The top reported proficiency rate is 83% in English language arts. The lowest is 56% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lakewood Elementary School
Lakewood Elementary School serves third through fifth grade students in Phenix City, Alabama, and sits within the Phenix City school district. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and it draws its enrollment from a community that the national BusinessWeek publication once ranked as the number one best affordable suburb to raise a family. Phenix City lies directly across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia, and observes Eastern Time because of its strong economic ties to that larger city. The city has riverfront amenities including a river walk and an amphitheater, a mix of residential neighborhoods and commercial corridors along U.S. highways, and a downtown civic core near the river. Families here live in a context where median household income and home values reflect the area’s reputation for affordability, and a substantial share of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.
Lakewood’s student body is moderately diverse. Just over half the students are white, and roughly three in ten are Black, with smaller shares of Hispanic students and students who identify as two or more races. The school serves a middle-grade band, third through fifth, and enrollment is about the size one would expect for a school of this grade span in a mid-sized city. Data on the share of students with disabilities and English learners was not available in the source material, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about how it supports those populations.
On state assessments, Lakewood’s results present a split story that parents will want to weigh carefully. In English language arts, the school performs at a strong level. Across the three tested grades, a large majority of students met the proficiency standard, and the performance at the fourth and fifth grade levels was particularly high. This suggests that the school’s literacy instruction is a genuine strength and that most children are leaving elementary school reading and writing at grade level. The story in mathematics is more uneven. While the third and fourth grade proficiency rates are in the moderate range, the fifth grade math result drops noticeably, with fewer than half of students meeting the standard. This decline in math as students move through the grade band is something a family with a child who struggles in math may want to discuss with the school. In science, which is tested in grade four alone, just under two-thirds of students were proficient, which is a solid but not outstanding result.
When compared against the other districts in Lee County, Lakewood’s overall proficiency across subjects and grades sits above the midpoint. That is a useful piece of context: among the three districts in the county, the school is on the stronger side academically. However, the comparison set is small, and the school’s own internal math trend suggests that not every subject area matches that overall strength. The state assessment data comes from a single year, so there is no trend line to show whether the school is improving or declining.
Because Lakewood is an elementary school that ends at grade five, there is no high school graduation rate to report. That is expected for a school of this grade band. Data on chronic absenteeism was also not available, so a parent may want to ask the school about attendance patterns.
No recent district-level changes were surfaced in the available research. The school’s program offerings were also not detailed in the source data, so a family looking for information about electives, enrichment, or after-school activities beyond the core academic program will need to contact the school directly. The absence of that program data is a gap, not a sign that programs do not exist.
Overall, Lakewood Elementary presents as a school where a child will likely do well in reading and will receive instruction in math that shows a drop-off by fifth grade. The student body reflects the broader city’s demographics, with economic diversity signaled by the share of students receiving meal assistance. The school sits in a community that has invested in its riverfront and civic spaces and that markets itself as an affordable place to live, especially for families who work across the river in Georgia. For a parent whose primary concern is strong elementary literacy, Lakewood appears to deliver. For a parent whose child needs consistent math support through the upper elementary years, it would be worth asking what interventions or instructional strategies the school has in place for fifth grade.
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