School districts by the numbers

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There were 4,042 fewer students in Illinois last year than the year before, and 109 of those students disappeared from Bureau County.

That’s only one of the pieces of information that can be found in the 2009 Illinois School Report Cards, which were released by the state on Oct. 30.

The report cards show how students are doing in math, reading and science, but they also provide information on items ranging from student demographics and to how many teachers in a district have their master’s degree. All of this information has an impact on how students perform.

How does your school district measure up?

Enrollment

There were 5,720 students in Bureau County during the 2007-08 school year, and that number dropped to 5,611 by the following year. Some districts saw modest growth, like Ohio Grade School, which added four students, and the Princeton High School and Spring Valley Elementary districts, which each added 22.

But most districts saw declining enrollment figures. Malden, LaMoille, Ohio High School and Dalzell all saw declines of between 13 and 18 percent of their student bodies. The biggest decline was in Neponset, which saw its enrollment drop more than 27 percent, from 88 to 64 students.

Seven Bureau County school districts had fewer than 100 students, with Ohio High School being the smallest with 46 students.

Low-income

According to the Illinois School Report Card, most low-income students come from families receiving public aid or are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches.

In Bureau County, the highest percentage of students who met that mark were at Leepertown Elementary in Bureau, where 76.5 percent of the 51 students in the district qualified.

Other districts with more than 50 percent low income students were DePue at 63 percent, Neponset at 59 percent, and Spring Valley Elementary at 50.1 percent. The state average is 42.9 percent, almost two percentage points more than last year.

Limited English

Again according to the report card, Limited-English-proficient students are those students eligible for transitional bilingual programs.

In Bureau County, DePue takes the top score, with 52.1 percent, or more than one student out of every two, eligible for the programs. Spring Valley Elementary showed 5.6 percent of its students qualified, and Cherry was on the list with 1.4 percent.

Chronic truancy and attendance

Income and language skills don’t matter much if the child isn’t in the classroom. Chronic truants are those students who are absent from school without valid cause for 18 or more of the last 180 school days.

Hall High School’s truancy rate led the county with 4.2 percent, half a percentage point over the state average. Leepertown and Cherry were a ways behind, with rates of 3 and 2.9 percent respectively.

However, overall attendance at all Bureau County school districts was higher than the state’s 93.7 percent mark. As in the previous year, only Princeton High School, with 91.9 percent, was lower than the state average.

Mobility

A district’s mobility rate is based on the number of times students enroll in or leave a school during the school year. Students who move from one school to another are often held back by having to get used to a new district.

In Bureau County, the highest mobility rate was again at Leepertown, where just over half of the students had moved during the past school year. Other local schools with rates higher than the state average of 13.5 percent were Malden with 22 percent, Hall with 18 percent, Spring Valley Elementary with 16.3 percent, Ohio Elementary with 15.1 percent.

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