The top reported proficiency rate is 17% in English language arts. The lowest is 0% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Wooldridge El
Wooldridge Elementary sits in north Austin, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of Austin ISD. The school is a standard public elementary with no charter or magnet designation, and its enrollment is moderately sized for a PK-5 campus in a large urban district.
The student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with smaller shares of Black and white students. The vast majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing Wooldridge among the more economically disadvantaged campuses in the district. English learner data was not reported in the available records, but the testing pattern tells a meaningful story: across grades three through five, reading and math assessments were administered in both Spanish and English depending on the grade and cohort, which reflects a population with a substantial number of emergent bilingual learners.
State STAAR results for the most recent year are low across all tested subjects and grades, and this is the single most important thing a parent should understand before enrolling. In math, proficiency rates across grades three through five are very low by any standard. Reading results are similarly low in the younger tested grades, with a somewhat better but still modest result in fifth-grade ELA. In science, the fifth-grade cohort reported no students reaching proficiency. Social studies results are also at the floor. Placed against other districts in Travis County, Wooldridge's overall proficiency index sits in the bottom quartile of that comparison set. Multi-year trend data is only available for one year, so it is not possible to characterize whether performance is improving, declining, or stable. A parent who wants to understand what is driving these outcomes, what the school's improvement plan looks like, and how the bilingual instructional model is designed to progress students toward English proficiency would do well to ask those questions directly of school staff.
This is also a school directly touched by Austin ISD's current period of institutional turbulence. Publicly reported accounts confirm that in late 2025 the district board approved state-mandated turnaround plans for two dozen schools in response to persistent low performance, and Wooldridge appears in that context. Families should verify directly with the district whether Wooldridge is among those subject to a turnaround plan, what that plan involves, and how it might affect programs, staffing, and the school's operations going forward. Separately, a district-wide consolidation closing multiple campuses before the 2026-27 school year is also underway, with dual-language program relocations among the changes. None of this settles easily into a stable picture, and a family making an enrollment decision deserves current information from Austin ISD about exactly where Wooldridge stands.
On the facilities side, a large bond approved by voters in 2022 is funding campus rebuilds and modernizations across the district, with several elementary campuses already receiving full rebuilds. Whether Wooldridge is in line for a similar project is not clear from the available data.
The neighborhood housing market shows home values near the national median, with rents having declined year over year. Austin overall is a large, fast-growing city with a strong technology and government employment base. The area near Wooldridge's address on Norseman Terrace is in the northern part of the city, which tends to be more car-dependent than Austin's central walkable corridors. The city's apartment construction pace has been among the highest in the country, and the broader Travis County area continues to add residents, though enrollment in Austin ISD itself has declined over the past decade.
Wooldridge is a school in a period of real challenge, serving a predominantly low-income, largely Hispanic, bilingual population in a district navigating financial pressure, mandatory turnaround plans, and consolidation. The academic data as reported is a concern, and a parent considering this school should ask the district specific questions about the turnaround process, bilingual program design, and what tangible changes are planned.
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