The top reported proficiency rate is 64% in Math. The lowest is 55% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Peacham Elementary School
Peacham Elementary School sits at the heart of one of Vermont's most distinctive small towns. Peacham is a quiet, rural place in Caledonia County, defined by working farms, dense woodlands, and a historic village center recognized as a National Historic District. There are no numbered state highways running through town, which tells you most of what you need to know about the pace and texture of daily life here. The community has a mix of year-round residents and seasonal arrivals, with the population swelling noticeably in summer. It has been slowly losing year-round population over the decades as farming faded, and the town has become increasingly oriented toward retirees and vacationers. The civic core clusters around Peacham Corner, where the library, Congregational church, and town office sit near the school. There is no commercial street life to speak of, and the town is overwhelmingly car-dependent.
The school itself is small even by Vermont standards, serving prekindergarten through sixth grade with a total enrollment that fills just a handful of classrooms. The student body is largely white, with a small number of children identifying as Hispanic, Asian, or multiracial. A modest share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not have charter or magnet status. It operates as the town's only public school, and after sixth grade, the community shifts to a school choice model, with the town paying tuition for students to attend any state-approved school for grades seven through twelve. That means families here face a real transition point when elementary school ends, and it is worth understanding early what options the tuition arrangement opens up.
Academic results are limited in what they can tell you, and that limitation is built into the school's size. Vermont's state assessment data for Peacham Elementary in the most recent year shows only third grade results were reported. In third grade math, a solid majority of the small group tested reached proficiency. In third grade English language arts, just over half of that same small group were proficient. Every other tested grade and subject was suppressed, which is standard practice when so few students sit for the exam in a given year. A parent reading this should understand that the available numbers rest on a very small group of children and that suppression of the rest reflects privacy rules, not a hidden weakness. The picture is thin but not alarming. What you can see is a third grade cohort performing respectably in math and adequately in reading. What you cannot see is how the upper grades are doing, because the data is not reported. A parent may want to ask the school directly about progress in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, since the state results do not provide that window.
No graduation rate applies here, because the school does not extend into high school. No chronic absenteeism figure was available in the data provided. No comparison against other Caledonia County districts was possible, because the cohort of comparable schools with usable proficiency data was too small to support it. Information on special education rates, English learner counts, staffing, discipline, and course access was not available in the payload, so those dimensions are left blank rather than guessed.
The district brief turned up no specific parent-relevant changes, such as recent referenda, curriculum shifts, or property-tax adjustments. The search did not identify major employers in Peacham, consistent with its residential and agricultural character. Publicly reported material describes the town as a place that attracted educators, intellectuals, and liberal thinkers as vacation and retirement homebuyers in the late twentieth century, and that heritage shows in the civic life around the school, from the Peacham Library to the Northern Skies Observatory run by the Northeast Kingdom Astronomy Foundation.
What this school offers is a very small, intimate elementary setting in a town that values its history and its quiet. A family looking for small classes, rural surroundings, and a close-knit community will find that here. A family wanting a broad program of electives, specialized staffing, or a larger peer group will find those thin or absent. The transition to middle and high school happens through tuition-funded choice rather than a local campus, which gives families flexibility but requires them to take on the work of finding the right next school. The academic evidence is too sparse to deliver a verdict, but what is visible is reasonable for a school of this size and setting.
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