The top reported proficiency rate is 38% in Math. The lowest is 27% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Madison Elementary School
Madison Elementary School is a regular public school in Coos Bay, Oregon, serving only the earliest elementary grades—kindergarten through second grade. It sits in the Empire district of Coos Bay, a neighborhood with its own business corridor along Cape Arago Highway, separate from the city’s historic downtown Marshfield area. Empire was once an independent city before merging into Coos Bay, and today the school is one of several elementaries spread across the city’s distinct districts rather than clustered near the civic core.
The school enrolls roughly three hundred children. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic presence and a notable share of students identifying as two or more races. More than seven in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that places it among schools serving a high-poverty population. This economic context is consistent with Coos Bay’s role as a regional employment hub for healthcare, education, and port operations, but also a community where housing costs are lower than the state average—a double-edged reality for families.
State testing data appears in the record for third-grade math and English language arts, but Madison Elementary does not serve grade three. Those assessment results, therefore, do not apply to the school’s current students. The proficiency figures are from a grade the school does not teach, and a parent should not read them as a measure of Madison’s academic performance. The school’s grade band means it does not participate in the state’s testing program for its own students, and no other school-level achievement data is available here. The comparison with other districts in Coos County includes an overall proficiency index drawn from that same inapplicable grade-three data, so that positioning is irrelevant for understanding what happens inside Madison’s classrooms.
What is known is that the school is a neighborhood elementary focused on the foundational years. With only three grade levels, the scale is small and the student-to-teacher ratio is likely favorable, though specific staffing numbers are not provided. There is no information on chronic absenteeism, discipline, special education identification, or English learner services in the data. A parent who wants to understand classroom practice, early literacy programming, or how the school supports its many lower-income students would need to ask the school directly. The district, Coos Bay SD 9, had no recent publicly reported changes of note when searched.
Coos Bay itself offers a mix of working waterfront, tourism, and regional services. The Port of Coos Bay is the largest deep-draft harbor between the Columbia River and San Francisco Bay. Bay Area Hospital and Southwestern Oregon Community College anchor the local economy. Recreation is nearby—Empire Lakes park with its trails, the Oregon Dunes, and state parks to the southwest. Housing values in the area have seen a modest decline recently, and mortgage rates have edged up, but Coos Bay remains more affordable than much of Oregon.
For a family considering this school, the main takeaway is that Madison is a dedicated early-elementary environment in a neighborhood with a high rate of economic need. The school does not generate its own testing data, so there is no way to judge academic proficiency from the available record. Families will want to visit, talk to teachers, and find out how the school handles early reading instruction and supports for children who qualify for free meals. The peer group is the youngest elementary cohort in the Empire area, and the setting is a small coastal city that functions as the commercial and medical hub for the south coast.
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