The top reported proficiency rate is 54% in English language arts. The lowest is 30% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Goodrich El
Goodrich Elementary serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in a very small rural town in southern Polk County, about 70 miles north of Houston. The school shares a campus with the district's middle and high schools on Katie Simpson Street, and that campus effectively functions as a civic center for the town. The school is small, with fewer students than most comparable elementary campuses in the state, and it is not a charter or magnet school.
The student body reflects the town's economic conditions. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school firmly in the high-economic-need category by any measure. The student population is roughly split between Hispanic and white students, with smaller shares of Black students and students of two or more races. English learner and special education population data were not available in what was provided.
State assessment results from Texas's STAAR exam tell a mixed story. Reading and language arts proficiency across the tested grades lands in the mid-range, with roughly half to somewhat more than half of students meeting or exceeding grade-level standards depending on the grade. That is a meaningful point of relative strength compared to math, where proficiency is considerably lower across tested grades, with fourth and fifth graders both coming in well below half. Science proficiency in fifth grade is also below the halfway mark. Looking at the district-wide STAAR summary across subjects, the share of students reaching the highest performance tier, what Texas calls "masters," is quite small, meaning fewer students are performing at the advanced level. Parents who want to understand where their child might need additional support should ask the school specifically about its math and science intervention programs. When placed among the districts in Polk County, the school's overall proficiency index lands just above the midpoint of that comparison group, which is context worth holding onto.
Goodrich ISD, the parent district, has publicly reported earning a B rating on the state's restored A-F accountability system for the most recent year, with the high school earning an A. The district also publicly reported adopting a five-year strategic plan starting with the current school year, centered on formalizing how curriculum is selected, building instructional capacity, improving teacher onboarding, and working on retention. Those are the kinds of structural investments that tend to shape classroom consistency over time, and a family considering this school would be well positioned to ask what phase of implementation the elementary school is in and how it is being measured.
The housing market in the Goodrich zip code is well below both the Texas statewide median and the national median, making it one of the more affordable entry points in the region. Home values have been roughly flat to slightly down year over year. Rental data was not available. The affordability relative to national norms is real, though it reflects the rural, low-income character of the area rather than a market in transition. No major new housing developments were identified in publicly available sources.
Goodrich itself is a car-dependent rural town with a small commercial strip along Highway 59, a city library, a community center, and a park. There is no public transit. The pine-forest setting and slower pace of life are genuine characteristics of the place, not marketing language, but they also mean limited services within the town itself; many residents commute to Livingston or the Houston area for employment and amenities.
For a family weighing this school, the practical picture is this: it is a small community school in a low-income rural area, with ELA results that are passable and math and science results that are weaker and worth watching. The district is in an early phase of a structured improvement effort. No information on program offerings, course access, or staffing specifics was available, and those would be worth exploring directly with the school.
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