Douglas MacArthur High School is a public high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 located in Decatur

Decatur, Illinois

Decatur is the largest city and the county seat of Macon County in the U.S. state of Illinois. The city, sometimes called "the Soybean Capital of the World", was founded in 1823 and is located along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Central Illinois. In 2000 the city population was 81,500,...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. The school serves about 1,300 students from grades 9 to 12 in Decatur Public Schools District 61. in the past, some of its students have participated in the reality television

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

 program

Television program

A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...

 The N's Student Body

The N's Student Body

The N's Student Body is an eight-episode reality television series that first aired on The N on July 11, 2008 that takes twelve students from high schools MacArthur and Eisenhower in Decatur, Illinois.Tagline: Competition is tough...

. As with crosstown rival Eisenhower High School

Eisenhower High School

Eisenhower High School can refer to the following schools in the United States:* Eisenhower High School * Eisenhower High School * Eisenhower High School...

, Macarthur is organized into communities that the students will remain in for four years.

History

Past attendees:


Brian Culbertson

Brian Culbertson

Brian Culbertson is a musician and instrumentalist from Decatur, Illinois, United States. Son of jazz band director and trumpeter Jim Culbertson, Brian's instruments include the keyboard and trombone....

, musician, funk-based instrumentalist, jazz artist (Class of 1991)


Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman is an author of books on a number of topics, including cryptozoology, who was born in 1947 in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in Decatur, Illinois.-Education:...

, cryptozoologist, author, television personality (Class of 1965)


Jason Avant

Jason Avant

Jason Raye Avant is an American football wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League . He was drafted by the Eagles in the fourth round of the 2006 NFL Draft. He played college football at Michigan....

, NFL wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles

Philadelphia Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the East Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...

 (Freshman year only)

Demographics

The 2008 school enrollment was 1,261 students. The racial makeup of the school in 2008 was 51.2% White

White

White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...

, 43.3% African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

, 3.2% Multiracial

Multiracial

The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...

, 1.3% Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

, .7% Asian

Asian people

Asian people or Asiatic people is a term with multiple meanings that refers to people who descend from a portion of Asia's population.- Central Asia :...

, and .2% Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

. 57% of the student population are low income students.

Academics

In 2008, 36.8% of the student population Met or Exceeded in All Subjects. The school did not make Adequate Yearly Progress

Adequate Yearly Progress

Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is a measurement defined by the United States federal No Child Left Behind Act that allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized...

 (AYP) as defined by federal and state laws in 2008. In 2008, the high school graduation

Graduation

Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony that is sometimes associated, where students become Graduates. Before the graduation, candidates are referred to as Graduands. The date of graduation is often called degree day. The graduation itself is also...

 rate was 92.3%, up from 76.6% in 2007. The dropout

Dropping out

Dropping out means leaving a group for either practical reasons, necessities or disillusionment with the system from which the individual in question leaves....

rate lowered from 10.8% in 2007 to 2.5% in 2008.

Athletics

Football, Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Crossrunning, Wrestling, Cycling, Soccer, Tennis, Golf, Swimming, Squash

Activities

MacArthur's Jazz Band is one of the best in the country competing in many competitions throughout the world. It has been named #1 in the country by Downbeat Magazine dozens of times and has been under the direction of Mr. Jim Culbertson for many years.