Chester El, Chester TX - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Chester El

Chester Elementary serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in a very small town in northwestern Tyler County, deep in the East Texas piney woods. The school sits on a shared campus with Chester High School, both located on the town's main institutional thoroughfare. It is a school of roughly seventy students, drawn almost entirely from the immediate area and the surrounding rural community.

The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial share qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the rural, lower-income character of the immediate area. Enrollment across grade bands is relatively small and even, suggesting stable local population rather than rapid growth.

Recent state testing data shows mixed academic performance. In mathematics, the school performs solidly overall, with a majority of students reaching proficiency across the grades tested. Fourth-grade math performance stands out as particularly strong. English language arts proficiency is somewhat lower and less consistent by grade, with third grade showing the weakest results and fourth grade rebounding. Science results, measured only in fifth grade, fall well below proficiency for most students, a soft spot worth watching. Social studies data from an earlier year showed roughly one-third of students meeting or exceeding expectations, another area where the school may want to examine instructional approaches.

When proficiency is broken down by performance level across all tested subjects, roughly seven in ten students meet or exceed expectations school-wide, and roughly one quarter reach the highest level. This puts Chester Elementary in the top quartile of proficiency among school systems in Tyler County, despite the school's small size and rural location.

The school operates within Chester Independent School District, a small district with a combined elementary and secondary campus and no recent major shifts in policy, budget, or calendar that could be documented. The immediate town of Chester itself is very small, quiet, and rural, with essentially stable population over time, no major employer beyond the school district itself, and a housing market of modest value. The area is primarily residential and owner-occupied, with limited commercial infrastructure.

A parent choosing Chester Elementary would be selecting a small-town, rural educational setting with solid fundamentals in core academics, especially mathematics, but with weaker performance in science and a student body drawn from low-income households. The school's strength relative to other districts in the county suggests competent instruction within its grade band, though a parent may want to look into science curriculum and instructional practices in that area with the school directly, and understand that a child moving on to sixth grade would remain in the same district's building, where the secondary grades serve a different peer group. State assessment participation rates were not available, so a parent might also want to confirm what share of students are tested.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 371%

School 71% · District 71%

▲ 31 pts above state median

Grade 4100%

School 100% · District 100%

▲ 59 pts above state median

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 26 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 350%

School 50% · District 50%

▲ 4 pts above state median

Grade 478%

School 78% · District 78%

▲ 29 pts above state median

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 13 pts above state median

Science

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 33%

▲ 10 pts above state median

Social studies

Grade 838%

School 38% · District 13% · ▲ 25 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median

This schoolCHESTER ISD, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income0%Higher-income75%75 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income22%Higher-income13%9 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income55%Higher-income75%20 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income30%Higher-income71%41 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income60%Higher-income75%15 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income28%Higher-income38%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income18%Higher-income63%45 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income10%Higher-income36%26 pp gap