Bell Oaks Upper Elementary School, Bellmawr NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Bell Oaks Upper Elementary School

Bell Oaks Upper Elementary School serves the borough of Bellmawr, a compact residential community in Camden County along the Big Timber Creek. The school takes students from fifth through eighth grade, a four-year span that covers the final year of elementary and all three middle-school grades. Its enrollment is moderate for that grade range, and it is the only upper elementary school in the Bellmawr Public School District. After eighth grade, students move on to a regional high school, which is outside the district’s direct oversight.

State testing results from the most recent school year lay out an uneven academic picture. In English language arts, the share of students meeting the proficiency standard varied from roughly two-fifths in fifth and sixth grade to three-fifths in seventh grade and roughly three-quarters in eighth grade. That upward trend through the grade levels is a positive sign, and the school’s overall performance across subjects lands above the midpoint of districts in Camden County. In math, the story is more mixed. Proficiency rates ranged from about a third in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades down to about a quarter in eighth grade. Science proficiency was notably low in both tested grades, fifth and eighth, sitting at around one in five or one in ten students meeting the standard. A parent may want to talk with the school about what science instruction and support look like, as those results are well below the rest of the school’s profile.

The student body is majority white, with a substantial share of students who identify as Hispanic and a slightly smaller but still prominent Asian population. A little under half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, giving the school a moderately high level of economic need. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available, so there is no way from this information to assess how those groups are supported.

Bellmawr itself is a modest borough typical of the inner-ring suburbs around Camden and Philadelphia. Housing stock leans toward older single-family homes and small apartments, with typical home values near the New Jersey median. Rents fall in the middle range for the region. The housing market in Camden County has been moderately active, with listings moving fairly quickly but prices rising at a pace that tracks with the broader metro area. For a family looking at the area, the school serves a straightforward residential corridor where commuters have easy access to Route 42 and the highways leading into Philadelphia.

No recent district-level changes such as a referendum, new curriculum, or major staffing shift were publicly reported in the span reviewed, so the school’s programmatic offerings appear stable. Because Bell Oaks is an upper elementary and middle school, there is no graduation rate to report; that measure applies only to high schools. Course access and discipline data were also absent from the available record. The school’s core identity is a neighborhood-based mid-grade school that provides the standard sequence of core academic classes within a district that has not undergone a notable transformation in recent memory. For a parent weighing this path, the clearest takeaway is that the school has real strength in late-middle-grade reading while math and especially science warrant a closer look.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 534%

School 34% · District 34%

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 38%

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 734%

School 34% · District 34%

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 8 pts above county median

Grade 824%

School 24% · District 24%

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 14 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 46%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Grade 643%

School 43% · District 43%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

Grade 756%

School 56% · District 56%

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 875%

School 75% · District 75%

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

Science

Grade 518%

School 18% · District 18%

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Grade 88%

School 8% · District 8%

▼ 5 pts below state median · even with county median

This schoolBellmawr Public 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 5Lower-income34%Higher-income61%28 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income41%Higher-income47%6 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income47%Higher-income69%23 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income69%Higher-income81%12 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income31%Higher-income39%8 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income34%Higher-income44%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income27%Higher-income45%18 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income17%Higher-income31%14 pp gap