Lakewood Elementary School, Cecilia KY

Original Research by School Decision on Lakewood Elementary School

Lakewood Elementary School serves students from preschool through fifth grade in Cecilia, a small unincorporated community in Hardin County. Cecilia is a quiet rural place, historically a railroad junction, and today it sits within the Elizabethtown–Fort Knox metropolitan area. Its population has been essentially flat, and the built environment is oriented around highways and rail rather than a pedestrian core. The school is part of the Hardin County district, and no recent district-level changes of note were publicly reported.

Academically, the school presents a mixed picture. In reading and math, proficiency rates for third and fourth graders are solidly above half, a clear strength. Fifth-grade reading drops a bit, and fifth-grade math is substantially lower, as is social studies. Science, tested in fourth grade, falls between the two. Taken together, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades positioned it at the high end among the small number of districts in Hardin County. That said, the drop in fifth grade is noticeable enough that a parent may want to look into this further with the school, especially if middle school readiness is a concern. Because Lakewood only goes through fifth grade, students will transition to a middle school elsewhere in the district, making the fifth-grade year an important bridge.

The student body is predominantly white, with small shares of Hispanic, Black, Asian, and multiracial students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, indicating that economic diversity is a meaningful part of the school’s context. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and no information on Title I status or special education and English learner counts was available, so those support structures are harder to gauge from the data here.

Housing in the area is moderately priced relative to national benchmarks, with home values near the Kentucky state average. The mortgage rate environment has been elevated, which affects affordability for new buyers, but on a national scale the community remains comparatively accessible. The local economy is tied to the broader Elizabethtown–Fort Knox region, with no single large employer identified in Cecilia itself.

For a family, Lakewood Elementary fits a parent who values a small-town, rural elementary school with strong early-grade academics and wants to be part of a district that, at this school at least, performs well relative to its immediate county peers. The dip in fifth-grade results is something to explore, and the lack of publicly available data on special education, English learner services, and after-school programming means those details would need to come directly from the school. The community is quiet and stable, with modest growth pressure from nearby Elizabethtown, and the housing stock is not out of reach for many working families.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 352%

School 52% · District 45% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▲ 8 pts above county median

Grade 453%

School 53% · District 46% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 529%

School 29% · District 44% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 16 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 351%

School 51% · District 48% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 455%

School 55% · District 50% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 545%

School 45% · District 54% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Science

Grade 443%

School 43% · District 34% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 40% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

This schoolHardin County, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income42%Higher-income65%23 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income48%Higher-income66%18 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income33%Higher-income61%28 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income50%Higher-income57%7 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income45%Higher-income63%18 pp gap