The top reported proficiency rate is 29% in Math. The lowest is 15% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Coloma Elementary School
Coloma Elementary School sits in the heart of Michigan's Fruit Belt, a small rural city surrounded by peach, grape, and apple orchards within the Lake Michigan Shore American Viticultural Area. The town has a compact downtown with mom-and-pop shops, hometown restaurants, and a first-run movie theater, and it hosts community gatherings like the Glad-Peach Festival and a St. Patrick's Day Parade. The nearby Paw Paw Lake area was once a bustling summer resort destination drawing visitors from Chicago and across Michigan, though that tourism era has quieted. Publicly reported sources describe a town that blends residential and small-scale commercial character rooted in agriculture and lakeside recreation, with an easy-going lifestyle. Highway access runs through I-94 and I-196, and no public transit system was identified. The town's population has slightly declined, and no major new housing developments or growth projects surfaced in available sources.
The school serves pre-kindergarten through third grade as a regular public school within Coloma Community Schools. Enrollment is moderate for an early-grades building, with the largest cohort in kindergarten. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of students identifying as two or more races, Black, and American Indian. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the economic context of the surrounding community. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations cannot be characterized here.
State testing applies only to third grade at this school, and the most recent M-STEP results show proficiency rates that are low in both subjects. In math, fewer than a third of third graders reached proficiency, and in English language arts the share was smaller still. When placed against its comparison set, relative to districts in Berrien County, the school's overall proficiency index lands in the bottom quartile. This is a soft spot a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly around early literacy, where the results are weakest. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these numbers represent a decline, a plateau, or a year-to-year fluctuation. Participation rate data was also missing from the state results.
Because Coloma Elementary does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than any gap in performance. Chronic absenteeism data was not available either. No discipline, course access, staffing, or attendance figures were provided, so those dimensions of school climate cannot be assessed here.
The housing market in Coloma's zip code is modest by state and national standards. Typical home values sit below the Michigan statewide benchmark and well below the national figure, though values have been appreciating at a healthy clip year over year. Rental data was not available. With mortgage rates in the mid-six-percent range, the estimated monthly carrying cost on a typical home is within reach for households near the national median income, though local incomes may run lower given the rural agricultural economy. The price-to-income ratio sits below the national level, suggesting relative affordability compared with many parts of the country.
No parent-relevant district changes, such as bond referendums, millage shifts, or curriculum updates, surfaced in the search for Coloma Community Schools, so there is nothing to report on that front.
What this picture adds up to is a small-town early-grades school in an affordable, agricultural community with a clear identity tied to fruit farming and lakeside recreation. The academic results available are a genuine concern, particularly in early literacy, and a family considering this school would do well to ask school leaders how they are addressing third-grade reading and math outcomes. The early grades are foundational, and the numbers here suggest the building is working with a population that faces real economic challenges, with a large share of students in poverty and limited publicly available information about supports for English learners or students with disabilities.
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