The top reported proficiency rate is 96% in Science. The lowest is 80% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Ferguson Twp El Sch
Ferguson Township Elementary School sits in Pine Grove Mills, a small residential village at the base of Tussey Mountain about five miles south of State College. The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade and enrolls just under 300 students from a predominantly white-collar community whose workforce commutes into State College or Centre County's health care sector. The village itself has little commercial life beyond a core of institutions—post office, tavern, dairy store, churches, and the elementary school—clustered at the intersection of state highways, with newer subdivisions spreading into surrounding farmland and mountain land.
The school's academic performance is solid. On the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, students in grades 3-5 showed proficiency in English language arts in the low-majority range and math proficiency in the upper-majority range in the most recent year for which data are available. Science results from the prior reporting year were notably strong. Among schools tested in this grade band across Centre County's school districts, Ferguson Township's overall proficiency sits in the top quartile. Most students are white, with smaller populations of Asian students and students of mixed race; a small minority qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the community's upper-middle-income profile. No data on English learners or students with IEPs were available.
The town is growing steadily. Several new single-family subdivisions have been added in recent years, and the population ticked upward modestly between 2022 and 2023. Ferguson Township and the Centre Region Planning Agency adopted a small-area plan in 2021 and a follow-up mobility study in 2022, both addressing walkability and traffic safety in the village core, which sits on highways with through-traffic. A standing advisory committee continues to work on implementation. Direct fixed-route public transit was discontinued and replaced by an on-demand microtransit service; Rothrock State Forest on Tussey Mountain south of town offers outdoor recreation access.
The State College Area School District, which operates Ferguson Township Elementary, has raised property taxes for five consecutive years after holding them flat in 2020-21 and 2021-22. The district is in the midst of significant facilities projects: Mount Nittany Elementary (in the eastern part of the district) is completing a major expansion, and Park Forest Middle School is being replaced by a newly constructed building rather than renovated. Housing values in the area sit slightly below the state benchmark and substantially below the national median, making the community a more affordable entry point than surrounding regions.
The school has no state-reported data on graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, or school discipline, which is typical for elementary schools and does not indicate a weakness. Whether this community and school fit depends partly on family preference for a small, residential village setting with a short commute to a college town, and partly on comfort with the tax trajectory the district has charted.
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