The top reported proficiency rate is 77% in Science. The lowest is 26% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Johnson Co Central Elem-cook
Johnson Co Central Elem-Cook is a regular public school in the very small rural village of Cook, Nebraska, serving children from prekindergarten through fifth grade. The school is part of Johnson County Central Public Schools, a consolidated district that draws from several communities across the county. Cook itself is a quiet, car-dependent village of a few hundred households, where most people drive alone to work and average car ownership is high. There is no downtown commercial district to speak of; the village’s economy is driven by public administration, retail trade, and educational services. Housing values in the area run well below state and national medians, making it a relatively affordable place to buy a home. Population has remained essentially flat, and no major new development has been documented.
The school’s enrollment is small, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with a notable Hispanic minority and very small numbers of Asian, Black, and multiracial students. Since the school serves only early-elementary grades through fifth, there are no high-school outcome measures such as a graduation rate, and state testing begins in fourth grade, so no assessment data exists for the younger grades.
On the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System for the most recent school year, results varied significantly by subject and grade. In fourth-grade math, slightly more than half of students met proficiency. However, no fifth graders met the proficiency standard in math, a stark drop that a parent may want to discuss further with the school to understand the instructional supports and curriculum approach for that grade. In English language arts, roughly three out of five fourth graders and a slightly smaller share of fifth graders were proficient, indicating a fairly consistent performance in reading and writing across the upper elementary grades. Science is tested only in fifth grade, where a strong majority of students reached proficiency.
The multi-year trend data contains only a single year of reported results for each subject, so no pattern of improvement or decline can be identified. The school does not publish trend comparisons for prior years in the available data.
There is no comparison data positioning this school against others in Johnson County, because too few schools in the county had comparable testing information. Similarly, no data on special education populations, English learner services, discipline rates, chronic absenteeism, or course access is available in the profile. The district has no recent publicly reported changes that would affect families.
For a family seeking a very small elementary school in a rural, quiet setting with modest home prices, Johnson Co Central Elem-Cook offers a straightforward academic pathway through fifth grade. The test results present a mixed picture: solid performance in science and moderate performance in ELA, but a notable difficulty in math for fifth graders that warrants a closer look. The school’s small size means class groups are likely small, and the consolidated district structure means students will move on to a larger middle and high school building elsewhere in the district after fifth grade. Families without a strong preference for data-rich school comparisons or extensive programming may find this school a reasonable fit for the early grades, provided they engage with the school directly about the math results for older elementary students.
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