Albany Park’s Edison tops Illinois elementary school rankings for 2027

Edison Elementary Regional Gifted Center in Albany Park holds the top Illinois spot in U.S. News & World Report’s elementary school rankings for 2027. The newly released results also place six other Chicago public schools among the state’s top 25, highlighting campuses across the city.

Edison is located at 4929 N. Sawyer Ave. and serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Admission to the magnet school requires testing. According to the ranking report, Edison enrolls approximately 265 students and has a student-teacher ratio of 13 to 1, useful context for families learning about the school behind the No. 1 ranking.

Skinner North Elementary School, on Chicago’s Near North Side, finished second in Illinois. Other Chicago schools in the top 25 were Keller Elementary Gifted Magnet School at No. 4, Hawthorne Elementary Scholastic Academy at No. 8 and Decatur Classical Elementary School at No. 9. McDade Elementary Classical School ranked No. 16, while Lincoln Elementary School took the No. 25 position.

The publication evaluated more than 70,000 public elementary schools nationwide at the state and district levels. It did not issue a single national ranking. That distinction matters when reading the results: Edison’s first-place finish is for Illinois, rather than a comparison placing it above every elementary school in the country.

Four measures each accounted for one-quarter of the ranking formula: math proficiency, math performance, reading proficiency and reading performance. The assessment used state reading and language arts and math tests. Half of the formula considered scores directly, while the other half evaluated results in relation to students’ socioeconomic demographics.

For Chicago families, the list offers a way to compare schools through the specific lens of academic testing and the report’s demographic adjustments. Edison’s testing requirement is also an important detail for anyone considering enrollment, separate from its placement in the rankings.