The top reported proficiency rate is 53% in English language arts. The lowest is 24% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Hamilton Elem School
Hamilton Elementary is a K-5 school serving roughly mid-sized enrollment in Moline, a Mississippi River city tied historically to manufacturing and John Deere. The school draws from a genuinely mixed residential area: the enrollment is just under half white, roughly a third Hispanic, and includes families across many backgrounds, with smaller shares of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. Free-or-reduced-price-lunch data was not available, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the economic composition of the student body.
On academics, Hamilton's recent state test results show a picture of mixed proficiency. In English language arts, the school performs stronger in fourth and fifth grade (around half to three-fifths of students meeting state standards) than in third grade (just under half). Math is weaker across grades: third graders hover near half proficiency, fourth graders dip to about four in ten, and fifth graders fall to just over a quarter. Science results for fifth grade show one in four students meeting standards. These results are not strong, and a parent should understand that this is a school where a substantial majority of students are not yet reaching grade-level standards in math by the time they reach the upper elementary grades. When positioned against the other districts in Rock Island County, Hamilton ranks in the top quartile on an overall proficiency measure, though this reflects the county context rather than representing broad state strength. The data does not tell us whether these patterns are specific to Hamilton or broader in the district.
The school opened in its current form as a regular public elementary school in Moline-Coal Valley CUSD 40 and sits at 700 32nd Ave. Moline itself is a stable, older city where most housing stock predates the 1960s and 70s, and where downtown and riverfront are walkable but the broader area is car-oriented. The area is moderately affordable relative to many U.S. markets, with median home values well below the state benchmark. Housing supply has been a local constraint, though the city has recently signed agreements for downtown residential development to begin in the next few years.
The district is undergoing significant consolidation. Lincoln-Irving and Willard Elementary schools are merging into a new facility called Robert Ontiveros Elementary School, which will open in August 2027 after a major expansion and renovation project. This consolidation reflects a deliberate district strategy to pool resources in larger elementary schools. While this change does not directly affect Hamilton, it signals how the district is thinking about its footprint and may affect enrollment flows and staffing across all elementary schools.
Hamilton serves pre-K through fifth grade, so state test data appears only for grades three through five. No kindergarten or pre-K assessment data exists because those grades are not tested by the state. Chronic absenteeism rates and special education or English learner breakouts were not available in the data, so a family should ask the school about student support services, ELL programming, and attendance patterns if those are priorities for them. A parent visiting Hamilton would get a clearer sense of the classroom environment, intervention strategies the school has in place, and how staff think about closing the math proficiency gap that the data surfaces.
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