The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in English language arts. The lowest is 29% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Saxton River Elementary School
Saxton River Elementary School sits on School Street in the heart of Saxtons River, a small historic village in the town of Rockingham, Windham County. The school serves pre-kindergarten through fourth grade and is part of the Rockingham School District. With a total enrollment well under a hundred students across its grade bands, this is a small, community-rooted elementary school in a village where the built environment is overwhelmingly residential, composed of nineteenth-century wood-framed and clapboarded houses along a compact Main Street corridor.
The village itself is almost entirely a National Register historic district, restored after mid-twentieth-century decline. Vermont Academy, a private co-educational boarding and day secondary school, occupies an elevated terrace just north of the village center and is the most prominent institutional presence shaping local character and economy. A second private institution, New England Kurn Hattin Homes, sits on a terrace south of the river. The village lacks a public green and has no public library of its own; the main library for the town of Rockingham is in Bellows Falls. No current public transit serves the village. The Saxtons River Inn and a village market form the modest commercial core. The village has seen a modest population decline over recent decades, and development here is restoration-oriented rather than growth-oriented, with no major new housing projects identified.
Academically, the school's state assessment results come from the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Program for grades three and four. In English language arts, the school's results are mixed but broadly middle-range. Third-grade ELA proficiency sits at about half of tested students, and fourth-grade ELA is close behind. In mathematics, third-grade proficiency is near the mid-range, but fourth-grade math proficiency drops sharply, with only a small fraction of tested students reaching proficiency. This fourth-grade math result is a soft spot a parent may want to look into further with the school, as it stands well below the third-grade result and below the ELA figures for the same grade. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether this is a one-year dip or a persistent pattern. Participation rate data was missing from the state results for both subjects and both grades.
The tested cohorts are very small, with only a handful of students in each grade taking each assessment. In a school this size, a single student's result can shift the proficiency rate noticeably, so parents should read these numbers with that context in mind rather than treating them as a stable trend line.
Demographically, the school is predominantly white, with a small number of students identifying as Hispanic, Black, or two or more races. Just over half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives a picture of a working- and middle-income community rather than an affluent one. Data on individualized education programs and English learner status was not reported, so those dimensions of student support cannot be characterized here. Information on Title I status, school type classification, staffing ratios, chronic absenteeism, discipline, and course access was also not available in the provided data.
Because this is an elementary school serving only early grades, there is no graduation rate, and the neighbor comparison set, drawn from districts in Windham County, could not produce a proficiency index or other comparative metrics for this school. The cohort was too small to support a reliable comparison, and the relevant figures for this entity were missing. So the school's academic standing relative to its county peers cannot be placed in a ranked context from the available data.
On housing, the Saxtons River zip code shows a typical home value below both the Vermont state benchmark and the national benchmark, with recent year-over-year appreciation that outpaced both. Estimated monthly mortgage costs against current rates are moderate relative to the national median household income, placing this among the more affordable corners of Windham County for a family looking to buy. Rental data was not available.
Saxton River Elementary is a small early-grades school in a quiet, historically preserved village dominated by two private educational institutions. It offers a close-knit, residential setting for families with young children. Its ELA results are reasonable for a small school, but the fourth-grade math proficiency is low enough to warrant a direct conversation with the school about what is happening in that classroom and what supports are in place.
See more original research from School Decision →