Kennedy Elementary, Janesville WI

Original Research by School Decision on Kennedy Elementary

Kennedy Elementary is a regular public school in Janesville that serves prekindergarten through fifth grade. Because the school ends at grade five, there is no graduation rate to report, and the academic picture rests entirely on state assessments in the elementary grades. Those results are the strongest signal in the data, and they are encouraging.

On Wisconsin’s Forward assessments, Kennedy posted proficiency rates across third, fourth, and fifth grade that place the school among the highest performers in Rock County. The school’s overall proficiency index, which averages performance across all tested subjects and grades, sits in the top quartile relative to the county’s nine districts. Math proficiency was strong at every tested grade level, and English language arts proficiency was solid, with fifth-grade reading and writing outperforming the earlier grades. Social studies, tested in fourth grade, also showed a high share of students meeting the state’s proficiency bar. Science, however, was a relative soft spot, with a noticeably lower proficiency rate in fourth grade. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how science instruction and curriculum are supported.

The student body is predominantly white, with the next largest groups being Hispanic students and students identifying as two or more races, followed by smaller shares of Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native students. Just under half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a meaningful share of families with lower household incomes. Data on special education identification and English learner status was not available, so the full scope of student support services is not clear from this record.

Kennedy Elementary sits within the Janesville School District. Janesville is a mid-sized city that historically anchored itself in manufacturing, including agricultural equipment and automobiles. Several corporate headquarters remain, and the city is known for its extensive park system and downtown Town Square along the Rock River. The city experienced notable plant closures in the past and has seen modest population growth in recent years, with the local economy and housing market adjusting to those shifts. Housing values and rents in the school’s ZIP code fall within a moderate range relative to national benchmarks, and the area is more affordable than many parts of the country.

No recent district-level changes of lasting impact were found in publicly reported material, so the operational context appears stable for now.

For a family or resident trying to understand what Kennedy Elementary offers, the academic picture is the clearest draw: the school’s tested students perform well against their county peers, particularly in math, reading, and social studies. The lower science result is the one area that invites follow-up. The school’s size, grade range, and demographic composition are straightforward characteristics of a neighborhood elementary in a mid-sized Midwestern city, and the economic diversity among families is typical for the area. There is no data on course access, discipline, or attendance, so those dimensions remain unknown from this analysis.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 377%

School 77% · District 63% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 476%

School 76% · District 55% · ▲ 21 pts above district

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 24 pts above county median

Grade 580%

School 80% · District 59% · ▲ 21 pts above district

▲ 29 pts above state median · ▲ 30 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 59% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 465%

School 65% · District 54% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 20 pts above county median

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 57% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 24 pts above state median · ▲ 25 pts above county median

Science

Grade 454%

School 54% · District 48% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 8 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 479%

School 79% · District 65% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

This schoolJanesville School District, 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-income65%Higher-income77%12 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income49%Higher-income83%35 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income63%Higher-income89%25 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income68%Higher-income87%19 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income64%Higher-income90%26 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income80%Higher-income81%1 pp gap