The top reported proficiency rate is 39% in English language arts. The lowest is 23% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Centreville Elementary School
Centreville Elementary School sits in the heart of a small village that serves as the county seat of St. Joseph County. The school serves pre-kindergarten through sixth grade as part of Centreville Public Schools, and its enrollment sits at a moderate size for an elementary building serving that grade band. The student body is predominantly white, with a small Hispanic presence and a handful of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, which points to a community where a majority of families are working within modest economic means.
On Michigan's M-STEP assessments, the most recent results show a school that performs unevenly across subjects and grades but trends upward as students move through the building. English language arts is the stronger area. Third-grade proficiency is low, but by fourth and fifth grade the share of students scoring proficient or above climbs, and by sixth grade more than half of tested students reach proficiency. That upward arc in ELA suggests the school is building literacy skills effectively over the elementary years. Math results are flatter and lower across the board, hovering in the low-to-mid range at every tested grade. Science results fall in a similar middle band, while social studies proficiency is among the weakest areas reported. A parent weighing this school may want to look into how the school supports math instruction in particular, since the data points to that as the softest academic area.
Against its neighbors, Centreville Elementary's overall proficiency sits above the midpoint among districts in St. Joseph County. The county set includes roughly a dozen districts, and this school's combined proficiency across tested subjects and grades lands closer to the top than the bottom of that range. That positioning is a genuine strength given the community's economic profile. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results are improving or declining over time. Participation rates for the state assessments were also not reported in the available data.
Because Centreville Elementary serves only early grades, it has no graduation rate, and that metric does not apply here. Chronic absenteeism data was not available. Information on discipline, course access, staffing ratios, special education enrollment, and English learner counts was either missing or not reported, so those dimensions of school life are left unaddressed rather than guessed at. No program offerings were listed in the data provided.
The surrounding community is a quiet, car-dependent village with a civic center built around its Victorian-style courthouse and town square. Manufacturing is the largest employment sector, followed by educational services and health care. The village hosts the largest Amish community in Michigan, which shapes local culture and traffic patterns. Centreville sits near Three Rivers and Sturgis along the M-86 highway, and most residents commute by car. Publicly reported sources note the Langley Covered Bridge and the St. Joseph County Grange Fairgrounds as civic landmarks. The village has a stable to slightly declining population, with no major housing developments or growth projects identified.
Housing in the Centreville zip code is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit below the Michigan state average and well below the national figure, with a price-to-income ratio that remains modest. Rental data was not available. For a family considering the area, this means homeownership is more attainable here than in much of the state, though current mortgage rates shape what that monthly cost looks like in practice.
No district-level information on recent bond elections, curriculum changes, or property tax measures was available beyond search references, so those topics are left out rather than speculated on. What the assembled picture shows is a small-town elementary school serving a working-class community, producing literacy results that strengthen as students progress through the grades, sitting above the middle of its county peers on overall proficiency, with math as the clearest area where a family might ask more questions.
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