The top reported proficiency rate is 53% in Science. The lowest is 22% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Cooley Elementary School
Cooley ElementarySchool sits on Highfield Road in Waterford, a charter township in Oakland County roughly a half-hour northwest of downtown Detroit. The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Waterford School District, a public system whose footprint spreads across a sprawling suburban landscape defined by its three dozen named lakes. Waterford has no traditional walkable downtown; instead, low-density residential subdivisions ring those lakes, and commercial life clusters along strip corridors like Dixie Highway and Highland Road. The township's civic center complex, public library, and Oakland Community College's Highland Lakes campus serve as community anchors, and Oakland County government is a major local employer. The area lost two large commercial tax sources when Summit Place Mall and a General Motors facility closed, and the township has been working through the economic aftershocks of those losses, including cuts to its police department years ago.
Cooley's enrollment is moderate for an elementary building, with students spread fairly evenly across the six grade levels. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller Hispanic, Black, and Asian populations and a few students identified as two or more races. Nearly half of Cooley's students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives a sense of the economic mix within the attendance area. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations could not be characterized here. A parent weighing fit may want to ask the school directly about special education services and English-learner support, since the payload does not speak to either.
On Michigan's M-STEP assessments, Cooley's results are mixed but generally land in a respectable range. In English language arts, third graders posted proficiency above the midpoint of what Oakland County districts typically see, while fourth and fifth grades came in somewhat lower. Math followed a similar pattern: fourth grade reached the halfway mark of proficiency, third grade was close behind, and fifth grade dipped more noticeably. Fifth-grade science was a relative bright spot, with more than half of tested students scoring proficient. Social studies was the weakest area, with only a small fraction of fifth graders reaching proficiency. Taken together, Cooley's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it above the midpoint among districts in Oakland County, which is a reasonably strong position given the county's size and variety. There is a note that the state changed the social studies proficiency cut score for this assessment cycle, which complicates year-over-year comparison, but the data provided does not include prior years, so trend analysis was not possible.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and chronic absenteeism figures were not available in the data provided. Participation rates for the state assessments were also missing.
For families thinking about the broader district context, the Waterford School District has been in a period of contraction and reinvestment. Enrollment has declined over the past two decades, and in June 2025 the board voted to close Kettering High School, the district's oldest, and redistribute its students to Mott and Durant starting in the 2026-2027 year. That move will redraw attendance boundaries and is expected to save the district money annually. At the same time, voters have approved two bond proposals in recent years, one in late 2022 and another in May 2024, both focused on facility upgrades, safety improvements, technology, and converting classroom spaces into STEM labs without raising the tax rate. Those investments may eventually benefit elementary buildings like Cooley, though the payload does not specify which schools receive which projects.
The housing market around Cooley reflects Waterford's suburban character. The typical home value in the school's zip code sits below the national benchmark and modestly above the Michigan state benchmark, making the area relatively accessible by Oakland County standards. Countywide listing activity has been brisk, with active listings, new listings, and pending sales all moving upward in recent months, and homes typically going under contract in about a month. Prices have softened somewhat year over year. Rent burdens look manageable relative to local incomes, and mortgage costs exceed rent by a modest margin, which may influence whether families buying into the area choose to rent first.
What Cooley offers is a mid-size elementary experience in an established, lake-dotted suburb with a working-class to middle-class economic profile and a district actively restructuring itself. Academic performance is solid in the early grades and in science, with room to grow in upper-grade math and social studies. Families drawn to Waterford's residential setting and willing to navigate a district in transition may find Cooley a reasonable fit, particularly if they plan to engage directly with the school about supports and enrichment for the upper elementary years.
See more original research from School Decision →