The top reported proficiency rate is 67% in Science. The lowest is 51% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Harding Grade School
Harding Grade School serves prekindergarten through fourth grade in Earlville, a very small, predominantly residential farm town in LaSalle County. The school is part of Serena CUSD 2, a small rural district that spans three towns: Earlville, Serena, and Sheridan.
Earlville itself is a compact, walkable farm community with a sparse suburban character. Most residents own their homes, and the town center sits a few blocks from the school campus on Union Street. The local economy centers on agriculture, small business, and some light manufacturing; many residents commute to work outside town. The community has a public library, a bank, volunteer fire and ambulance services, and civic anchors like a public golf course, but lacks major shopping centers or large employers. Population has been essentially flat to slowly declining over recent decades, and housing development slowed considerably after the nationwide housing downturn. Home values in the area are modest, and the median listing price in LaSalle County is well below the state and national benchmarks, making housing relatively affordable by comparison.
Harding Grade School itself is small, with a total enrollment of about one hundred twenty students spread across six grades from pre-K through fourth. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller shares of Hispanic, multiracial, and Black students. Reliable data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and English learner status were not available. The school maintains very high participation rates on state assessments, with about ninety-five percent of tested students taking the exam.
Academic performance on the most recent state assessments shows mixed results. In third-grade math, the school's proficiency rate was around seventy percent, which places it in the top quartile among LaSalle County school districts overall. Fourth-grade math performance dropped considerably, to below fifty percent proficiency. In third-grade English language arts, proficiency was around fifty percent; fourth grade improved slightly to above fifty percent. Testing data for grades five through eight are not reported because Harding serves only pre-K through fourth grade; those grades are tested at the secondary school. Limited science data from several years ago showed proficiency around fifty-six percent at grade five and above seventy percent at grade eight, but those assessments were administered under an older testing regime and are not current. The school's overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile relative to other districts in the county, though absolute proficiency rates in the tested grades are below sixty percent.
The drop in performance between third and fourth grade in math warrants parental attention. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand whether specific curriculum, instruction, or student composition changes between grades explain the decline, or whether there are targeted intervention strategies in place.
Data on programs, staffing, attendance, school discipline, special education, and other school environment characteristics were not available. No recent district-level changes of major parent relevance were publicly reported. The school's website address and more detailed program information would help round out this picture.
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