Jefferson Elementary, Wauwatosa WI

Original Research by School Decision on Jefferson Elementary

Jefferson Elementary is a regular public school serving prekindergarten through fifth grade in the Wauwatosa School District, an inner-ring suburb immediately west of Milwaukee. The school sits in an older residential neighborhood east of the city’s major commercial corridors, part of the district’s nine-elementary network that feeds into two middle schools and two high schools.

Academically, Jefferson posted overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades that landed above the midpoint among elementary schools in Milwaukee County. That is a meaningful signal for a parent scanning options in the region. Within the school, performance varied by grade and subject. In the most recent testing year, a solid majority of third graders and a strong majority of fifth graders met state benchmarks in both math and English language arts. Fifth-grade math and ELA proficiency rates were notably high, suggesting that students who stay through the upper primary years are often well prepared. Fourth-grade results were softer: only about two in five fourth graders reached proficiency in math and ELA, with half meeting the bar in science and just over half in social studies. That dip at grade four is something a parent may want to explore further with the school to understand the supports in place for that transition year. Participation rates across all tested grades were very high, so the results are a fair picture of student performance.

The school’s enrollment is on the small side for a K-5 building, and the student body is predominantly white, with the next largest groups being Black students, students of two or more races, and Hispanic students. Smaller shares of Asian and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students round out the demographic mix. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate that places Jefferson near the middle of the socioeconomic spectrum in the district. Data on students with disabilities and English learners were not available, so a parent with a child in either of those categories may want to contact the school directly about services and inclusion.

The school sits within the Wauwatosa community, a dense, walkable city with five distinct commercial districts, a well-known Village center along the Menomonee River, and the region’s major medical complex anchoring the east side. The housing market in the area has been active; typical home values and rents have both risen moderately in the past year. Wauwatosa is a built-out suburb with a stable population, and the district recently passed a facilities referendum that will fund safety upgrades, HVAC improvements, and accessibility work across its buildings, as well as an operational referendum that provides additional annual funding for programming and staff for a set number of years. The district also adopted a new literacy curriculum aligned with Wisconsin’s science-based reading law and implemented boundary adjustments after the closure of a different elementary school.

For a family looking at Jefferson Elementary, the picture is of a neighborhood school that performs above the county median in an academic sense, with especially strong upper-grade results, set in a city with abundant civic amenities and moderate home values for the region. The grade-four soft spot is the one caution a parent may want to follow up on. The school itself is part of a district that has been actively investing in its facilities and instructional approach, and the overall peer environment reflects the diversity of the suburban community. The absence of data on special education and English learner populations leaves an open question that the parent should resolve with the school office before making a decision. Jefferson fits a family that values a small, stable elementary in an established suburb with above-average performance trends and a district that is financially reinvesting in its buildings and teaching.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 361%

School 61% · District 64% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 33 pts above county median

Grade 438%

School 38% · District 57% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 68% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 24 pts above state median · ▲ 52 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 361%

School 61% · District 61%

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 34 pts above county median

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 61% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 572%

School 72% · District 70% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 21 pts above state median · ▲ 44 pts above county median

Science

Grade 450%

School 50% · District 64% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 29 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 456%

School 56% · District 76% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▲ 18 pts above county median

This schoolWauwatosa 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-income13%Higher-income80%68 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income17%Higher-income55%38 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income22%Higher-income91%69 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income0%Higher-income85%85 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income17%Higher-income50%33 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income44%Higher-income87%43 pp gap