| Description | In the October, 2006 issue of Chicago Magazine , Council Oak Montessori School was named one of the top 25 private elementary schools in Chicago. How We Ranked ThemThe charts on these pages are not all the same. The larger set of charts rank public elementary, middle, and junior high schools in Chicago and its six surrounding counties; out of the more than 1,740 schools in the Chicago area, we list only the 115 that came out on top in the data-crunching process described below. The number of schools we list for each area is roughly proportional to the total number of schools there; thus, for heavily populated Chicago and Cook County we list the top 30, but for the far less populous McHenry County, only five. On the last chart, we show relevant data for a select group of private and parochial schools, but we do not rank or score them. (Instead, they are listed alphabetically.) Although universal measuring sticks for the public schools exist in the form of standardized data released... |