District 200 Earns High Marks from Business Publication

District 200 has received the highest ranking in Expansion Management Magazine’s nationwide analysis of 2,800 school districts that offer high school programs. The ranking is based on college entrance exam scores, graduation rates, the community’s financial commitment to public education, and the education and income levels of the community’s adult population.

The study is conducted annually to help companies decide where to locate a new facility. “Corporate executives understand that the public school system is the basic training ground for a region’s labor pool, and if the schools aren’t very good, their employee training costs will be considerably higher in that location,” the article reports.

The article concludes that communities with the most successful districts spend more money on their schools, both in higher teacher salaries and per pupil costs. Those same districts also tend to have parents with higher levels of education than those in the lower performing districts.

District 200 is one of seven Illinois districts to earn the gold ranking out of 24 included in the study. Its overall ranking is at the 91 st percentile, placing it and other gold ranked districts among the top17 percent in the study, which included 34.5 million students.