The top reported proficiency rate is 55% in Science. The lowest is 34% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Burlingame Elementary
Burlingame Elementary serves students from prekindergarten through fifth grade in the small, rural agricultural town of Burlingame, Kansas, about a half-hour south of Topeka. The school is part of the Burlingame Public School district, which also operates a junior high and high school in town.
The enrollment is small, which is typical for a rural elementary school in this region. The student body is predominantly white, with a very small share of students who are Black, Hispanic, or of two or more races. About half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that roughly tracks the area's modest economic context. The town has experienced slight population decline in recent years, and housing values, while below the state median, have risen. No information on students with disabilities or English learners was available in the data we reviewed.
On state assessments, the Kansas Assessment Program, results vary notably by grade and subject. In third grade, the share of students meeting or exceeding state standards in both math and English language arts was near the schoolwide average. Fourth-grade reading results were low, with a small share of students reaching proficiency. Fifth-grade performance was stronger, with a majority of students proficient in both reading and science, and a solid share in math. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index lands below the midpoint when compared with other districts in Osage County. Because Kansas changed its cut scores for these assessments, year-to-year comparisons are not reliable from the data available.
A parent looking closely at these results may want to understand how instruction and support vary across the elementary grades, particularly why fourth-grade English language arts scores are meaningfully lower than the other grades. The data does not provide enough detail to explain the pattern, but it is a reasonable area for a conversation with the school.
No information about course access, staffing ratios, discipline rates, or chronic absenteeism was available, so it is not possible to describe the school's climate or resource levels from this data.
Burlingame itself is a walkable town by rural standards, centered on a wide brick main street that was a stop on the Santa Fe Trail. The school sits near the downtown core alongside the district's other buildings and the city's civic anchors, which include a museum, a community center, and a farmers' market. The local economy is dominated by agriculture, and the district is one of the larger public employers in town. Allen Community College also maintains a small campus in Burlingame, though it is not part of the K-12 district. No major new housing developments or recent district-level changes, such as bond measures or curriculum shifts, were identified in publicly reported sources.
For a family considering this school, the picture is one of a small, rural elementary with a mostly homogeneous student body, a moderate level of economic need, and state test results that are mixed across grade levels and subjects, with a clear soft spot in fourth-grade reading that would merit a direct inquiry. The town is stable with a slight contraction trend, and the housing market is relatively affordable compared to the state as a whole. The school does not serve grades where a graduation rate would apply, and no advanced coursework or specialized program data was reported for this elementary grade band.
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