The top reported proficiency rate is 35% in Math. The lowest is 15% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on East Side Elementary School
East Side Elementary School is a regular public school serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Chattanooga, part of the Hamilton County school district. The school is located on South Lyerly Street in the city’s eastern neighborhoods. Chattanooga itself is a mid-sized city that has undergone a well-documented downtown revival, with a walkable core, riverfront redevelopment, and a growing population. The local economy is diversified across automotive manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, and tourism.
The school’s enrollment is substantial for an elementary school serving a single grade band, with students spread fairly evenly from kindergarten through fifth grade. The student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with a far smaller share of Black students and very few white, Asian, or multiracial students. This demographic composition is a plain characteristic of the school’s attendance zone; families considering East Side should know that their child will attend a school where the large majority of peers are Hispanic. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, receive special education services, or are identified as English learners was not available in the source information, though in an elementary school with this demographic profile a parent may want to ask the school directly about English learner supports and the availability of services for students with disabilities.
On the most recent state assessments, which are the TNReady tests for third through fifth grade, East Side’s results show room for growth. In mathematics, roughly a third of students scored at the proficient or advanced level. In English language arts, that figure was lower, at about a fifth of students. In science, just over a fifth of students were proficient. These are the school’s reported proficiency rates for the tested subjects, and they place the school at a level where a parent considering East Side should want to understand what academic supports and interventions are in place. Older data from several years ago for social studies showed a similar pattern, though that assessment has since changed, making direct comparison unreliable. The school had full participation on the assessments, which means nearly every enrolled student took the tests.
As an elementary school, East Side does not have a graduation rate to report, and the comparison set that would place it among other Hamilton County districts could not be calculated because the cohort was too small and the school’s data for the specific metrics was incomplete. This is not unusual for a single-school-level comparison within a large county district.
The district itself, Hamilton County Schools, has made recent shifts that affect all its elementary schools. In the past few years, the district moved to a structured literacy approach grounded in the science of reading, starting with the youngest grades. This means East Side, like other district elementary schools, has adopted explicit phonics-based instruction that replaces the previous balanced literacy method. The district also opened a new elementary school in another part of the county in 2023 after a tornado destroyed the original building, but that is specific to the East Brainerd corridor and does not directly affect East Side’s zoning.
For housing, the market around the school has seen modest increases in both home values and rents over the past year, consistent with a city that is growing and attracting new residents. The area is car-dependent outside the downtown core, and families relocating to the East Side attendance zone should expect that driving will be the primary mode of transportation for school drop-off and errands.
East Side Elementary presents as a school with a clear demographic profile and academic results that suggest a parent would want to engage proactively with the school about instructional supports. Its strengths are not in top-tier test scores but in the consistency of its full-participation testing and the district-wide commitment to a new, evidence-based reading curriculum. Families considering this school should visit, talk to the principal about how the school is addressing literacy and math achievement, and understand what after-school or enrichment programs are available, as those details were not in the source data.
See more original research from School Decision →