Marquette Elementary, Madison WI

Original Research by School Decision on Marquette Elementary

Marquette Elementary serves grades three through five in the Marquette neighborhood of Madison, near the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. The school sits in a dense, walkable part of the city, close to the Wisconsin State Capitol and the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. A small school, it enrolls families across the elementary grades who live within its attendance area.

The student body is predominantly white, with a smaller share of Black students and smaller shares of Hispanic students and students who identify as two or more races. Asian students make up a very small proportion, and enrollment of American Indian or Alaska Native students, and of Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students, is not reported. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that sits below the typical rate for the state as a whole.

State assessment results for the Wisconsin Forward exam show a school that performs above the midpoint among districts in Dane County on overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades. Reading proficiency is the school’s strongest area. Across third, fourth, and fifth grade, most students meet or exceed state reading standards, with fourth-grade reading slightly lower than the other two grades. Math proficiency is a mixed picture: third grade math results are strong, with most students proficient, while fourth and fifth grade math results are lower, with about half of students in those grades meeting the state bar. This drop in early elementary math is a pattern a parent may want to discuss with the school to understand support and instruction in those grade levels. Science and social studies are assessed in fourth grade only; more than half of students are proficient in science, and about two-thirds are proficient in social studies.

Marquette Elementary is part of the Madison Metropolitan School District, a mid-sized urban district. As a grade-three-through-five school, it does not have a high school graduation rate to report or a chronic absenteeism figure in the available data. The school is a regular public school, not a charter, and no information is available on its Title I status.

The housing market in the zip code that serves the school is expensive relative to the rest of the state. Home values are well above the Wisconsin median, though the market has recently softened. Rents in the area are also above the national typical level and have been rising. The combination of elevated home prices and rents makes the neighborhood a high-cost entry point for families, consistent with a desirable urban location near the Capitol and university. The area’s affordability ratio, comparing home prices to the typical share of income needed for a mortgage, is relatively stretched.

Madison itself is the fastest-growing city in Wisconsin as of this writing, with population growth driven by the education, healthcare, and technology sectors. The city recently annexed most of the remaining Town of Madison, expanding its boundaries. For families, this growth means continued demand for schools in the district and ongoing new housing construction, particularly on the isthmus and in expanding neighborhoods.

The district, Madison Metropolitan, has not published widely reported updates on new school construction in the years relevant to a parent researching current facilities. A parent interested in facility conditions or planned building projects should look for the district’s own capital plans or budget documents. For a school that serves only three grade levels, the transition into Marquette from a primary feeder school and the transition out to an intermediate or middle school are important planning points that are not detailed in the available data. A parent should verify feeder patterns and program continuity with the district.

Marquette offers a solid academic foundation for the middle elementary years, with clear strengths in literacy and respectable performance in math at the entry grade, though math results soften as students advance. For a family looking at the Marquette neighborhood specifically, the school sits in a densely urban, walkable, and amenity-rich part of the city, with a high cost of housing but a student body that is less economically diverse than the district as a whole.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 46% · ▲ 24 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 451%

School 51% · District 45% · ▲ 7 pts above district

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

Grade 559%

School 59% · District 41% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 372%

School 72% · District 47% · ▲ 25 pts above district

▲ 19 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 463%

School 63% · District 50% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 569%

School 69% · District 46% · ▲ 24 pts above district

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

Science

Grade 457%

School 57% · District 47% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · even with county median

Social studies

Grade 467%

School 67% · District 59% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 2 pts above state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

This schoolMadison Metropolitan 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-income37%Higher-income88%51 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income20%Higher-income93%73 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income13%Higher-income94%81 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income32%Higher-income88%56 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income15%Higher-income76%61 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income13%Higher-income79%66 pp gap