Hamilton Elementary School, Hamilton IL

Original Research by School Decision on Hamilton Elementary School

Hamilton Elementary School serves pre-K through eighth grade in a small Mississippi River city in rural Hancock County. The school sits in a declining community where the broader context shapes the student experience and academic environment.

The town itself is compact and residential, centered on Broadway, with the school at one address in what remains a tightly knit place. The population has contracted over decades and continues to shrink slowly. Housing is affordable relative to state and national benchmarks. The local economy is modest, tied partly to cross-river employers in Keokuk, Iowa, and small local retail. This is a stable, quiet setting with limited urban amenities but also modest cost of living.

The school's enrollment runs roughly mid-sized for a rural elementary-middle combined building, drawn almost entirely from the immediate area. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of Black, Hispanic, and multiracial students. Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility and special education and English learner populations were not available, which often reflects the nature of small rural schools where such reporting may operate differently or the numbers may not be disaggregated publicly. No information was available on chronic absenteeism, discipline, or staffing patterns.

On state testing, Hamilton Elementary shows uneven results across grades and subjects. In English language arts, proficiency tends to be stronger in the upper middle grades, with students in sixth grade showing notably higher attainment, while fourth grade shows solid performance and third grade more modest gains. Math performance is weaker overall and more variable. Third grade and fifth grade show middling results; fourth grade and sixth grade fall below that. Seventh and eighth grade math proficiency is low. Science testing, available for fifth and eighth grade only, sits at roughly even odds. All tested students participated in ELA and math assessments, with participation near universal in science. These results place the school at the top of the comparison cohort of Hancock County districts by a composite proficiency index, meaning it performs better than most of its county peers, though that may partly reflect the composition of that particular set rather than strength in absolute terms.

The school serves grades pre-K through eight without a high school, so there is no graduation rate. No information was provided about specific programs, course offerings, AP or dual-credit pathways, or extracurricular activities. No strategic priorities or recent district changes of parent relevance were found in available sources.

A parent considering this school should understand that it sits in a stable but slowly contracting rural place, offers a pre-K-8 pathway in one building, and shows mixed academic proficiency with particular weakness in upper-grades math. Relative to its county context it performs at the stronger end, but absolute performance in several grades and subjects is a matter a parent may want to discuss directly with the school. The absence of detailed program and staffing data means a prospective family should ask about what enrichment, support services, and instructional approaches are available to address individual student needs, especially in math where the pattern suggests challenges that merit closer examination.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 357%

School 57% · District 57%

▲ 11 pts above state median

Grade 438%

School 38% · District 38%

▲ 1 pts above state median

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 21 pts above state median

Grade 630%

School 30% · District 30%

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 734%

School 34% · District 34%

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 841%

School 41% · District 41%

▲ 18 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 357%

School 57% · District 57%

▲ 13 pts above state median

Grade 460%

School 60% · District 60%

▲ 11 pts above state median

Grade 564%

School 64% · District 64%

▲ 12 pts above state median

Grade 676%

School 76% · District 76%

▲ 26 pts above state median

Grade 766%

School 66% · District 66%

▲ 15 pts above state median

Grade 865%

School 65% · District 65%

▲ 12 pts above state median

Science

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 49%

▲ 12 pts above state median

Grade 849%

School 49% · District 49%

▲ 9 pts above state median

This schoolHamilton CCSD 328, 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.