Original Research by School Decision on Madisonville Elementary School
Madisonville Elementary School serves the earliest grades in Madisonville, a small historic riverfront town on the Tchefuncte River in St. Tammany Parish. The school takes students from pre-kindergarten through second grade, and its enrollment is large for a primary school, reflecting that it is the sole entry point for the town's younger children before they move on to Lancaster Elementary for grades three through six and Madisonville Junior High after that. High school students attend Mandeville High School in the neighboring community.
The student body is predominantly white, with Hispanic and Black students each making up a modest share and small numbers of Asian, multiracial, and other backgrounds represented. Just over a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate lower than many public schools across the state and consistent with the area's relative affluence. The town itself has grown modestly in recent decades and sits within commuting distance of Greater New Orleans, with housing values above the national median. A parent should understand that because this school serves only the earliest grades, there are no state assessment results to report. Students in pre-kindergarten through second grade are not part of Louisiana's testing program, so the school does not produce the proficiency or growth data that parents may expect from an elementary school serving older children. That gap is normal for a school of this grade band and is not a sign of weak performance. There is also no graduation rate, for the same reason: the school ends at second grade.
The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. Data on special education identification and English learner status was not available. Information on discipline, attendance, and staffing was also absent from the records reviewed. Families looking at Madisonville Elementary will want to ask the school directly about class sizes, the availability of support services, and its approach to early literacy and numeracy. The district brief for St. Tammany Parish did not surface any recent changes, such as boundary adjustments or program overhauls, that would affect this school, but that may simply reflect limits on what could be searched.
Madisonville itself is a quiet residential and leisure-boating community with a compact historic downtown along the river. The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum and the annual Wooden Boat Festival anchor the town's cultural life. The school's location is north of the town center, and the elementary and junior high campuses are separated, meaning that even for the youngest students, the school is not within walking distance for most families who live in the historic core. The town's civic spaces, including town hall and the library branch, are downtown. Flooding has shaped the town's recent history: much of Madisonville flooded during Hurricane Katrina and again during Hurricane Isaac, and municipal facilities were relocated afterward as a result.
For a parent considering this school, the takeaway is straightforward. Madisonville Elementary is a large primary school in a stable, relatively well-off community. It does not generate the test scores or graduation metrics used to evaluate schools with older students, so a family's decision will rest on factors like the feel of the building, the quality of the teaching staff, the alignment with the town's feeder pattern, and the practical fit with the family's daily commute and schedule. The absence of state testing data is simply a function of the grades served.
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