I recently started working with a gentleman relocating with his wife and daughter from Seattle. He was clear that his top criterion in deciding where to buy a home is good schools. Even though his daughter won’t be in high school for several years, he wanted to know where good high schools are located. What defines a school as good to one parent may be irrelevant to another, so I gave him the link to the IL State Board of Education’s eReport Card site.

One of many measurements of a high school’s quality is the school’s composite ACT score. Below is a map I created based on the most recent ACT data available from the IL State Board of Education. Each blue flag marks the location of one of the 32 high schools with the highest composite ACT scores out of 210 high schools in the Chicago metro area. Click on a blue flag to go to the web site for that school.