Best Elementary Schools in Naperville? (Lincoln, Highland: neighborhood, middle school, college)

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by chicagodesi

Thanks everyone for the responses, certainly a lot to think about! From responses on here to my own research as well, it seems that the top 3 elementary schools in Naperville 203 are Meadow Glens, Ranch View, and Highlands. We'd prefer that our potential home is served by one of these 3 schools. Thoughts, suggestions?

The relative "downward pressure" on some schools' performance that there is in a mostly nice town like Naperville can usually be traced to two factors -- some schools are "designated" as serving the students with the more severe learning issues and some parts of even generally nice towns have more "transient" families in rental situations. The result of this is schools that MOSTLY have kids that are ready to learn / have nice stable homes look "worse" than they otherwise would. I know that h'wrths has "sliced and diced" the data for Wheaton and he makes a pretty convincing case that because of these factors it might make sense to look at the subgroups that do not include kids with special needs / low income / traditionally disadvantaged status.

The trick is that the laws that are designed to prevent "steering" potential buyers toward and away from any area make it hard for a real estate agent to give overly specific reasons for one school performing less well than others, and too many parents tend to focus on the upsides / downsides of the school their kids went to, excluding others in the district. That leaves homebuyers to dig into the data on their own...

[chicagodesi]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The relative "downward pressure" on some schools' performance that there is in a mostly nice town like Naperville can usually be traced to two factors -- some schools are "designated" as serving the students with the more severe learning issues and some parts of even generally nice towns have more "transient" families in rental situations. The result of this is schools that MOSTLY have kids that are ready to learn / have nice stable homes look "worse" than they otherwise would. I know that h'wrths has "sliced and diced" the data for Wheaton and he makes a pretty convincing case that because of these factors it might make sense to look at the subgroups that do not include kids with special needs / low income / traditionally disadvantaged status.

The trick is that the laws that are designed to prevent "steering" potential buyers toward and away from any area make it hard for a real estate agent to give overly specific reasons for one school performing less well than others, and too many parents tend to focus on the upsides / downsides of the school their kids went to, excluding others in the district. That leaves homebuyers to dig into the data on their own...

Good to hear from you Chett! Appreciate the advice!

[caverunner17]

Originally Posted by chicagodesi

Thanks everyone for the responses, certainly a lot to think about! From responses on here to my own research as well, it seems that the top 3 elementary schools in Naperville 203 are Meadow Glens, Ranch View, and Highlands. We'd prefer that our potential home is served by one of these 3 schools. Thoughts, suggestions?

What is a "top" elementary school? They're all perfectly fine. I went to Maplebrook > Lincoln > NCHS and turned out just fine. Maplebrook had a fine advanced math and reading program and I think they even bused kids to Lincoln who were on a double advanced track in 5th grade (at least they did when I was there ("graduated" 5th grade in 2001)).

Worry more about the neighborhood locations and the houses themselves rather than what elementary school. There's a huge geographic difference between Ranch View in SE Naperville and Beebe in north Naperville -- that could be an easy 20 minute commute difference.

To be honest, I'd much rather be in north Naperville unless your job is down south. Much easier access to to both interstates 355 and 88 and the train. Moving out of my parent's house in the Maplebrook neighborhood to Lisle (the next town over, some of which is zoned for Naperville North) cut my commute to Oak Brook almost in half.

[JustJulia]

^ Hey, our kids went Maplebrook > Lincoln > NCHS too.

I believe North outperforms Central just a bit, but Central was recently remodeled and upgraded. The classrooms are bigger and the facilities are much nicer. I feel bad for North whenever I go there. When's their upgrade?

But yes, absolutely, living at the north end of town will make your commutes much easier. Getting from our house to I-88 during rush hour can easily take 20 minutes.

[chicagodesi]

Thankfully my company has an office at 5th Avenue Station and also in downtown across from Ogilvie. My thinking is that if I can be anywhere in Naperville, so why not be in the best schools area, low taxes, etc.

[caverunner17]

Originally Posted by chicagodesi

Thankfully my company has an office at 5th Avenue Station and also in downtown across from Ogilvie. My thinking is that if I can be anywhere in Naperville, so why not be in the best schools area, low taxes, etc.

Your *current* job is downtown Naperville -- what about future jobs? My dad ended up getting a job downtown Chicago at some point during his career. Because they were in South Naperville -- Driving in was easily 90 minutes with normal traffic or having to take a 25 minute bus route to the train to get downtown.

AFAIK, the ares you are looking are all DuPage county so tax rate will be the same. There really isn't such thing as "low taxes" in IL. Move to another state if you want lower taxes.

As I said above, there isn't really a "best" school. It's the same curriculum whether you're at Maplebrook or Beebe, Naperville North or Naperville Central. It's a community unit school district and there are multiple institute days where entire departments from the district come together to discuss curriculum development. Any variance between ACT scores or whatnot is just that -- a statistical deviation.

