The top reported proficiency rate is 51% in Math. The lowest is 20% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on W H Knuckles
W H Knuckles serves pre-kindergarten through third grade in Lumberton, a small Robeson County city anchored by a historic downtown along the Lumber River and a sprawling commercial corridor. The school enrolls a diverse group of young learners in a high-poverty setting. Nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is roughly evenly split between Black and Hispanic students, with a substantial Native American population and smaller numbers of white and Asian students.
The school sits within the Public Schools of Robeson County, a district recovering from recent infrastructure setbacks. In 2025, the federal government canceled pandemic-relief funding that the district had planned to use for major facility repairs, including HVAC replacement at Lumberton High and window work at elementary schools. That forced the district to divert its own tight budget to cover contractors already in progress, leaving some projects unfunded. Robeson County ranks last in North Carolina for local per-student spending, a constraint that affects all its schools.
On the positive side, PSRC has adopted a Science of Reading approach at the elementary level, moving toward structured literacy instruction. W H Knuckles uses EL Education curriculum for reading in grades K-2 and 3-5, along with Eureka Math Squared for math. Teachers have received training under North Carolina's Read to Achieve framework and LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling). This pedagogy shift reflects a deliberate effort to ground early literacy in systematic phonics and language principles. The district is also building a new Career and Technical Education Center in Pembroke that will open in 2025, offering pathways like drone technology, culinary arts, welding, and EMT—a development that will be relevant as W H Knuckles students move into upper grades and eventually into secondary options.
State testing data for grades three and eight show mixed results at W H Knuckles. In mathematics, roughly half of third-grade students tested scored at proficient or above. In English language arts, proficiency was substantially lower, with one in five students meeting the standard. These figures reflect a school serving a population facing considerable economic hardship and place the school's reading outcomes as an area where continued focus on the Science of Reading curriculum and teacher training may be especially important. A parent may want to discuss early intervention approaches and literacy support with the school directly.
The school operates in a Lumberton that has slowly recovered from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, with new low-income housing construction underway but modest job growth. The locale is car-dependent and sprawling, with civic anchors in the small historic downtown and around Luther Britt Park. Families in this area typically hold production, sales, and office-administrative jobs. Home values in the 28358 zip code are below state and national medians, and rental costs remain relatively affordable relative to household income, a reflection of limited demand and economic conditions that shape the families W H Knuckles serves.
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