Elkhorn Elementary, Excelsior Springs MO

Original Research by School Decision on Elkhorn Elementary

Elkhorn Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Excelsior Springs, a small historic city roughly thirty miles northeast of Kansas City. The school is part of the Excelsior Springs 40 district, which also operates two other elementary schools, a middle school, a high school, and a career center. The student body is small and predominantly white, with a substantial share of families qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.

State testing results are available for grades three and five but were suppressed for grade four, so a full picture is incomplete. In third grade, a majority of students scored proficient in math, while reading proficiency was lower. Fifth-grade reading reached around half proficient, with math and science showing weaker results. A parent may want to follow up with the school to understand why fourth-grade data was not reported and how that cohort is progressing.

Despite these mixed results, when the school is measured against other elementary schools in Ray County, its overall proficiency index lands in the top quartile. That is a relative strength for families choosing among districts in this area.

Because Elkhorn is an elementary school, there is no graduation rate or secondary-level outcome data. The district’s high school is a separate campus, and the career center offers technical pathways for older students.

The community itself is stable. Excelsior Springs grew as a mineral springs resort and retains a walkable historic downtown with landmarks like the Hall of Waters and Elms Hotel. Population has been essentially flat in recent years, and the housing market is moderately priced relative to national averages. The city has a park system and a public library branch, and the surrounding area offers a mix of residential neighborhoods and rural stretches.

No recent district-level policy changes, bond measures, or curriculum shifts were publicly reported, so the school’s offerings and operations appear to have been consistent. For a family looking at elementary options in this part of Ray County, Elkhorn offers a small-school setting with academic performance that is locally strong in some grades while leaving questions about others—questions the school itself is best positioned to answer.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 358%

School 58% · District 45% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 18 pts above state median

Grade 542%

School 42% · District 32% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 337%

School 37% · District 37%

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 38% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 9 pts above state median

Science

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 30% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▼ 5 pts below state median

This schoolEXCELSIOR SPRINGS 40, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.