Highland, Indiana. Highland sits in Lake County, part of the Chicago metro area, and is a largely built-out, predominantly residential suburb. The town’s population has been stable to slightly declining in recent years, and its housing stock reflects an older suburban community where large-scale new development is unlikely; growth, where it occurs, takes the form of infill and redevelopment along commercial corridors. Home values and rents in the area sit near the national benchmark, and the community’s median household income is in line with the broader region. Families considering Highland will find a town with a small downtown, a network of neighborhood parks, a rail-trail for cyclists and pedestrians, and access to the Chicago area via interstate highways and nearby commuter rail stations.
The school itself serves roughly nine hundred and eighty students in grades nine through twelve, which is a mid-sized enrollment for a comprehensive high school. The student body is racially and ethnically diverse. About half of the students are white, roughly a third are Hispanic, and a meaningful share are Black, with small shares of Asian students and students who identify with two or more races. More than a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that a substantial portion of families are navigating economic constraints. Data on the share of students with disabilities and the share of English learners was not available in the profile, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the supports and services available for those populations.
A notable gap in the information available is the absence of state assessment results. Because Highland High School is a regular public high school serving tested grades, this absence may reflect a data-reporting gap rather than a feature of the school itself. Without proficiency rates or a four-year graduation rate in the data, it is not possible to characterize academic performance or compare the school to other high schools in Lake County. A family for whom test scores and graduation rates are a central consideration should look into these metrics directly from the school or from the Indiana Department of Education.
The district brief for the School Town of Highland did not surface any recent referendum proposals, curriculum changes, or other lasting shifts in policy or financing that would be relevant to a parent. This suggests a period of relative stability at the district level.
Highland High School, then, presents itself as a mid-sized, racially diverse comprehensive high school in a stable, built-out suburb with limited new housing and a commuting-oriented economy. The student body includes a significant low-income population, and the town itself offers a range of civic amenities. The central unknowns for a prospective family are the school’s academic outcomes, which are not captured in the available data. Without that information, the school’s character is best understood through its setting and composition: a typical public high school serving a diverse, middle-income suburb on the fringe of a major metropolitan area, where the academic peer environment and student outcomes would need to be verified with the school itself.
See more original research from School Decision →