How successful your child will be in school really depends on two things: How engaged your specific child is in class *and* how engaged you are as a parent. Not whether they went to Naperville North or Naperville Central.

Again, look at locations and houses within your price range that you like before putting which school your child will attend first.

[chicagodesi]

Originally Posted by caverunner17

Your *current* job is downtown Naperville -- what about future jobs? My dad ended up getting a job downtown Chicago at some point during his career. Because they were in South Naperville -- Driving in was easily 90 minutes with normal traffic or having to take a 25 minute bus route to the train to get downtown.

AFAIK, the ares you are looking are all DuPage county so tax rate will be the same. There really isn't such thing as "low taxes" in IL. Move to another state if you want lower taxes.

As I said above, there isn't really a "best" school. It's the same curriculum whether you're at Maplebrook or Beebe, Naperville North or Naperville Central. It's a community unit school district and there are multiple institute days where entire departments from the district come together to discuss curriculum development. Any variance between ACT scores or whatnot is just that -- a statistical deviation.

How successful your child will be in school really depends on two things: How engaged your specific child is in class *and* how engaged you are as a parent. Not whether they went to Naperville North or Naperville Central.

Again, look at locations and houses within your price range that you like before putting which school your child will attend first.

Appreciate the advice! If I could move to another state with lower taxes I would in a heartbeat, but job and family are all in IL, so at the moment it's not an option. I agree with kids being successful also depends heavily on the parents as well without a doubt. So if the curriculum is very similar, then what differentiates the schools must be the teachers then? Is there a particular reason why schools such as Highlands, Meadow Glens, Ranch View, and Prairie are often mentioned in higher regard compared to other schools? I'm sure there's good and bad teachers in even the best schools, but perhaps the top schools have better teachers?

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by caverunner17

... isn't really a "best" school. It's the same curriculum whether you're at Maplebrook or Beebe, Naperville North or Naperville Central. It's a community unit school district and there are multiple institute days where entire departments from the district come together to discuss curriculum development. Any variance between ACT scores or whatnot is just that -- a statistical deviation.
....

While you are correct that the whole district is technically offering the same curriculum, the performance of students is influenced by far more factors. One of the most widely referenced sources of info catalogs the results of studies ranking nearly 200 factors -- Hattie effect size list -*195 Influences Related To Achievement* It is undeniable that there will be some teachers that simply are much more successful reaching the group the students they have even with identical curriculum, and I have little doubt that Naperville (nor any other well run school district) would even attempt to "script" the lessons in every classroom.

Further, anyone that dismisses "variance" among students as mere "statistical deviation" suggests someone probably did not pay attention to statistics much -- Standard Deviation vs Difference Between Variance and Standard Deviation

[caverunner17]

Originally Posted by chet everett

While you are correct that the whole district is technically offering the same curriculum, the performance of students is influenced by far more factors. One of the most widely referenced sources of info catalogs the results of studies ranking nearly 200 factors -- Hattie effect size list -*195 Influences Related To Achievement* It is undeniable that there will be some teachers that simply are much more successful reaching the group the students they have even with identical curriculum, and I have little doubt that Naperville (nor any other well run school district) would even attempt to "script" the lessons in every classroom.

Further, anyone that dismisses "variance" among students as mere "statistical deviation" suggests someone probably did not pay attention to statistics much -- Standard Deviation vs Difference Between Variance and Standard Deviation

I agree. There will always be some teachers that are better than others. My 1st grade teacher was horrible (and was fired the next year) yet everyone loved my 3rd grade teacher. That can happen at any school in any district. My girlfriend is a middle school teacher in Plainfield D202. I completely understand how lesson planning goes -- but the materials covered between classes is the same, regardless of teachers.

As my college coach used to say, "The journey is the goal" -- both teachers will accomplish the same thing but can take somewhat different approaches to do so.

As for your ranting about variance vs standard deviation, I'm not going to even go there. There's a 0.5 point ACT difference between NCHS and NNHS according to Wikipedia. That's not large enough to get worried about one school being better than another. If the child is actually smart and wants to learn and their parents are supportive, either school will give them an equal chance to succeed in life. Plenty of my friends or Track teammates went to Ivy Leagues from NCHS and I know a few from NNHS as well.

[almost3am]

It seems you have narrowed your list, that's good. Not to distract, but there are also Blue Ribbon schools, so I am not sure how you define the best, but a couple Naperville elementary schools were on that list.

Illinois boasts 16 Blue Ribbon Schools in 2015

Another option is to find an elementary school in a neighborhood you like and then the school will be right by your home. That's nice for elementary school.

Anyway, I didn't really look at elementary schools when we were house hunting and while I had a list of top High Schools (that is different from what others have on this thread), we picked a neighborhood we liked (with a school in the neighborhood)...because I felt I couldn't really go wrong in Naperville. It has worked out well so far for us.