The top reported proficiency rate is 83% in Science. The lowest is 70% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Cavett Elementary School
Cavett Elementary School serves students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in a regular public school setting in Lincoln, Nebraska. It is part of Lincoln Public Schools, the district that anchors the city's education system and counts as one of the area's largest employers alongside the state government and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The school sits in the southern part of the city, an area that has seen steady residential growth as Lincoln's population has continued to expand in recent years. Housing values in the immediate zip code run above both the state median and the national median, and the monthly cost of owning a home after a typical down payment runs meaningfully higher than renting, a pattern that reflects the broader affordability pressures in a growing midwestern city.
The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial share of students identifying as two or more races and smaller shares identifying as Hispanic, Asian, or Black. Just under one-quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a figure that places the school on the lower end of economic disadvantage relative to many schools nationally. The enrollment is steady for an elementary school serving the full PK-5 span, with slightly larger classes in the lower elementary grades and a bump in fifth grade.
On state assessments administered in the 2024-25 school year, Cavett's students posted proficiency rates across tested grades that place the school below the midpoint when measured against other schools in Lancaster County districts. The overall proficiency index—a composite of math, English language arts, and science results across tested grade levels—lands below the county median among the half-dozen schools with comparable data. That said, the individual subject and grade-level results tell a layered story. In third grade, a strong majority of students met proficiency in both math and English language arts. By fourth grade, the share dropped in both subjects, and by fifth grade, the proficiency rate in English language arts fell further. Fifth-grade science, by contrast, showed a solid majority of students meeting proficiency. The single-year data from 2024-25 is the only year available in the assessment file, so no year-over-year trend can be established. A parent considering Cavett may want to discuss with the school how the school supports students across the elementary years, particularly the apparent dip in the upper grades, and whether the 2023 district-wide shift to a science-of-reading approach to early literacy instruction has been embedded in the school's daily practice.
No data was reported for chronic absenteeism, staffing levels, course access, or discipline, so those areas cannot be characterized. Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report.
Lincoln itself is a mix of government, university, healthcare, and manufacturing employment, with a growing high-tech sector sometimes called the Midwest Silicon Prairie. The downtown and historic Haymarket District provide a central core for commerce and street life, and the University of Nebraska campus is woven into the city's fabric. Lincoln Public Schools passed a major bond issue in 2020 that funded two new high schools, an elementary school, and extensive renovations across existing buildings, a development that reshaped attendance boundaries and relieved overcrowding. That bond work has been completed in recent years, so the district is now operating with updated facilities, though a parent moving into the Cavett attendance zone should verify current boundaries directly with the district, as the construction projects may have shifted them.
For a family, Cavett Elementary presents as a school in a stable, growing part of Lincoln with a largely white student body and a modest share of economic diversity. Academic proficiency is solid in the early grades and in fifth-grade science, but the drop-off in fourth and fifth grade reading and math is a pattern worth investigating further with the school. The district's shift to evidence-based reading instruction may be a recent development that is still being integrated. The neighborhood is positioned in a higher-cost housing market relative to the rest of the state, and the city's steady expansion means the school's enrollment context is likely to remain stable for the near term.
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