If you are moving to the Chicago area with kids, the schools question hits before almost everything else. You are scrolling listings, and somewhere in the back of your head a voice is asking whether that cheaper house two towns over means a worse school for your kid. I have subbed in a lot of buildings, and I will give you the honest version, because the marketing version is useless when you are about to sign a thirty-year mortgage.
Here is the short answer. Illinois's strongest school districts are overwhelmingly in the affluent suburbs that ring Chicago, the collar counties. Lake, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, and the outer edge of Cook. Once you leave that ring, the picture thins out fast, and the gap between the top suburban districts and the big urban ones is large. Not a little gap. A large one.
So let me give you the ranking first, then walk you through the trap that catches transplants every single time.
The Top Districts by Test Scores
This list ranks districts by weighted composite proficiency on Illinois state assessments. That means the share of students meeting or exceeding standards on the IAR in the elementary and middle grades, plus the SAT at the high school level, rolled into one figure. The numbers are approximate and pulled together from Illinois state report-card data and NCES enrollment for SY 2024-25. Treat them as a tier, not a photo finish. The difference between number three and number eight is basically noise.
- Lake Zurich CUSD 95 (Lake County) · ~75%. The top of the table, a unified district running K through 12.
- Naperville CUSD 203 (DuPage) · ~74%. About 16,000 students, which makes it a large unified standout. Big and high-scoring at the same time is unusual.
- Barrington CUSD 220 · ~70%. Straddles the Lake and Cook line northwest of the city.
- Elmhurst SD 205 · ~70%. A DuPage favorite for families who want the suburbs without going all the way out to the far western towns.
- St. Charles CUSD 303 (Kane) · ~70%. The Fox River valley, farther west.
- Glenview CCSD 34 · ~70%. A K-8 elementary district in suburban Cook.
- Arlington Heights SD 25 · ~70%. Also K-8, northwest suburban Cook.
- Dunlap CUSD 323 (Peoria area) · ~69%. The notable downstate entry, and the one to remember if you are not tied to Chicago.
- Downers Grove GSD 58 · ~69%. A K-8 grade-school district in DuPage.
- Indian Prairie CUSD 204 (Naperville and Aurora) · ~66%. About 26,000 students, the giant of the strong tier. Holding scores this high across a district that big is genuinely hard.
- Oak Park ESD 97 · ~65%. A K-8 district just west of the city line.
With one exception, every district on that list is in the Chicago suburbs, and most are in the wealthier ones. That is not a coincidence and I am not going to pretend it is. Test scores track household income closely, and these are high-income towns. The schools are good, the teachers are good, but a big part of what you are buying is the demographics of the families already there.
The one exception is Dunlap CUSD 323, near Peoria. If your job or your family pulls you downstate, that is the standout district outside the Chicago orbit, and it is worth a serious look.
The District-Type Trap Nobody Warns You About
Illinois has three kinds of districts mixed together on the same map. There are unified districts, the CUSD ones, which run kindergarten through twelfth grade under one roof. Then there are elementary districts, often labeled ESD, CCSD, GSD, or SD, which only run the lower grades, usually K-8. And those elementary districts feed into separate high school districts that have their own boundaries, their own school board, and their own test scores.
Read that again, because it is the whole ballgame. A top-rated K-8 district does not guarantee a top-rated high school. Several districts on my list above are elementary-only. Glenview 34, Arlington Heights 25, Downers Grove 58, Oak Park 97. Those numbers describe the grade-school years. The high school your kid actually attends sits in a different district entirely, with a different proficiency figure you have not looked at yet.
So when a listing says "top-rated schools," your first question is: top-rated which schools? The elementary district, the high school district, or both? You have to confirm both. I have watched families fall in love with a town because the grade school was excellent, never check the feeder high school, and get a nasty surprise four years later.
The unified districts sidestep this entirely. Naperville 203 and Indian Prairie 204 are the two big unified options here, K through 12 under one district. If you want one boundary, one school board, and one set of numbers to track from kindergarten through graduation, those are the simplest strong picks on the board. Lake Zurich 95, Barrington 220, and St. Charles 303 are unified too, just smaller.
Honest Numbers on the Big Districts
The large districts in Illinois, the ones serving the most kids, post much lower average proficiency, and parents deserve the real figures rather than a polite silence.
- Chicago Public Schools · about 324,000 students · weighted proficiency around 32%.
- Elgin Area School District U-46 · around 35%.
- Rockford SD 205 · around 24%.
- Plainfield SD 202 · around 50%.
CPS is enormous. Inside that 32% sit some of the best public high schools in the entire state. Chicago's selective-enrollment high schools and its magnet programs post numbers that would top the suburban list, but they are admission-by-test or by-lottery, and their excellence gets averaged in with hundreds of struggling neighborhood schools until the district number looks grim. The average hides them. It hides the best ones and it hides the worst ones.
That is exactly why, in a district like Chicago, the district name on the sign tells you almost nothing. What matters is the specific school your address is assigned to, or the specific selective or magnet program your child can test or apply into. A family in the right CPS attendance boundary, or with a kid who lands a selective-enrollment seat, can do very well. A family two miles away in a different boundary can have a completely different experience. Same district, same average, opposite reality.
Where I Would Look If I Were You
Let me put on the parent hat instead of the data hat, because at some point you have to just pick a town.
The safe suburban picks cluster northwest and west of the city. Barrington and Lake Zurich up in the Lake County corner. Arlington Heights and Glenview in northwest Cook. Naperville out in DuPage. Elmhurst if you want to stay closer in. These are the towns where the schools consistently deliver and where, frankly, you are paying for it in the home price.
If you want the simplicity of one district from kindergarten through senior year, Naperville 203 and Indian Prairie 204 are your big unified options, and Indian Prairie sprawls across Naperville and Aurora so there is a wider price range than you might expect. Oak Park is the close-in, walkable, more diverse option, just remember its 97 is K-8 and the high school is a separate district to vet.
Downstate, if Chicago is not in the cards, Dunlap near Peoria is the one I would point you to first.
And the rule under all of it, the one I would tattoo on a transplant's hand: check the specific assigned school, not the district name. Confirm the elementary district and the high school district if they are split. Pull up your exact address before you decide, because in Illinois more than most states, two houses on the same street can feed different schools, and the welcome sign at the edge of town is the least reliable source you have.
None of this is a knock on the families in the big districts or the teachers grinding away in them. It is just what the numbers say, and you came here for the numbers.
Sources
NCES: Common Core of Data
Illinois State Board of Education: Illinois Report Card
Illinois State Board of Education: Assessment and Accountability
