The top reported proficiency rate is 61% in English language arts. The lowest is 38% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Mary Bray Elementary School
Mary Bray Elementary School serves the borough of Mount Ephraim, a compact and densely populated community that sits at the historic intersection of Black Horse Pike and Kings Highway. This is a small borough, built out with limited room for growth, and its population has been stable to slightly declining in recent years. Property taxes in Mount Ephraim are among the highest in New Jersey, a reality for any family considering a home here. The borough is primarily residential, with commercial corridors along its major roads, and is well connected to Philadelphia by bus and interstate highway. The schools here are woven into the residential street grid rather than set on separate campuses, and high school students attend Audubon High School in the neighboring district under a sending-receiving arrangement.
Mary Bray is a regular public elementary school serving pre-kindergarten through grade 5. Its enrollment is modest for that grade band. The student body is predominantly white, with a notable share of Hispanic students and a smaller Black population. A substantial share of students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, giving a sense of the economic diversity in the building.
State testing results are available for grades 3 through 5 in math and English language arts, and for grade 5 in science. The picture is mixed. In grade 3, a large majority of students met proficiency standards in both math and reading, a strong showing at that early level. In grade 4, performance diverges sharply: reading proficiency fell to roughly half of students, while math proficiency dropped to about a third. By grade 5, math recovered somewhat, reaching about two-fifths proficient, and reading held steady at around three-fifths. Science at grade 5, where the state assesses with different criteria, saw just over a third of students meeting the bar.
Taken together, Mary Bray’s overall proficiency across all tested subjects and grades places it in the top quarter among districts in Camden County, a genuine strength. The school clearly has pockets of solid achievement, particularly in third-grade literacy and math. Yet the drop-off in fourth-grade math is steep enough that a parent may want to ask the school how it supports students making that transition. The fifth-grade science result also sits well below the other subjects, which is worth a conversation with the school about curriculum and instruction in that area.
We looked for program offerings, staffing ratios, discipline data, and information on students with disabilities or English learners, but found little publicly reported material specific to Mary Bray. The absence of that data limits a fuller picture of the school’s supports and climate. Chronic absenteeism data was also not available; that is often a useful indicator, but for an elementary school of this size and type, the gap may simply mean the state has not published it for this cycle.
No recent district-wide changes or strategic initiatives surfaced in our search, so this appears to be a stable, locally governed school system without major new developments to consider.
For a family evaluating Mary Bray, the core takeaway is a small elementary school in a densely settled, high-tax borough with strong overall proficiency relative to its county peers, but with notable variation across grade levels and subjects. The school feeds into a middle school within the same district and then to a high school in neighboring Audubon. The community itself offers proximity to Philadelphia, a close-knit feel, and limited commercial amenities. Parents who value that trade-off and who want to engage directly with the school about its instructional consistency from grade to grade may find Mary Bray a fit worth exploring.
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