The top reported proficiency rate is 60% in Math. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Armando Cerna El
Armando Cerna Elementary serves grades one through six in Eagle Pass, a border city in Maverick County. The school has a student body that is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with most students living in households qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. This is a high-poverty, predominantly Spanish-speaking school community.
In math, the school shows a clear downward trend as students progress through grades. Third graders perform at a solid level, with about two-thirds meeting or exceeding proficiency. By fourth grade that drops to about two-thirds. Fifth grade dips further, with roughly half the students proficient. By sixth grade, fewer than half meet the proficiency standard. The pattern holds across most grades: a majority of students are reaching at least the "approaches" level, meaning they show some grasp of the material, but the share meeting or exceeding the state's proficiency bar narrows with each grade.
English language arts results are more stable. In sixth grade, the school does notably well in ELA, with about two-thirds of students proficient in English. Third grade shows notably weaker results, though the school does test a handful of third graders in Spanish; those Spanish-language results are much lower. Fifth grade Spanish assessments are also weak. The discrepancy suggests the school is testing some students in Spanish and others in English, which complicates a straightforward reading of performance but likely reflects a dual-language or transitional bilingual program.
Science assessment data appears only in fifth grade and is very low, with roughly one in twelve students meeting the proficiency standard. This single snapshot makes it hard to judge the school's science instruction broadly, but it signals a soft spot parents should ask the school about directly.
Across all tested subjects, about four in five students reach at least the "approaches" level schoolwide. About three in four meet or exceed proficiency when you average across subjects, which is solid foundational performance. However, the school shows strength in reaching most students at a basic level and weakness in moving many of them to higher mastery, and the math decline across grades is worth exploring with school leaders.
The school serves about six hundred students in a mid-sized elementary school setting. Nearly two-thirds qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating substantial economic hardship in the families served. The student body is small enough that school-level relationships and individual attention are possible, and large enough to sustain multiple classrooms per grade and some program diversity.
Eagle Pass itself is a historic border city with strong cross-border ties to Mexico. A school bond recently passed narrowly, funding facilities improvements across the district. Housing costs in the area are modest relative to state and national benchmarks, making it an affordable place to live, though median household income locally is not abundantly documented in the available data. The city has a downtown with local shops and restaurants, a golf course, and access to fishing at a county lake. Two international bridges connect residents to Piedras Negras, and the city is pursuing development incentives and opportunity-zone investment, signaling long-term growth ambitions, though the scale of that growth is unclear from the data provided.
A parent considering this school should expect a predominantly Spanish-speaking, high-poverty, elementary-only setting with solid early-grade math and stable ELA results but a notable math decline by sixth grade and weak science performance. The school reaches most students at a foundational level but shows challenges in moving many into mastery. Questions worth raising with the school: the shape and goals of any bilingual or dual-language program, specific strategies for the math decline, science instruction and support, and how the recent bond improvements will touch this campus. For families seeking a small, community-embedded, Spanish-language-rich school environment in an affordable border city, this school is part of that landscape; for those prioritizing strong advanced performance across all grades, the test data suggest looking closely at the school's current trajectory.
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