The top reported proficiency rate is 46% in English language arts. The lowest is 39% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Benson Village School
BensonVillage School sits in the heart of a small Rutland County farming town on the western edge of Vermont, close to Lake Champlain. It is a pre-kindergarten through sixth grade public school serving the children of Benson, and it is part of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District. When students finish sixth grade here, they move on to Fair Haven Union High School in a neighboring community for their secondary education. The school itself is embedded in Benson's village center, sharing the civic footprint with the town offices, the museum, and the community hall that houses the library. There is no separated campus. The school and town functions sit side by side on School Street, which gives the place a particular intimacy: the building where children learn is the same building complex where town life happens.
The school is small. Its enrollment is modest even for an elementary school, and individual grade cohorts are tiny, with some grades holding only a handful of students. The pre-kindergarten group is the largest single grade. This is a defining feature rather than a flaw. A school of this size means adults know every child, and the peer environment is close-knit by necessity. It also means that statewide testing results are sparse. Vermont suppresses results when grade-level cohorts are too small to report without risking student identification, and at Benson Village School nearly every grade and subject in the most recent assessment cycle fell into that category. Math results across grades three through six were all suppressed. English language arts results were suppressed for grades three, four, and six. Only fifth grade ELA and fifth grade science were reported, and in both cases the number of tested students was very small. The proficiency rates that were reported sit below what most Vermont schools aim for, but with cohorts this small a single student's performance shifts the picture considerably. A parent looking at these results should treat them as a limited snapshot and ask the school directly about classroom-level learning, growth, and support.
The student body is nearly entirely white, reflecting Benson's own demographics. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school among those serving a higher-need population in the county. The school did not report data on English learners or students with individualized education programs, so we cannot characterize those populations from the available information.
Housing in Benson is relatively affordable compared with both Vermont and national benchmarks. The typical home value sits well below the state figure and modestly below the national one. That affordability, paired with the rural setting and the lakeshore access nearby, shapes who moves here. Benson is a working community of farms, scattered homes, and a compact village cluster, with limited walkability outside the village center and long car commutes for many residents. The town's population has stayed roughly stable over recent decades, and a draft town plan is in progress, but no major housing developments or growth initiatives are documented. The housing market here is quiet rather than competitive.
For a family considering this school, the picture is straightforward. This is a very small rural elementary school in a tight-knit community where civic life and schooling are physically intertwined. Academic outcomes are hard to judge from state data because the cohorts are too small to report reliably, and the few results available are modest. What the data cannot capture is the day-to-day texture of a school where every teacher knows every family. Parents weighing Benson Village School would do well to visit, talk with the principal and teachers about how they handle multi-grade learning and individualized attention, and understand the transition path to Fair Haven Union High School. The publicly available data is thin here, so the school itself is the best source for the questions that matter most.
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