The top reported proficiency rate is 91% in Science. The lowest is 46% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Standing Bear Elementary School
Standing Bear Elementary sits in the far northwest Omaha neighborhood of Millard, within the Omaha Public Schools district. The school serves students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. The enrollment is roughly the size that would make it a mid-sized elementary within a large urban district. The student body is majority White, with a sizable Asian population and meaningful Black and two-or-more-races representation. Hispanic students make up a smaller share, and American Indian or Alaska Native enrollment is present but very small. Data on free and reduced-price meal eligibility was not reported, which makes it difficult to gauge the share of families experiencing economic hardship. Information on special education identification and English learner classification was also missing, so a parent would want to ask the school directly about how it supports students with disabilities and multilingual learners.
Academically, the school’s state assessment results present a mixed picture that varies notably by grade and subject. In English language arts, proficiency was at a rate that a parent would likely consider solid for third grade, a touch higher for fourth and fifth grades, with the three grades clustering in the mid-to-high range. Math results were more uneven. Third graders performed at a rate that many would find healthy. Fourth graders, however, showed no students meeting the proficiency bar, a stark drop that stands out and warrants a conversation with the school about what happened in that grade. Fifth graders rebounded strongly to a rate that is among the higher math outcomes in the building. In science, which is tested only in fifth grade, proficiency was at a very high level, easily the strongest subject result for the school. Looking across all tested subjects and grades, the overall proficiency index lands below the midpoint relative to other elementary schools within Douglas County. The trend data, covering only the most recent year, does not allow a view of improvement or decline over time.
The school is located in a part of Omaha that has seen steady suburban residential growth. The typical home value in the ZIP code is above the state benchmark, and rents have been rising modestly. Mortgage rates nationally were hovering in the mid-six percent range, and the estimated monthly mortgage payment on a median-value home in the area is not trivial. The local unemployment rate has been stable at just above four percent, and median household income nationally sits just above $83,000. These figures suggest that Standing Bear serves a community that is economically comfortable relative to national averages.
Omaha as a whole is the state’s largest city and a corporate anchor for the Great Plains, home to the headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway, Mutual of Omaha, Union Pacific, and Kiewit, among others. The city’s downtown and Old Market district provide cultural and entertainment amenities, while much of the residential fabric, especially in the northwest where Standing Bear is situated, is classic suburban development. The city has seen modest population growth since 2020, and the metro area is the 55th-largest in the country.
The district that operates Standing Bear, Omaha Public Schools, launched a major literacy initiative in 2024 called the Moonshot, which aims to have all students reading on grade level by 2030. This involves a shift to the Science of Reading and structured literacy curriculum. For families with children at Standing Bear, this means that reading instruction across the elementary grades is undergoing a sustained, system-wide change. It is worth asking how the school is implementing this initiative and what parents can expect in terms of classroom practice and support.
For a family considering Standing Bear, the school offers a large, diverse elementary environment in a growing suburban pocket of Omaha. The very low fourth-grade math proficiency is a clear soft spot that demands explanation. The strong fifth-grade reading and science results show that some cohorts perform well, but the inconsistency by grade suggests that outcomes may depend heavily on the classroom or teacher a child draws. A parent should visit the school, ask about the fourth-grade math situation, inquire about special education and English learner services, and get a sense of how the Moonshot literacy push is taking shape at the building level.
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