The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in English language arts. The lowest is 24% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Kingston Elementary School
Kingston Elementary School serves pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in the village of Kingston, part of Michigan's Thumb region in Tuscola County. It is a regular public school and the elementary arm of Kingston Community School District. The village around it is very small, rural, and car-dependent, with most residents commuting to work elsewhere. Manufacturing, health care, and educational services are the largest local employment sectors, though no single major employer dominates. Kingston has a Downtown Development Authority and basic municipal services including parks and recreation, fire, police, and public works, but no public transit. The village has been losing population over multiple census cycles, a trend projected to continue. Even so, home values have risen recently, and housing here remains well below both state and national price benchmarks, making it one of the more affordable corners of the county for a family looking to buy.
Academically, the most recent state assessment results tell a mixed but recognizable story. In English language arts, proficiency holds fairly steady from third through sixth grade, landing in a middling band each year. That consistency is a quiet strength; the school is producing comparable results across the grade span rather than seeing a collapse or a spike in a single year. Science proficiency in fifth grade sits in a similar middle range. Social studies results in fifth grade are weaker, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand what drives that gap. Math tells the most uneven story. Third and fourth graders perform well, with a clear majority reaching proficiency, but fifth and sixth grade math proficiency drops sharply. This is a pattern worth asking about directly, since the decline is large enough to suggest a curricular or instructional transition point rather than a single weak cohort. Taken across all tested subjects and grades, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Tuscola County, above the county median. That positioning reflects the strength of the early grades pulling the aggregate up.
The student body is small for a school covering eight grade levels, and the enrollment is nearly entirely white. A small number of Hispanic students and students of two or more races round out the population, with a handful of other students across additional categories. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is typical for a rural Thumb community and shapes the resource context the school works within. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so those populations cannot be characterized here. The school's Title I status was also not reported.
Several categories of information that parents often ask about were absent from the available data. There is no chronic absenteeism figure, no discipline data, no staffing breakdown, and no course or program offering information. The district brief turned up little of lasting impact regarding recent changes, so there is nothing to report on that front. State testing data does not extend to pre-kindergarten through second grade because those grades are not assessed, and there is no graduation rate because this is an elementary school. Multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say whether the current results represent improvement, decline, or stability over time.
For a family weighing this school, the picture is of a small, rural, close-knit elementary with solid early-grade math and consistent reading results, positioned favorably against its Tuscola County peers on overall proficiency, but with a clear drop in upper-elementary math that deserves attention. The housing market around it is affordable relative to the state, and the community is quiet, dispersed, and shrinking slowly. Families comfortable with a rural setting and a small school environment will find a community where the elementary years are handled reasonably well, with a question mark around the transition into the later grades.
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