Prairie Lane Elementary, Pleasant Prairie WI

Original Research by School Decision on Prairie Lane Elementary

Prairie Lane Elementary serves students from four-year-old kindergarten through fifth grade in Pleasant Prairie, a village in Kenosha County. It is a regular public school within the Kenosha Unified School District. The school’s enrollment is predominantly white, with a smaller but present share of students who are Hispanic, followed by smaller numbers of students who identify with two or more races, Black, and Asian. A modest share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, meaning the school’s economic profile is relatively less disadvantaged compared to the broader district.

State testing results show a school where students overall are performing at a level that places Prairie Lane among the stronger elementary schools in Kenosha County when looking across tested subjects. In math and English language arts, the proportion of students scoring proficient or above is robust, though performance does step down gradually across the grade levels. In third grade, the share of students meeting the bar in math and in ELA is quite high. By fourth grade, those rates remain strong, and by fifth grade they are a bit lower, though still within a solid range. Science and social studies are tested in fourth grade only, and here the pattern diverges. Social studies proficiency is very high, while science proficiency is also solid but notably lower. A family looking at these results will see a school where most students are hitting academic benchmarks, with the strongest showing in the early grades and in social studies.

The school itself is a neighborhood elementary in a village that has a distinctive character. Pleasant Prairie is not a traditional walkable village with a downtown core; it is spread out over many square miles, car-dependent, and organized around highway corridors, corporate parks, and large retail centers. The village has seen substantial commercial and industrial growth, particularly in the LakeView Corporate Park and Prairie Highlands Corporate Park, which house major employers like Jelly Belly, Haribo, and Nexus Pharmaceuticals. Daily life for residents is oriented around these employment centers and large-scale recreational amenities like the RecPlex, an extensive municipal facility with pools, ice rinks, and a fitness center. The village is actively planning a downtown center, but for now, civic facilities and schools are on separate campuses rather than a centralized hub.

This school sits within a district that has been undergoing significant reorganization. The Kenosha Unified School District has experienced declining enrollment, which prompted a 2023 vote to close several schools, including Lincoln Middle School and five elementary schools, as part of a rightsizing plan. These closures have redrawn attendance boundaries, so families who live near Prairie Lane should confirm which schools their children would feed into for middle and high school, as the district’s footprint is in flux. The district overall serves a large number of students across a mix of communities, from the more suburban areas like Pleasant Prairie to the city of Kenosha itself.

For a parent considering this school, the picture is of a well-performing elementary in a growing suburban village with strong recreational and employment anchors. The academic data shows a school that is an above-average performer within its county, particularly in early literacy and math, and in social studies. The peer environment is relatively economically stable compared to other district schools. The trade-off is that the school is part of a district managing enrollment decline and school closures, which may affect long-term building assignments and feeder patterns. Families who want a dense, walkable downtown setting will not find that here; Pleasant Prairie is built for car travel and its amenities are spread across large parks and commercial corridors. The school’s strength is its consistent academic results and its place in a village that has invested heavily in its parks and family recreation infrastructure.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 387%

School 87% · District 46% · ▲ 42 pts above district

▲ 31 pts above state median · ▲ 36 pts above county median

Grade 475%

School 75% · District 49% · ▲ 26 pts above district

▲ 21 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

Grade 566%

School 66% · District 45% · ▲ 22 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 17 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 378%

School 78% · District 42% · ▲ 36 pts above district

▲ 25 pts above state median · ▲ 33 pts above county median

Grade 479%

School 79% · District 47% · ▲ 32 pts above district

▲ 26 pts above state median · ▲ 30 pts above county median

Grade 568%

School 68% · District 45% · ▲ 23 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 18 pts above county median

Science

Grade 469%

School 69% · District 41% · ▲ 28 pts above district

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 491%

School 91% · District 57% · ▲ 34 pts above district

▲ 26 pts above state median · ▲ 35 pts above county median

This schoolKenosha School District, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income59%Higher-income83%25 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income61%Higher-income85%24 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income52%Higher-income75%22 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income65%Higher-income94%30 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income61%Higher-income81%20 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income48%Higher-income75%27 pp gap