The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in English language arts. The lowest is 0% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Smith El
Smith Elementary sits on Smith School Road in southeast Austin, part of Del Valle ISD rather than Austin ISD despite its Austin mailing address. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade and carries a student body that is predominantly Hispanic, with Black and white students making up smaller shares. The enrollment is mid-sized for an elementary serving seven grade levels. An overwhelming majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing it squarely in a high-economic-need category. English learner counts were not available in the data provided.
The school's academic picture is uneven and a parent should look into it carefully. On the Texas STAAR assessment, the grade-level results reported here are from the Spanish-language version for most tested grades in math and science, which reflects the school's dual-language population. Math proficiency in the tested grades is very low across the board. Reading and language arts show more variation: third grade comes in at a moderate level on the English STAAR, fourth grade is weaker, and fifth grade reaches a considerably stronger result on the English version. Fifth-grade science proficiency on the Spanish STAAR came in with no students scoring at the meets-grade-level threshold. Looking across all subjects and all tested grades combined, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Travis County. That is a real gap, and families weighing academic readiness benchmarks should ask the school directly about its instructional supports, intervention programs, and how students are tracked into the upper grades.
One important piece of context: Del Valle ISD runs a two-way dual language program at all nine of its elementary schools beginning in Pre-K, and Smith Elementary is part of that system. In a two-way program, Spanish-speaking and English-speaking students develop literacy in both languages together. That pedagogical structure means some STAAR results here reflect students being assessed in Spanish, their primary instructional language, and the low math and science scores in particular may partly reflect the developmental arc of dual-language acquisition rather than a single-dimensional academic failure. That does not erase the concern, but it adds context a number alone cannot. Separately, publicly reported information indicates that Austin and Travis County used federal stimulus funding to make full-day dual-language Pre-K available tuition-free to all eligible children in the Del Valle ISD zone, which is classified as a child care desert. For families with four-year-olds, that is a concrete economic benefit alongside an early bilingual pathway.
The neighborhood around Smith School Road sits in the 78744 zip code in southeast Austin. Home values in this zip have declined year over year, and they sit below the Texas state benchmark and well below the national median. Rents have also dipped modestly year over year. For renters, the rent-to-income ratio implied by the data lands in a manageable range relative to national norms. The area is within Austin city limits but far from the pedestrian-friendly core of downtown or South Congress. Like most of southeast Austin, it is car-dependent in daily life.
Del Valle ISD as a whole is growing quickly, adding students each year, and voters approved a bond to build a second high school. That campus has been pushed to a Fall 2028 opening due to roadway delays, so for now the district's older elementary students will eventually feed into a single comprehensive high school. The district also publicly reported opening an Early College High School and P-TECH Center for the 2024-25 school year, backed in part by Tesla, with manufacturing and career pathways and access to college coursework. Sixteen career-focused pathways with potential industry certifications round out the upper-grade options. Those are real post-elementary assets for families thinking about the full K-12 arc in Del Valle ISD, even if they are several years away for students currently at Smith Elementary.
Chronic absenteeism data and graduation rates were not available for this school, the latter because Smith does not serve high school grades.
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