Barre Town Elementary & Middle School, Barre VT

Original Research by School Decision on Barre Town Elementary & Middle School

Barre Town Elementary and Middle School sits on Websterville Road in Barre, a small Vermont city in Washington County that has long called itself the Granite Center of the World. The granite industry shaped Barre's identity, drawing immigrants from Italy, Scotland, Spain, Scandinavia, Greece, Lebanon, and Canada in the late nineteenth century and making it one of Vermont's more diverse communities for its size. Today the city retains a working-class residential character with a traditional New England downtown along North Main Street, where the Barre Opera House, Studio Place Arts, and City Hall anchor civic life. The Barre-Montpelier micropolitan area gives the city a regional commercial role beyond its own modest population. Publicly reported sources note a slight population decline in recent census cycles, and no major new housing developments were identified in the available research.

The school serves prekindergarten through eighth grade and is part of the Barre Unified Union School District, a governance structure created through a state-directed merger under Act 46 that combined several local schools into a single unified district. That restructuring changed how families engage with the board and district operations. The enrollment is sizable for a Vermont elementary-and-middle school, with roughly even distribution across grade levels and a prekindergarten cohort that is among the larger grades. About two-fifths of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with small Hispanic and multiracial populations. Data on English learners and special education enrollment was not available in the provided materials.

State assessment results from the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Program show a school where performance rises meaningfully as students move through the grades. In math, third-grade proficiency is low, but it climbs steadily through the middle grades, with eighth-grade results reaching a level where roughly half of tested students meet or exceed the standard. Fourth through eighth grades land in a moderate to solid range for math. English language arts results are generally stronger, with several grades showing nearly half or more of students reaching proficiency, and the fourth-grade cohort standing out as particularly strong. Science, tested only in fifth and eighth grades, lands in a moderate range. A parent may want to look into the early-grade math results further with the school, as those are the weakest point in the data, though the upward trajectory across grades is a genuinely encouraging pattern. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results reflect recent improvement or a longer-standing pattern.

Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that gap reflects the grade band rather than a missing result. No chronic absenteeism, discipline, course-access, or staffing data was provided. No information on specific programs, electives, or extracurricular offerings was available, so a parent would need to consult the school directly for those details. Civil-rights data was also absent from the provided materials. The neighbor comparison, drawn relative to districts in Washington County, could not be computed for proficiency, graduation, or attendance due to cohort size or missing entity values, so there is no positional read against peer districts in the county.

Housing in the school's zip code is modestly priced relative to both the state and national benchmarks, with a typical home value below the Vermont statewide figure and well below national levels. Rents are also comparatively affordable, and the estimated monthly cost of renting comes in below the estimated monthly mortgage payment, which may matter to families deciding between buying and leasing. Mortgage rates hovered in the mid-six-percent range in recent months. The price-to-income ratio sits below the national figure, suggesting that homeownership in this area is more attainable than in many parts of the country, even with elevated borrowing costs.

Barre Town Elementary and Middle School offers a prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade pathway in a community with deep industrial roots, affordable housing, and a compact, walkable downtown. The academic data shows a school that starts weak in the early grades but builds to solid proficiency by the upper grades, particularly in English language arts. Families considering this school would benefit from asking about early-grade math support, program offerings, and staffing details that the available data does not cover.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 317%

School 17% · district not reported

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 434%

School 34% · district not reported

▲ 5 pts above state median

Grade 533%

School 33% · district not reported

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 641%

School 41% · district not reported

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 744%

School 44% · district not reported

▲ 3 pts above state median

Grade 851%

School 51% · district not reported

▲ 18 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 327%

School 27% · district not reported

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

Grade 457%

School 57% · district not reported

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 543%

School 43% · district not reported

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 648%

School 48% · district not reported

▼ 5 pts below state median

Grade 755%

School 55% · district not reported

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 850%

School 50% · district not reported

▼ 9 pts below state median

Science

Grade 536%

School 36% · district not reported

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 840%

School 40% · district not reported

▲ 1 pts above state median

This schoolDistrict average, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income11%Higher-income37%26 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income42%Higher-income69%27 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income32%Higher-income54%22 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income23%Higher-income67%44 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income39%Higher-income65%27 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income37%Higher-income61%24 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income3%Higher-income28%25 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income19%Higher-income45%25 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income17%Higher-income49%32 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income23%Higher-income55%32 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income29%Higher-income53%24 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income38%Higher-income63%26 pp gap