The top reported proficiency rate is 41% in Math. The lowest is 38% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Bellmawr Park Elementary School
Bellmawr Park Elementary School serves a community of families in Camden County, offering prekindergarten through fourth grade in the Bellmawr Public School District. The school is a regular public elementary school, and the district it belongs to had no major recent changes publicly reported that would directly affect how a parent experiences the day-to-day running of the school. This means a family considering the school will be looking at a stable operating environment.
The student body is diverse. The largest group of students are white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of Asian, Black, and multiracial students. Just over half the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is a standard measure of household economic need and places the school in a middle ground economically for its area. The school enrolls several hundred students across its grade span, with a notably large prekindergarten program relative to the other grades, suggesting a strong early-childhood entry point for local families.
On state assessments, the picture is mixed and worth a careful look. In third-grade math, about two in five students met the state’s proficiency bar. Fourth-grade math came in at a similar level. In English language arts, the difference between grades is more pronounced. Third-graders showed a lower proficiency rate, while fourth-graders posted a stronger result, with more than half reaching proficiency. This pattern could reflect normal variation from year to year or a specific instructional emphasis as students move through the school. When compared to other districts in Camden County, Bellmawr Park’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits above the midpoint of the county, meaning it performs in the middle-to-upper range among its neighbors rather than at the bottom.
A parent may also want to know that the school’s data does not include chronic absenteeism rates or special education and English learner counts, which are useful for understanding student support needs. These gaps often reflect how a state or district reports data, not a school’s actual conditions, but a family could ask the school directly about these areas.
The community context for the school is a borough with a modest, stable housing market. Home values in the area are well below the state average, which tracks with the borough’s character as a more affordable entry point in the Camden County housing market. Rental costs are similarly moderate relative to income, and the local market shows more homes for sale than a year ago. For a family, this means the neighborhood around the school offers relatively attainable housing for the region, though the market is not slack.
Bellmawr Park is a neighborhood elementary school with a large prekindergarten program, a diverse student body, and academic results that are a meaningful conversation between a strong fourth-grade reading performance and math scores that hover around the midpoint of county districts. A family looking for a school that reflects the economic and ethnic diversity of a middle-income New Jersey borough, with a specific strength in early-grade literacy by fourth grade, would find this school worth a closer inspection. Those concerned about the weaker third-grade reading numbers would want to ask the school how it supports early literacy intervention.
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