Lyme Elementary School, Lyme NH - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Lyme Elementary School

Lyme Elementary School sits in Lyme Plain, a small village center in a rural New Hampshire town along the Connecticut River. The school serves kindergarten through eighth grade, which means a Lyme family can keep a child in one building for their entire pre-high-school education. That continuity is a defining feature here. Publicly reported town sources note that Lyme operated thirteen one-room school districts historically, and the consolidated K-8 campus grew from that lineage. After eighth grade, students move on to tuitioned secondary schools through the Dresden Cooperative arrangement with Hanover, Norwich, and Thetford, so the elementary school is the town's sole public school building and its primary educational anchor.

The school is small, with roughly two classrooms per grade level. Class sizes in the tested grades are compact enough that a few children moving in or out can shift a grade's results noticeably, which is worth keeping in mind when reading the state assessment data. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of Asian, Black, and Hispanic students. A very small share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, one of the lowest rates you will encounter. The town itself, per publicly reported sources, has a population that includes both deep-rooted local families and newcomers drawn by the area's natural beauty, with strong ties to Dartmouth College and the broader Upper Valley. Information on individualized education program rates and English learner counts was not available in the data provided, so those pieces of the student-support picture are missing here.

On New Hampshire's state assessments, Lyme Elementary's results are strong across most grades and subjects, with some variation that a parent may want to understand. In English language arts, proficiency rates are high in nearly every tested grade, with several grades reaching the upper range and one grade hitting full proficiency. Mathematics shows a similar pattern of generally strong performance in the elementary and middle grades, with one grade's results landing lower than the rest. Science, tested only in grades five and eight, shows solid but more moderate proficiency. The eighth-grade results in both math and English were the weakest in the school, which could reflect the small cohort, a harder transition year, or something about instruction in that grade. This is the kind of pattern a parent might want to look into further with the school, particularly given how strong the seventh-grade results were just a year prior.

Lyme as a town has no large employers within its borders. Commerce centers on family-owned hardware and country stores. The nearest major employer, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, sits about a dozen miles away in Lebanon. The town has no public transportation, and homes rely on private wells and septic systems. Civic life revolves around the Common, the Converse Free Library, Post Pond, and community events like the Pumpkin Festival. The Appalachian Trail crosses the eastern part of town, and Dartmouth Skiway offers downhill skiing nearby. It is an outdoor-oriented, quiet place.

Housing in Lyme is expensive relative to both state and national benchmarks. The typical home value sits well above the state figure and far above the national one. The county market has seen listing inventory grow recently, with active listings up sharply year over year, but median listing prices have held relatively steady. Homes still move in a reasonable timeframe. Rental data was not available for the town itself. For families considering a move, the cost of entry into this housing market is a real factor, and the rental picture is a gap worth investigating independently.

What a family gets at Lyme Elementary is a small, stable K-8 pathway in a close-knit rural community with strong academic results in most grades and subjects, a peer group that is not economically diverse, and a built-in transition to secondary school options in neighboring towns. The eighth-grade dip in test results is the one soft spot the data points to. The town's conservation ethos, slow growth, and limited commercial activity shape the daily environment as much as the school itself does.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 389%

School 89% · District 89%

▲ 35 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Grade 481%

School 81% · District 81%

▲ 31 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 28 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

Grade 685%

School 85% · District 85%

▲ 45 pts above state median · ▲ 40 pts above county median

Grade 796%

School 96% · District 96%

▲ 58 pts above state median · ▲ 53 pts above county median

Grade 853%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 378%

School 78% · District 78%

▲ 28 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

Grade 488%

School 88% · District 88%

▲ 35 pts above state median · ▲ 25 pts above county median

Grade 590%

School 90% · District 90%

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Grade 690%

School 90% · District 90%

▲ 38 pts above state median · ▲ 29 pts above county median

Grade 7100%

School 100% · District 100%

▲ 44 pts above state median · ▲ 37 pts above county median

Grade 865%

School 65% · District 65%

▲ 12 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Science

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 24 pts above county median

Grade 859%

School 59% · District 59%

▲ 23 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

This schoolLyme School District, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.