The top reported proficiency rate is 43% in Science. The lowest is 32% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary
Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary serves only fourth and fifth graders in Abilene, a small historic county-seat town whose economy is tied to manufacturing, agriculture, and heritage tourism anchored by the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. The school sits within the Abilene district, which covers the town itself, a quiet Flint Hills community with a compact downtown and a slowly declining population.
The student body is overwhelmingly white, with a Hispanic share just above a tenth of the school and only a small number identifying as two or more races. More than half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate that points to a substantial low-income population within these two upper-elementary grades. The school does not serve younger children or middle or high school grades, which means there is no graduation rate, no chronic absenteeism data, and no course-access information to consider. The structure is straightforward: students attend for two years before moving on to a middle school.
On state assessments, roughly a third of fourth graders met proficiency in math, while about two in five met it in English language arts. For fifth graders, the math proficiency rate was lower, around a quarter, while English language arts came in around two in five. In fifth-grade science, slightly more than two in five students scored proficient. The school’s combined proficiency across all tested subjects and grades sits below the midpoint among the districts in Dickinson County. Because the state recently made cut-score changes to the math and English language arts exams, year-over-year comparisons are not reliable, so it is difficult to say whether these results represent a trend or a single snapshot.
The school is not a charter or magnet. There are no data on discipline, staffing ratios, or attendance patterns, and the available profile does not list any special programs or course offerings. The district itself, according to publicly available information, has no recent parent-relevant changes—no boundary adjustments, new facilities, or programming shifts were found in the research. That may simply mean the district has been stable in recent years.
For a family considering this school, the picture is narrow. Abilene offers the quiet, car-dependent texture of a small Kansas town with a historic core and a few major employers. The school itself is a two-grade building where academic proficiency is modest and below the county midpoint, particularly in math. A parent may want to ask the school directly about how it supports students who arrive below grade level, what interventions are in place for math, and what the transition looks like into the district’s middle school. The lack of data on special education services, English learner supports, and discipline rates are all gaps worth raising with the school office. Housing values locally are below both the state and national benchmarks, consistent with a town where the economy is stable but not booming.
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