The top reported proficiency rate is 57% in Math. The lowest is 31% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Robinson School
Robinson School sits in the village center of Starksboro, a rural Addison County town that functions mainly as a bedroom community for Burlington to the north, Middlebury to the south, and other Chittenden County job centers. The town has no real commercial district, no major employers, and very limited walkability. Scattered farms and single-family homes line long stretches of country road, many of them unpaved. Residents rely on personal vehicles for nearly everything, and civic life clusters around the town clerk's office, the Village Meeting House, and the elementary school itself. For a parent considering Robinson, the setting is distinctly rural and quiet, with the trade-offs that implies: space and closeness to nature, but also isolation and a commute for most services and employment.
Robinson is a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school serving a small enrollment, consistent with Starksboro's modest population. The student body is nearly entirely white, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the working and middle-income character of much of the community. The school is not a charter or magnet. It is part of the Mt. Abraham Unified School District, which means students here feed into Mt. Abraham Middle and High Schools in neighboring Bristol for seventh grade and beyond. IEP and English learner data were not available in the provided records, so those populations could not be characterized.
On state testing, the picture is limited. Vermont's Comprehensive Assessment Program tests grades three through six in math and English language arts, and grade five in science. For Robinson, most grade-level proficiency results were suppressed, which typically happens when the number of tested students in a subgroup is too small to report reliably. This is a common pattern in small rural schools and does not by itself indicate weak performance. What was reported gives a partial window. Sixth-grade math and sixth-grade ELA proficiency both came in at a moderate level, with roughly matching results across the two subjects. Fifth-grade science proficiency was lower, with fewer than a third of tested students reaching proficiency. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, particularly how science instruction is structured across the upper elementary grades and what supports are in place for students who are not yet meeting benchmarks. No trend data were available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent an improvement or a decline from prior years.
Because Robinson does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report. The comparison set placing Robinson among Addison County districts could not produce proficiency, graduation, or chronic absenteeism benchmarks for this school, partly because the cohort was too small and partly because the relevant values were missing. So there is no county-level positioning to offer here.
The housing market in Starksboro's zip code shows typical home values somewhat above the national benchmark and broadly in line with the Vermont state benchmark, with modest recent appreciation. The price-to-income ratio sits above what is considered affordable by conventional measures, which is consistent with much of Vermont where housing costs have outpaced local wages. Rental data were not available. This is a town where most families own rather than rent, and the housing stock is overwhelmingly single-family and rural.
The district brief for Mt. Abraham Unified turned up little of lasting impact in recent public reporting, so there are no specific district-level changes or initiatives to flag here. That absence is noted rather than filled with speculation.
What Robinson appears to offer is a small, community-anchored elementary school in a town where the school is one of the few civic gathering points. The academic data are thin due to small numbers, and the one science result that surfaced was modest. Families drawn to rural Vermont life, who value a small peer group and a close-knit setting, and who are comfortable with the commute and isolation that come with Starksboro, will find here a school that reflects its town: quiet, small, and embedded in the community it serves.
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