The top reported proficiency rate is 45% in Math. The lowest is 30% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Altizer Elementary School
Altizer Elementary School sits on 3rd Street in Huntington, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school within Cabell County Schools. The enrollment is small, with roughly two hundred students spread across seven grade levels, and the student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of children identifying as two or more races, Black, Hispanic, or Asian. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available in the provided records, nor were IEP or English-learner counts, so the economic and special-population picture is incomplete here. A parent wanting to understand the school's demographics in full would need to ask the office directly.
On state assessments through the West Virginia General Summative Assessment, the results follow a mixed pattern across grade levels. In math, proficiency is solid in the earlier tested grades, with most third graders and roughly half of fourth graders reaching proficiency. By fifth grade, that drops sharply, with only a small portion of students scoring proficient. English language arts tells a different story: third and fifth grade each show about half of tested students proficient, while fourth grade sits well below that. Fifth-grade science proficiency is low, with fewer than a third of tested students meeting the bar. Participation was full or nearly full across all tested grades. Because only one year of data was available, there is no trend to observe. Whether these grade-level swings reflect a single cohort's experience or a broader pattern is something a parent may want to look into with the school. Average scale scores were not reported, so the proficiency rates are the main academic signal available.
Altizer is a neighborhood elementary school in a city with a layered identity. Huntington is a mid-sized Ohio River city and the county seat of Cabell County. It was built as a planned rail terminus, thrived on coal, chemicals, and steel through the mid-twentieth century, and then lost much of its industrial base and population. Today it anchors a multi-county metropolitan area that stretches into Kentucky and Ohio. Marshall University sits beside the downtown core, and the two are closely intertwined, with university facilities and civic buildings concentrated in the center while public schools sit in surrounding neighborhoods. The largest employers are in healthcare, higher education, rail and port logistics, and government. The Port of Huntington Tri-State remains one of the busiest inland ports in the country, and CSX maintains its Huntington Division headquarters there. The city has produced a housing needs assessment and a revitalization plan, publicly reported, signaling an active policy focus on reversing population loss, though specific new construction details were not surfaced.
Housing in Altizer's zip code is modest by national standards, sitting below the West Virginia state benchmark and well below the national figure, with a recent year-over-year increase. Rent data was not available. For a family considering the area, this means homeownership is relatively accessible compared with most of the country, and the surrounding neighborhood is part of a city with a walkable historic core, Ritter Park's green space, and a university-adjacent cultural life, while also absorbing the realities of long-term population decline and economic transition.
Because Altizer serves only through fifth grade, there is no graduation rate or high-school course access to report. The provided data did not include staffing ratios, discipline information, attendance figures, Title I status, or program offerings, so those dimensions of the school environment are not represented here. We searched for parent-relevant changes in Cabell County Schools and found little of lasting impact in the available results. What the record does show is a small elementary school where younger tested grades are performing reasonably well in math and English, but where the upper elementary years present a clearer challenge, particularly in fifth-grade math and science. A family evaluating Altizer would be looking at a school embedded in a working river city with affordable housing and genuine civic anchors, with academic results that invite a direct conversation with the school about how it supports students in the later elementary grades.
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