The top reported proficiency rate is 33% in English language arts. The lowest is 17% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lowell Graded School
Lowell Graded School sits in the town of Lowell, in Vermont's Orleans County, and serves children from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It is the only school in the Lowell School District, a single-school district serving the local community. The school is small by any measure, with only a handful of students per grade level, which is typical of rural Vermont towns in this part of the state. This is a public, non-charter, non-magnet school.
The student body is predominantly white, with a small number of students identifying as Hispanic, multiracial, or Black. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which points to a community where economic need is widespread. The data does not include counts for students with individualized education programs or English learners, so those figures are unavailable here. Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and no AP or career-pathway data applies to this grade band.
State assessment results from the most recent school year are largely suppressed because of the very small number of students in each tested grade. Vermont, like many states, withholds results when a grade cohort is too small to protect student privacy. The only grade with reported results was fifth grade, and even there only about a dozen students were tested. In English language arts, roughly a third of those fifth graders reached proficiency, a modest result. In math, only a small fraction did, which is a weaker outcome. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, because with such tiny cohorts a single student's performance shifts the picture considerably, and the results are better understood as a snapshot than as a stable trend. No other grade level in any subject had reportable results. Science was also suppressed for both grades five and eight.
The school does not have a comparison profile against other Orleans County districts because the county-level cohort was too small to generate a meaningful proficiency index, graduation comparison, or absenteeism benchmark. This reflects the rural, small-school character of the region more than anything about Lowell itself. We looked for the district's strategic priorities or recent parent-relevant changes but found little beyond basic profile and enrollment information, so we left that out rather than guess. No recent referendums, curriculum shifts, or property-tax changes surfaced in the available research.
Housing in Lowell is relatively affordable compared with both Vermont and the nation as a whole. Typical home values sit well below the state benchmark, and the estimated mortgage cost against a typical household income suggests the area remains within reach for working families, even with current mortgage rates that have hovered in the mid-six-percent range. No rental data was available for the immediate area. The broader economic backdrop shows a national unemployment rate that has held steady, and median household income that has risen gradually in recent years.
For a family considering Lowell Graded School, the picture is one of a very small, rural, community-rooted school where class sizes are tiny and most children will know every classmate across the building. That intimacy can be a genuine strength for some learners, offering close adult relationships and a family-like setting. The tradeoff is that academic data is hard to read here because the cohorts are so small, and the limited results that are available suggest the school may face challenges in lifting students to proficiency, particularly in math. Families considering this school would benefit from speaking directly with staff about how instruction is structured across combined grade levels, what support is available for struggling learners, and how the school handles the reality of very small classes year to year.
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