Original Research by School Decision on Clarksburg Elem.
Clarksburg Elementary is the only public school in the Clarksburg C-2 district, serving students from kindergarten through eighth grade in a single campus. The school sits in Clarksburg, a very small rural city in Moniteau County that was once a coal mining and milling town but is now a quiet residential community. The town’s population has been declining over recent decades, and the local economy is limited, with residents likely traveling to nearby California, Missouri, or Tipton for most daily needs. The school building, integrated into the compact town, is the district’s only instructional facility, so the elementary and middle grades share the same campus.
Enrollment at Clarksburg Elementary is small. Nearly all students identify as white, with a small number identifying as two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that the school serves a community with moderate economic need. Data on the share of students with disabilities or those learning English was not reported.
The school’s academic performance on Missouri’s state assessments is largely unavailable to the public for the most recent testing year. Results in math, English language arts, and science were suppressed for small-group sizes across all tested grades. The numbers of students tested in each grade were small, and in many cases only a handful of students sat for the exams. When a group is that small, the state withholds the results to protect student privacy. That means there is no public proficiency rate for any grade level in any subject. A parent seeking a clear picture of academic performance will find very little to go on from state testing data. The lack of available scores is a direct consequence of the school’s very small enrollment, not an indication of strong or weak performance, but it does make it difficult to compare this school to others.
Because the school serves only kindergarten through eighth grade, it has no graduation rate, and the comparison set that positions this entity among the districts in Moniteau County was not applicable for proficiency, graduation, or chronic absenteeism because the school’s own data is missing.
The district itself has no publicly reported recent changes, strategic priorities, or notable program expansions, and the school’s website and directory do not list any specialized course access, staffing details, or discipline data. No information on after-school or enrichment programming, extracurricular activities, or support services was available.
For housing, the local market shows a typical home value that is below the state average and well below the national average, which reflects the rural and economically modest character of the area.
For a family considering Clarksburg Elementary, the most important takeaway is that this is a very small, rural school serving a small and shrinking community. A parent will find a school where their child will be in classes with very few same-age peers. The school’s academic performance cannot be assessed from public state test data because the numbers are too small to report. Any parent who wants to understand classroom instruction, curriculum, and student progress would need to ask the school directly for its own internal academic information. The school may be a close-knit environment where staff know every family, but the publicly available data does not allow an outside observer to draw any conclusions about the quality of the education provided.
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