Beaver Dam Elementary School, Beaver Dam KY

Original Research by School Decision on Beaver Dam Elementary School

Beaver Dam Elementary School is a regular public school serving prekindergarten through sixth grade in the small Ohio County town of Beaver Dam. It is the community’s primary elementary option within the Ohio County district, drawing from a town that combines residential streets, a Main Street commercial corridor, and a handful of manufacturing plants and shopping centers. The school itself is a sizable elementary campus by the area’s standards, with an enrollment that has a noticeable share of students from Hispanic backgrounds and a majority who are white. Roughly two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure that signals a substantial proportion of families with lower household incomes.

Academically, the school’s state test results show a mixed picture. In reading and language arts, proficiency rates rise across the grade levels, with the highest performance in sixth grade, where about seven in ten students meet the state’s proficiency standard. The lower elementary grades also show solid reading attainment: roughly half of third graders and three-fifths of fourth graders score at the proficient level or above. Mathematics is a softer area. Across all tested grades, proficiency settles around two-fifths, with no grade exceeding half. This means a majority of students in every tested grade are not yet meeting the state benchmark in math, which is a pattern a parent may want to discuss directly with the school to understand what supports and interventions are in place.

Science and social studies data are available only for single grades, as Kentucky tests those subjects less frequently. Fourth-grade science proficiency is about a third, and fifth-grade social studies is lower, at roughly a quarter. These are notably weaker than the reading results, though a parent might note that those subjects are tested only once in elementary school, so the snapshot is thin. The school’s overall performance in math and the content-area subjects suggests that while many students are reading on grade level by the time they leave for middle school, there is room for growth in other academic areas.

Beaver Dam Elementary has a traditional school structure: it is not a charter or magnet, and no special program offerings were listed in the available data. The district brief turned up no recent major changes or strategic initiatives that could affect the school’s direction. The town itself has seen modest population growth over the past decade and a half, with some new homes and updated downtown shops, but nothing that points to rapid demographic turnover. Housing in the Beaver Dam zip code is relatively affordable compared to state and national benchmarks, making the area accessible for families looking for a lower-cost community.

For a parent considering Beaver Dam Elementary, the key takeaway is a school where the majority of students are economically disadvantaged, where reading outcomes are notably stronger than math and science, and where the overall proficiency levels in math and the content subjects sit below half. There is no high school graduation rate to report because the school serves only through sixth grade; students move on to Ohio County’s middle and high schools. The school’s small-town context and the district’s apparent stability mean the experience is likely consistent from year to year, but a family wanting a fuller picture of academic supports, enrichment, and student engagement would benefit from visiting or speaking with staff directly.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 341%

School 41% · District 46% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 2 pts below state median

Grade 444%

School 44% · District 46% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 48% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 643%

School 43% · District 53% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▲ 1 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 350%

School 50% · District 44% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median

Grade 459%

School 59% · District 51% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 9 pts above state median

Grade 547%

School 47% · District 54% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 669%

School 69% · District 67% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median

Science

Grade 433%

School 33% · District 33%

▼ 5 pts below state median

Social studies

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 38% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median

This schoolOhio 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-income45%Higher-income59%14 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income56%Higher-income70%14 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income45%Higher-income50%5 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income61%Higher-income82%21 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income29%Higher-income63%34 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income41%Higher-income52%11 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income38%Higher-income40%2 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income30%Higher-income64%34 pp gap