The first thing you notice about Adlai E. Stevenson High School is the scale. It doesn’t feel like a high school so much as a well-funded corporate campus or a small, exceptionally tidy city. Sprawled across 76 acres of suburban Illinois prairie, its buildings are connected by a glass-encased walkway known simply as “The Link.” Students move through it with a purpose that seems less like the bell-driven shuffle of teenagers and more like the focused transit of professionals moving between departments. One of its newest additions, an extension to the East Building completed in 2019, boasts a green roof, living walls, and solar panels, an ambitious attempt at a net-zero energy footprint. It’s a physical statement about the future, a mission cast in concrete and steel.
This is District 125, a single-school district that functions as an educational juggernaut in Lincolnshire, Illinois. With an enrollment of 4,614 students for the 2023-2024 school year, it serves as the sole secondary institution for a sprawling 42-square-mile territory covering all or parts of 16 different communities. It is, by almost any measure, a stunning success story in American public education. It’s the only public high school in Illinois to earn the U.S. Department of Education’s coveted Blue Ribbon Award for Excellence five times. Its Advanced Placement program is a national powerhouse, regularly leading the Midwest in participation and ranking in the top five worldwide.
But to understand how Stevenson became this paragon of academic achievement, one must first understand its almost comically disastrous beginning—a story not of grand design, but of a messy divorce, an empty building, and a colossal shipping error.
An Unfinished Building and a Misplaced Shipment of Desks
The school that exists today was born from disagreement. In 1964, the former Ela-Vernon High School district was fracturing, with the western portion, now Lake Zurich, breaking away to form its own district. This left the eastern communities with a half-built second school, a name honoring the former Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson II, and very little else. When its doors opened on September 7, 1965, to a modest cohort of 467 students and 31 teachers, the place was a shell. The library had no books, the athletic fields were non-existent, and in a logistical blunder for the ages, most of the school’s new furniture had been mistakenly shipped to Prairie View, Texas, instead of Prairie View, Illinois.
It was an inauspicious start, a skeleton of a school dropped onto the flatlands. For years, it was just that—a school, serving its community. The turning point, the moment Stevenson began its transformation from a competent local high school into a national model, came in the 1980s. The decade began with the publication of “A Nation at Risk,” a landmark report that sounded the alarm on a perceived decline in American education. It was in this climate of national self-reflection that a new principal, Richard DuFour, arrived. DuFour didn’t just manage the school; he began to articulate a philosophy. He championed the idea of a “professional learning community,” a collaborative environment where the central mission was not just teaching, but ensuring that every student learned.
This philosophy required scale. In 1992, with enrollment growing, the community faced a choice: build a second high school or expand the existing one. In a pivotal referendum, 52% of voters chose to keep Stevenson as the district’s sole institution. This decision set the stage for a period of explosive growth. In 1995, a $25 million expansion project increased the school’s physical footprint by more than 50 percent, growing it to over six times its original 113,000 square feet. This project gave birth to the massive East Building, the state-of-the-art Performing Arts Center (PAC), the Patriot Aquatic Center, and the Field House. In 2002, with the district’s finances stabilized by a tax referendum that passed with nearly 70% community support, the machine was fully built. DuFour, who retired that year and became a leading voice for school reform until his death in 2017, had laid the foundation.
The Machinery of Excellence
Today, walking through Stevenson is like touring the operational hub of a Fortune 500 company dedicated to human potential. The numbers alone are staggering. The student body of 4,614 is guided by a faculty of 281.6 (on a full-time equivalent basis), maintaining a student-teacher ratio of 16.38 to 1 and an average class size of 22. This is a feat of logistics and management, delivering personalized attention on a massive scale.
The student population reflects a diverse cross-section of suburban America. The 2023 demographic data shows a student body that is 46.6% White, 39.3% Asian, 9.0% Hispanic, 1.7% Black, and 3.2% Two or More Races. These students come from a web of feeder schools—Daniel Wright, Aptakisic, Twin Groves, Woodlawn, Fremont, and West Oak—and converge on this single campus.
Here, they are presented with a universe of choice. The curriculum includes more than 200 courses and over 20 Advanced Placement classes. The results of this approach are quantifiable and consistently excellent. For the Class of 2016, an astonishing 99.9% of graduates attended college. That same year, 360 students were named Illinois State Scholars. Publications like U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post have repeatedly named it the top open-enrollment public high school in the state. In 2021, U.S. News ranked it #171 in the entire nation.
This academic rigor is matched by a culture of competitive excellence. The school’s academic teams are dominant, with the Science Olympiad team winning the National Championship in 2023, and state titles in Chess, Scholastic Bowl, and Math. The Debate Team has won the prestigious Harvard National Champions tournament three times (2008, 2011, 2019). It’s a culture that breeds success, producing alumni like Holden Karnofsky, CEO of the Open Philanthropy Project, and Gene Stupnitsky, head writer and executive producer of The Office.
The Patriot Way
The school’s mascot, the Patriot, feels apt. There is a fierce pride and a disciplined drive that permeates everything, especially athletics. The North Suburban Conference powerhouse has a trophy case groaning under the weight of its achievements. The school won IHSA state championships in both Football and Boys Basketball in the same remarkable 2014-2015 season. Its Girls Water Polo team is a modern dynasty, capturing state titles in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024. The Boys and Girls Gymnastics teams collected a trove of championships in the 2000s. The list goes on: Boys Water Polo, Boys Bowling, Boys Swimming & Diving, the Patriettes dance squad.
This athletic crucible has forged an impressive roster of professional and Olympic athletes. The NBA’s Jalen Brunson, a two-time All-Star and captain of the New York Knicks, walked these halls. So did WNBA legend and MVP Tamika Catchings, Olympic hockey player Megan Bozek, and Olympic gymnast Paul Juda. The school produces not just scholars, but disciplined, high-achieving competitors in every field.
The Enduring Blueprint
From its haphazard birth, Adlai E. Stevenson High School has relentlessly engineered its own success. It willed itself into existence through strategic planning, immense community investment, and an unwavering belief in a core mission. Its story is a powerful case study in the business of public education, demonstrating that with vision, resources, and a culture of high expectations, a single school can become a world-class institution.
The school’s old motto, a prediction made over 40 years ago, claimed it was “destined for greatness.” Standing in the shadow of its ever-expanding campus, watching thousands of students stream toward their futures, it’s clear that this was less a prediction and more of a promise—one that Stevenson High School has decidedly kept.
Also Read: The 10 Most Admired School Districts
