The top reported proficiency rate is 17% in English language arts. The lowest is 7% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Cummings Elementary School
Cummings Elementary School is a regular public school in Keizer, Oregon, serving kindergarten through fifth grade. It is part of the Salem-Keizer School District 24J, one of the largest districts in the state. The school’s physical location on Cummings Lane places it in a residential area north of downtown Salem. The community itself is a primarily residential suburb that grew rapidly in the 1990s. Keizer lacks a traditional downtown and its civic life is distributed along auto-oriented commercial corridors and around key anchors like the Keizer Heritage Community Center and Volcanoes Stadium. Parents should know that property taxes in the district increased after voters approved a construction bond in 2022 that funds safety and security improvements and classroom upgrades across all schools. More recently, the district has faced budget shortfalls that have led to the closure of several elementary schools, a pattern that could affect attendance boundaries and feeder patterns in the future. The district approved a new strategic plan in 2025 focused on academic excellence, belonging, and workforce readiness.
Cummings is a mid-sized elementary school for its grade band. A substantial share of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. Slightly less than half of students are white, with a significant Hispanic population, followed by smaller shares of students who are two or more races, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Black, and American Indian or Alaska Native. For parents considering the school, this composition describes the student peer environment, and its meaning depends on what a family is looking for.
State testing results for the 2024-2025 school year place Cummings Elementary in the bottom quartile for overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades relative to other districts in Marion County. For reading and math, proficiency rates among all students in third, fourth, and fifth grades consistently fell in a range that was below state and county medians. In science, the fifth-grade proficiency rate was lower still. These are the only testing data available, and they provide a clear picture of current academic attainment levels at the school. The trend data for this school year is a single snapshot, so there is no multi-year trajectory to assess improvement or decline.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. Data on the share of students receiving special education services or classified as English learners was not available in the source data. Families with children who have an individualized education program or are learning English may want to ask the school directly about these programs.
The housing market in the broader zip code area shows that home values are modestly below the state average, while rents are on the higher side comparatively and have been rising. Across the country, mortgage rates have been elevated by historical standards, making the financial tradeoff between renting and owning a tighter calculation than it was a few years ago. For a family moving to the area, this context affects the overall cost of living and the stability of the neighborhood.
Cummings Elementary shows a clear place in the region’s academic landscape. Its strengths lie in the services of a large district with a recent investment in facilities and a new strategic direction, but its state test results indicate that a substantial majority of students are not reaching the proficiency benchmark in core subjects. A parent evaluating this school may want to look into what academic supports are in place, what interventions are used for students who are behind, and how the school is responding to its district’s strategic goals around academic excellence.
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