Meramec Heights Elem., Arnold MO

Original Research by School Decision on Meramec Heights Elem.

Meramec Heights Elementary is a regular public school serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Arnold, a suburban St. Louis metro community. It is part of the Fox C-6 School District. The school sits in a car-oriented area with highway-served retail corridors, no traditional downtown, and a mix of single-family homes, apartments, and retirement communities. The largest employer in town is the district itself, alongside manufacturing and retail anchors such as Metal Container Corporation and Walmart.

The school’s state assessment results come from the Missouri Assessment Program. In math, the share of students scoring proficient or above rises noticeably from third to fourth to fifth grade, with fifth grade posting a strong result. In English language arts, fourth grade shows a higher proficiency rate than third grade; the fifth-grade ELA result is suppressed, so a parent may want to follow up with the school for that grade-level picture. In fifth-grade science, a solid majority of students met the proficiency bar. Overall, when measured across all tested subjects and grades, Meramec Heights places in the top quartile relative to other districts in Jefferson County. That top-quartile position is a clear strength, especially given that the school serves a population where a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

The student body is predominantly white, with small shares of Hispanic, Asian, Black, and multiracial students. The school is not a charter and does not report magnet or Title I status in the available data. The enrollment is typical for an elementary school serving its grade band, with roughly balanced class sizes across kindergarten through fifth grade. The school’s staffing, attendance, and discipline data are not reported, so those are gaps a family might want to explore directly with the school office.

Arnold is the most populous community in Jefferson County and has seen industrial growth, including a major expansion of the Metal Container plant that made it the largest can manufacturing facility in the country. The city emphasizes its supply of single-family homes, apartments, and retirement communities, and describes low taxes and well-maintained streets. However, the area has experienced recurring Meramec River flooding. Housing values in the zip code are modest relative to national benchmarks and close to the statewide average, with rents reflecting that same general affordability bracket. The Fox C-6 district has no major recent changes reported in publicly available material.

For a family considering Meramec Heights, the story centers on an elementary school that, despite serving a student population with elevated economic need, produces proficiency results that are strong within the county—particularly in math in the upper grades and in fifth-grade science. The third-grade results in both math and ELA are softer, which is not unusual for that testing year and could be a point of inquiry. The school does not have a high school, so graduation rate is not applicable, and there is no program information in the data to describe special offerings or extracurriculars. The setting is a typical suburban St. Louis edge community with ready highway access, major shopping, and a mix of residential and industrial land use. The absence of detailed school-level staffing and discipline data means those aspects of the environment cannot be evaluated from this profile alone. A parent would be well served to visit, ask about class sizes and support structures, and see how the school’s upward trajectory in math aligns with their child’s needs.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 56% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

Grade 459%

School 59% · District 60% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 581%

School 81% · District 56% · ▲ 25 pts above district

▲ 46 pts above state median · ▲ 34 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 51% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

Grade 453%

School 53% · District 56% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Science

Grade 557%

School 57% · District 56% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

This schoolFOX C-6, 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income27%Higher-income53%26 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income61%Higher-income89%28 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income46%Higher-income77%31 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income76%Higher-income87%11 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income33%Higher-income73%40 pp gap