Davenport Ridge School, Stamford CT

Original Research by School Decision on Davenport Ridge School

Davenport Ridge School serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Stamford, a mixed-use city blending commercial offices, waterfront multifamily housing, and suburban neighborhoods. The school is a regular public elementary school within the Stamford School District.

The school's enrollment sits at just under seven hundred students, with roughly equal numbers across the six grades. About four in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is diverse by race and ethnicity: roughly equal shares identify as white and Hispanic, with smaller shares identifying as Black and Asian. The school has full participation in state testing, a baseline that most schools meet.

State assessment data from the most recent school year shows a mixed picture by grade and subject. In English language arts, performance is weakest in third grade and strengthens in grades four and five. A clear majority of fifth graders meet proficiency in ELA, while fewer than a quarter of third graders do. The same grade pattern holds in mathematics, where third and fourth graders fall short of the midline, but fifth graders push past it. Science testing occurs only in fifth grade, where results are strongest across all three subjects.

Viewed together across tested grades and subjects, the school's overall proficiency sits in the bottom quarter relative to other district schools in Western Connecticut Planning Region. This means the school faces real academic challenges, particularly in the earlier tested grades. A parent considering this school may want to ask about targeted support in third and fourth grade reading, and about how the district's recently adopted science-of-reading curriculum (Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts, rolling out by grade) is being implemented here. The district has also launched a three-year curriculum overhaul across all grades and subjects, so the instruction your child receives may differ from what was offered in prior years.

Stamford itself is experiencing rapid residential growth, with new multifamily housing clustering downtown and in the South End near the waterfront. This shapes both the city's property market and its schools' composition: the school's racial and ethnic diversity reflects an increasingly diverse city. Housing values have risen steeply, and rents remain elevated, positioning Stamford as a higher-cost suburb with strong corporate employment anchored by companies relocated from Manhattan. The city has a genuine downtown with civic anchors like the Ferguson Library and walkable neighborhoods, though much of Stamford outside the core retains suburban character.

For a family choosing an elementary school in this area, Davenport Ridge offers a neighborhood anchor serving a diverse student body in a growing city. The academic trajectory tilts upward by grade, with fifth graders performing closer to the district midline. Whether the recent district curriculum changes and the science-of-reading adoption will improve results in the lower elementary grades remains to be seen; those are questions worth asking the school directly as the changes take hold.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 336%

School 36% · District 37% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Grade 436%

School 36% · District 42% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 30 pts below county median

Grade 553%

School 53% · District 35% · ▲ 17 pts above district

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 321%

School 21% · District 29% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

Grade 435%

School 35% · District 39% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▼ 32 pts below county median

Grade 554%

School 54% · District 40% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Science

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 43% · ▲ 12 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

This schoolStamford School District, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income7%Higher-income31%25 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income33%Higher-income68%34 pp gap