The top reported proficiency rate is 76% in English language arts. The lowest is 50% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Carter City Elementary School
Carter City Elementary School, a regular public school serving prekindergarten through fifth grade, is one of the elementary schools within the Carter County school district. The school is located in Grayson, Kentucky, a small city that functions as the county seat and a gateway to the Huntington-Ashland metro area via Interstate 64 and the AA Highway. Grayson has experienced commercial growth since the interstate opened, with a later wave of residential growth as commuting times to Ashland shortened. Its downtown core centers on the Main Street and Carol Malone Boulevard intersection near the Carter County Courthouse, and the city sits along the Little Sandy River. The public sector is a major local employer, with the school district, Kentucky Christian University, and county government among the key anchors.
The enrollment at Carter City Elementary is small, serving a student population that is predominantly white. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a significant presence of families with lower household incomes. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to evaluate, and state testing data covers only grades three through five.
The available state assessment results provide a partial picture of academic performance. In fourth-grade reading, a strong majority of students scored at the proficient level or above on the Kentucky Summative Assessment, a result that stands as a clear strength for the school. In fifth-grade math, half of students reached the proficient benchmark, which places that outcome near the middle of the range. Fifth-grade social studies results show that slightly more than half of students met the proficiency standard. The school’s third-grade reading and math results, fourth-grade math results, fourth-grade science results, and fifth-grade reading results were all suppressed, meaning those figures were not reported in the available data. A parent may want to ask the school directly for those grade-level outcomes to get a fuller sense of where the school’s instructional strengths and areas for growth lie. Because several results are suppressed, it is not possible to calculate a schoolwide proficiency index to compare against other schools in the county.
The comparison data set that exists for this school places it within the context of Carter County’s other districts, but the cohort is too small to allow for a meaningful comparison of proficiency or other metrics. That means there is no reliable benchmark available to show how Carter City Elementary performs relative to nearby schools in the same county.
No information was provided about the school’s course offerings, staffing ratios, discipline rates, or attendance levels, so those aspects of the student experience cannot be described here. The search for recent district-wide changes or initiatives that parents would want to know about returned little that would affect a family’s day-to-day experience at this school. The school is not a charter school, and its magnet status is not listed.
For a family considering this school, the main academic data points come from a few tested grades and subjects. The fourth-grade reading result is a notable strength, while the math and social studies results for fifth grade are more moderate. The suppressed scores leave gaps in the picture, particularly around early elementary performance and science. The small enrollment and the high share of students from lower-income households define the peer environment. The setting is a small county-seat city with a modest population and highway access to the larger Ashland area, and the housing market has typical affordability for the region. The school serves a traditional elementary grade band, so families will be thinking ahead to middle and high school placements within the Carter County system.
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