The top reported proficiency rate is 52% in English language arts. The lowest is 45% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Rock Hall Elementary
Rock Hall Elementary serves students from prekindergarten through fifth grade in the small Chesapeake Bay waterfront town of Rock Hall, on Maryland’s upper Eastern Shore. It is a regular public school within Kent County Public Schools, the smallest district in the state by enrollment. The school occupies a corner of a town that blends a working waterfront—commercial watermen harvesting oysters, crabs, and fish—with seasonal tourism centered on marinas, charter boats, and a Main Street that forms the primary pedestrian corridor. The town’s Historic District, one of the largest collections of 18th- and 19th-century structures in Maryland, gives downtown a compact, walkable character, though street life is shaped more by harbor activity than dense urban foot traffic.
The school’s enrollment is modest for an elementary serving seven grades. A very high share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Racially, the student body is majority white, with a Black population that is substantial, a smaller group identifying as two or more races, and a small Hispanic presence; Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native students each account for a very small share or are not represented. The school does not report counts for students with disabilities or English learners, so families looking for those figures would need to ask the district directly.
State testing data from the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program covers the 2024-25 school year. In math, third-grade students scored proficient at a rate that is a solid majority, fourth graders at a lower rate that falls below half, and fifth graders at a rate that is lower still, with roughly a third of students reaching proficiency. In English language arts, fourth-grade results show about half of students proficient. Third-grade and fifth-grade ELA results are reported as ranges rather than exact figures, a suppression method Maryland uses when student group sizes are small enough to raise privacy concerns; the ranges fall in the mid- to low-40 percent band for third grade and in the low- to mid-30 percent band for fifth grade. Fifth-grade science, tested on the Maryland Integrated Science Assessment, is reported as a range in the high-50s to low-60s percent proficient, an area of relative strength. Because these are single-year results with no prior trend data available, there is no way to tell whether performance is improving or declining.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate. There is no information on chronic absenteeism, discipline, or staffing. The neighbor comparison tool, which would normally position a school against other districts in Kent County, could not generate a comparison because there is only one district in the county, making the cohort too small to derive meaningful benchmarks.
The district has made two notable changes in recent years. Rock Hall Middle School was closed and its students were consolidated into Kent County Middle School in Chestertown, meaning that after fifth grade, Rock Hall Elementary students will leave town for middle school. A new superintendent was appointed in mid-2024, a leadership transition that may bring shifts in district priorities.
Housing in Rock Hall’s zip code carries a value roughly in line with national medians. The town’s population is small and has shown a slight decline in recent decades, and conservation priorities have historically constrained large-scale development. The economy is water- and tourism-dependent, with no large corporate employers identified.
This is a small elementary school in a quiet waterfront town where nearly all students come from low-income households. The testing picture is mixed: math proficiency falls as students get older, ELA results are uneven across grades and partially suppressed due to small class sizes, and science is a bright spot for fifth graders. A parent considering the school should understand that the elementary experience ends in fifth grade, after which children will attend a middle school in a different town.
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