The top reported proficiency rate is 23% in Science. The lowest is 18% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Hillsdale School
Hillsdale School serves prekindergarten through sixth grade in West Valley City, part of the Granite District. The school’s enrollment is substantial for an elementary campus, and its student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a large share of students who are white and smaller but still meaningful numbers of Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Black, Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native students. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a high-poverty population.
State assessment results from the RISE test show proficiency rates that are low for all three tested subjects: math, English language arts, and science. Compared with other schools in Salt Lake County, the school’s overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile. This is a clear soft spot, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand what instructional supports and interventions are in place.
The school serves a young population, from PK through sixth grade, so there is no graduation rate to report, and the civil-rights and discipline data was not available in the source information. It is not a charter school, and its magnet and Title I statuses were not specified. No program offerings were listed in the data provided.
West Valley City itself is a large, fast-growing suburb of Salt Lake City, incorporated from four unincorporated communities and now the second-most populous city in Utah. The city has made a deliberate shift from a bedroom community to a significant employment center, housing major companies in finance, logistics, and manufacturing. The built environment is largely suburban and auto-oriented, though a planned downtown district around Fairbourne Station is concentrating civic, retail, and transit uses near the TRAX light rail line. Schools in the Granite District are spread across the suburban landscape rather than clustered in a single downtown area. Housing values in the ZIP code are near the national median, and rents absorb a reasonable share of income by national standards, though the city’s median age and demographic diversity point to a wide range of household situations.
The neighborhood around Hillsdale School is one of dense residential development, strip commercial along the arterial roads, and proximity to the Valley Fair Mall and the Maverik Center. What the data shows is a school serving a high-poverty student body where academic proficiency is low relative to peers in the county. The strengths are harder to name from the available information; the school’s role as a neighborhood elementary in a large, growing city is a basic characteristic, and the Granite District operates many schools, giving families some choices at the next level, but the data provided does not include details on curriculum, enrichment, or support programs. For a family weighing this school, the core question is whether they find the academic profile acceptable and what efforts the school and district are making to address it.
See more original research from School Decision →