The top reported proficiency rate is 77% in Math. The lowest is 74% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Elwood Elementary School
Elwood Elementary School serves children from pre-kindergarten through second grade in the Elwood Community School Corporation, a small-city district in Madison County. Because it is an early-primary school, there is no high-school graduation rate to report, and the state testing data that exists comes from many years ago, before the current cohort of students was enrolled. Those results, from a single school year when the school included upper elementary grades, showed proficiency rates that fell above the midpoint among the districts in Madison County. Given the age of the data and the change in grade configuration, a parent considering the school today should treat those numbers as very old context rather than a current performance picture.
The student body is predominantly white, with a small share of Hispanic students and very small shares of Black, multiracial, and Native American students. More than half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, which is a meaningful share and indicates that the school serves a community with significant economic need. Enrollment runs just short of the size that would be considered mid-sized for an early-elementary school, with roughly comparable numbers in each grade from kindergarten through second grade and a notably large pre-kindergarten group that is the biggest single grade level.
Elwood itself is a small city in central Indiana with a residential, small-town feel. The city’s own description emphasizes neighborly life, with people sitting on porches, children playing ball, and bicycles on summer evenings. The downtown historic district sits at the intersection of Main Street and State Road 13, and civic anchors include a public library, a YMCA, a golf course, and a hospital. Historically a natural-gas boomtown with glass and tin factories, the city now has a more modest economic base. Housing values in the area are well below state and national medians, and the estimated monthly mortgage payment on a typical home is modest, which together point to a lower-cost living environment.
The school building is located on North 19th Street, within the city’s street grid. The district has seen some recent public investment, including a new municipal building and school facilities mentioned in city materials, though the district brief found no specific changes of lasting impact to report for the school corporation itself. For a family, the most essential thing to understand is that Elwood Elementary is an entry-point school. Children will attend here only for the earliest grades and then move on to another school in the district for later elementary years and beyond. There is no current testing data for the grades this school actually serves, because the state does not test pre-kindergarten through second grade. Parents looking for evidence of academic outcomes will find none from recent years; the single older test snapshot is too far removed to be useful. The school’s role is to provide an early childhood and primary foundation, and the available information speaks more to who the students are and where they live than to instructional results. A parent may want to ask the school directly about early literacy and math approaches, class sizes, and how children transition to the next school in the district.
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