The top reported proficiency rate is 42% in Math. The lowest is 37% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Ralls County Elementary
Ralls County Elementary serves students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and is the sole elementary school within the Ralls County R-II School District. The school is located in Center, a small agricultural community in northeast Missouri situated along Highway 19, not far from Mark Twain Lake. The town itself is compact, with a grain elevator, a handful of service businesses, a library, and Mason Park as its main recreational anchor. Housing values in the area are well below the national median, though they have risen in recent years, and the community has seen modest population shifts over time but no major development booms. Families considering this school should know that the town has a limited commercial base and that the nearest larger employment and shopping centers require a drive.
The student body is overwhelmingly white, with a very small share of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Enrollment is concentrated fairly evenly across kindergarten through fifth grade, with a pre-kindergarten program that serves about the same number of children as the older grades. The school operates as a regular public school and is not a charter or magnet school.
State testing data from the Missouri Assessment Program shows that results across third through fifth grade in both English language arts and math are subdued. In English language arts, the share of students meeting proficiency standards sits in the late thirties for each grade level. In math, the pattern is similar in the lower grades, though it drops further by fifth grade. Science results for fifth graders also stay in the same range. The school does not serve grades that generate a graduation rate, so that measure does not apply here. There is no multi-year trend data available to show whether performance has been improving or declining over time. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how instruction and supports are structured and whether recent changes have been made.
No data was available on chronic absenteeism, discipline, staffing ratios, or course access. The national comparison set that would position this school relative to other districts in Ralls County could not generate a meaningful comparison, because the cohort of districts in the county is too small to place the school in a useful context. That means a reader cannot draw a direct comparison to neighboring districts from this data alone.
The school is the only elementary within the Ralls County R-II district, which also includes Mark Twain Jr./Sr. High School, located nearby on the same highway. The district brief did not turn up any recent parent-relevant changes like boundary adjustments, program cuts, or facility upgrades, so the district appears to have been in a stable state in recent years. Families looking at this school are effectively looking at the only elementary option within the district for this area, and the community context is that of a small, agricultural town with limited amenities and a quiet pace of life. The school itself offers pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, and the testing picture suggests that students are generally below state proficiency benchmarks, a pattern that holds across subjects and grade levels. For families weighing this school, the conversation will likely center on what the school is doing instructionally rather than on competitive metrics among local options.
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