The top reported proficiency rate is 53% in English language arts. The lowest is 39% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Hardin County Elem School
Hardin County Elementary School serves grades pre-K through fifth in Elizabethtown, a very small river village that sits as the county seat of Illinois's least populous county along the Ohio River. The school enrolls a small group of students, with enrollment spread across seven grade levels from pre-K through fifth grade. The student body is predominantly white, with a small representation of students of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. Detailed demographic information about economic disadvantage, English learners, and special education enrollment was not available.
The school building is located on School Road in Elizabethtown, within the compact downtown area where civic life centers on the courthouse, riverfront, and a handful of historic sites. The broader Hardin County CUSD 1 district recently made a district-wide operational change: in 2022 it transitioned its entire school bus fleet to electric vehicles through a partnership with Highland Electric Fleets, funded largely by an EPA grant. For a rural district serving a small enrollment, this shift affects how every student who rides the bus travels to school and reduces long-term transportation costs.
State assessment results from the most recent year show mixed performance across grades and subjects. In mathematics, third-grade students show the strongest proficiency, while fourth and fifth grades show substantially lower proficiency rates. In English language arts, fourth-grade students perform notably higher than third or fifth grade. Science results, available only for fifth grade, fall below both ELA and math results for that grade. Students across tested grades had high participation rates in assessments.
Hardin County Elementary has no comparative context available for evaluation. The school is the only elementary school in its county district, so standard peer comparison against other county districts cannot be made. This means the school's performance cannot be positioned relative to neighboring elementary schools.
The elementary grades served by this school do not include the high school years, so graduation rate data does not apply. Trend data across multiple years was not available, so it is unclear whether recent results represent stable performance or a recent shift.
The housing market in the Elizabethtown area reflects the broader pattern of the village and county: population decline rather than growth. Home values in the local zip code are substantially below both state and national benchmarks. The surrounding county, Illinois's least populated, has been shrinking for years. No major new residential development was identified in the area; recent investment has been tourism-oriented rather than residential. For families considering this school, the housing market offers affordability but within the context of a very small, slowly declining community where the school functions as one of the few institutional anchors alongside county government and local tourism tied to the Shawnee National Forest and Ohio River.
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