The top reported proficiency rate is 74% in English language arts. The lowest is 54% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Belmont Elementary
Belmont Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Olney, a primarily residential suburban community in Montgomery County. The school sits within one of the highest-cost housing markets in the state, and the area itself has seen steady but moderate suburban growth since the 1960s, when farmland gave way to the outward expansion of the Washington D.C. metro area.
Olney is a car-dependent community whose commercial core sits at the intersection of two state routes. The built environment consists largely of single-family houses, townhouses, and condominiums radiating outward from that crossroads. Montgomery County Public Schools trisects the town across three high school clusters, and Belmont Elementary feeds into one of them, sending students on to a middle school and then to a high school within that pathway. A parent shopping for a home in this part of Olney should confirm which secondary schools serve the address they are considering, because attendance boundaries matter here.
The student body is predominantly white, with a mix of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and multiracial students making up the remainder. A modest share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a share that is low relative to many schools in the county. The enrollment is on the smaller side for a suburban elementary school, which can mean teachers and staff know students by name and families often find the school easy to navigate.
On state assessments, Belmont's results show a clear pattern. In English language arts, proficiency rates rise across the grades, with a solid majority of students meeting the bar in third grade and an even larger majority doing so by fifth grade. Math results are more mixed. The share of students scoring proficient or above is lower in fourth grade than in third or fifth, and the overall math proficiency across all tested grades is lower than the school's ELA performance. In fifth-grade science, just over half of students reached the proficient threshold. This is a school where a strong majority of students are reading at grade level or above by the time they leave for middle school, and math is an area where some students may need additional support. A parent whose child struggles with math might want to ask the school about intervention strategies early.
Because the school serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and no measures of chronic absenteeism or college readiness data are available. The district brief flags a few larger context items for Montgomery County. The district adopted a new elementary literacy curriculum starting in the 2023-24 school year, replacing the previous reading program, which means the approach to reading instruction has shifted for the current students. The district also draws a substantial share of the county's budget, a fiscal commitment that shapes local property taxes. And MCPS continues to conduct a systemwide boundary analysis, which could eventually affect which schools some students attend, though the timeline and specific implications for Belmont are not specified in the available data.
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