Marnel C. Moorman School, Shelbyville KY

Original Research by School Decision on Marnel C. Moorman School

Marnel C. Moorman School serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade in Shelbyville, Kentucky, as a regular public school within the Shelby County Public Schools district. The school occupies a building on Discovery Boulevard, part of a community that has seen steady growth and is now anticipating further expansion tied to a major battery manufacturing facility recently announced for Shelby County. That development, publicly reported as the largest economic project in county history, is expected to bring hundreds of jobs and may increase demand on local schools over time.

Academically, Moorman School's state assessment results show a pattern that parents will want to weigh carefully. In both math and English language arts, proficiency rates run notably lower in the primary grades, improve through upper elementary and middle school, then soften again in eighth grade. The strongest performance in recent testing appeared in seventh grade, where the share of students meeting the state's proficiency benchmark reached a higher point than in other grades. By contrast, the early elementary years and eighth grade show weaker results, and a parent may want to ask the school how it supports students at those transition points. In science, assessed in fourth and seventh grades, the seventh-grade cohort performed at a noticeably higher level than the fourth-grade cohort. Social studies, tested in fifth and eighth grades, also showed a gap, with the eighth-grade group outperforming the fifth-grade group. Overall, the building's academic picture is uneven: some middle-grade cohorts are doing reasonably well, while the primary grades and eighth grade present areas that deserve a closer look from families.

The student body is diverse and economically mixed. Enrollment is moderate for a K-8 campus. About half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of economic need. Racially and ethnically, the school is majority white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of Black students, students identifying as two or more races, and Asian students. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available in the provided records, so those dimensions of the school's population are not part of this account.

Shelbyville itself blends a historic small-town downtown with a growing industrial base. It is known as the American Saddlebred Capital of the World and has a strong equine and agricultural presence alongside distilleries like Bulleit and Jeptha Creed. Interstate 64 runs nearby, connecting the area to Louisville and Frankfort. The housing market in the zip code covering the school sits between the state and national benchmarks for typical home values, and mortgage rates in the broader economy were around the mid-six percent range at the time of this writing. For families moving to the area, the recent battery plant investment signals that the community is likely to keep growing, which could affect class sizes and school capacity in coming years.

The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. Information on discipline rates, chronic absenteeism, staffing ratios, and course access is also absent from the available data; a parent may want to follow up directly with the school or district on those topics. The comparison set for this school is the other districts in Shelby County, but with only one district in the county, no meaningful comparative rankings are possible from the data provided. That leaves the state assessment results and the school's own demographic profile as the primary lenses for understanding what Marnel C. Moorman School offers. It presents a mixed academic picture in a community that is growing and diversifying, and families looking for a K-8 pathway in Shelbyville will want to explore how the school addresses the variation in performance across grade levels.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 325%

School 25% · District 41% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median

Grade 427%

School 27% · District 37% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median

Grade 532%

School 32% · District 38% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 29% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 749%

School 49% · District 36% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 831%

School 31% · District 32% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 327%

School 27% · District 41% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median

Grade 427%

School 27% · District 40% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median

Grade 534%

School 34% · District 45% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median

Grade 649%

School 49% · District 43% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▼ 5 pts below state median

Grade 751%

School 51% · District 42% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 839%

School 39% · District 34% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Science

Grade 420%

School 20% · District 31% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median

Grade 737%

School 37% · District 22% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median

Social studies

Grade 521%

School 21% · District 31% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median

Grade 834%

School 34% · District 29% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▼ 4 pts below state median

This schoolShelby 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-income15%Higher-income42%27 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income13%Higher-income38%25 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income25%Higher-income46%21 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income44%Higher-income54%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income37%Higher-income60%23 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income27%Higher-income48%21 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income19%Higher-income33%14 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income19%Higher-income50%31 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income19%Higher-income54%35 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income46%Higher-income51%5 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income20%Higher-income39%19 pp gap