The top reported proficiency rate is 35% in English language arts. The lowest is 18% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Highlawn Elementary School
Highlawn Elementary School sits on Collis Avenue in Huntington, a regular public school in the Cabell County Schools district serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. It draws from a city with deep railroad and river-industry roots, a place that grew up as the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and spent decades adjusting to the collapse of its coal, steel, and chemical base. Today Huntington functions as a regional hub for healthcare, higher education, and transportation, with Marshall University's campus pressed against downtown, the Port of Huntington Tri-State moving freight along the Ohio River, and CSX maintaining a division headquarters in the city. The broader metro area spans seven counties across West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, which gives the region a larger economic footprint than the city's own declining population would suggest. Huntington has been working on downtown reinvestment, with a housing needs assessment and a revitalization plan on the books, and neighborhoods like the one around Highlawn reflect the city's mix of older residential streets and mid-century development.
The school's enrollment is modest for an elementary spanning pre-K through fifth grade. Its student body is majority white, with a substantial share of students identified as two or more races and a smaller but present Black population. Hispanic and Asian students make up a small portion. Whether the school receives Title I funding was not reported, and free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available, so the economic profile of the student body cannot be characterized from what was provided. Information on students with individualized education programs and English learners was also missing.
On the most recent West Virginia General Summative Assessment, Highlawn's results paint a mixed picture across the three tested grades. In math, third and fourth graders showed moderate proficiency, with roughly a third of tested students meeting the state bar. Fifth grade math proficiency dropped sharply, with only a small fraction of students scoring proficient. English language arts followed a different pattern. Third grade results were similar to math, fourth grade dipped somewhat, and fifth grade posted the school's strongest result, with a higher share of students reaching proficiency than in any other grade-subject combination. Fifth grade science, the only science grade tested at this level, was low, with fewer than a fifth of students demonstrating proficiency. Participation was full or near-full across all tested grades and subjects.
Because only one year of assessment data was available, there is no trend to report. A parent looking at these results would see a school where reading outcomes outpace math outcomes by fifth grade, and where math results decline as students move toward the transition to middle school. The fifth grade math and science numbers in particular are soft spots a parent may want to look into further with the school, asking what supports are in place as students prepare to leave for sixth grade.
Several categories of information that would help round out a picture of Highlawn were not available. No data was provided on staffing ratios, teacher credentials, class sizes, attendance, discipline, course offerings, or extracurricular programs. No civil-rights data on suspensions, harassment, or access was included. No magnet or charter designation applies. No comparison set against neighboring schools was furnished, so Highlawn cannot be positioned against its county peers here. The district brief for Cabell County Schools returned no parent-relevant changes, such as curriculum shifts, facility plans, or tax measures, so there is nothing to report on that front.
Housing in the school's zip code is very affordable by national standards, with typical home values well below both the state and national benchmarks. Mortgage costs run modest relative to typical incomes, and rents are lower than ownership costs. For a family considering the area, that means entry into homeownership around Highlawn is more accessible than in most of the country, though the broader context is a city that has been losing population and working to stabilize its neighborhoods.
Highlawn presents a familiar profile for a neighborhood elementary in a post-industrial West Virginia city. The academic results are uneven, stronger in upper-grade reading than in math or science, with clear room for growth in fifth grade math. The missing data on student support services, staffing, and programs means a family would need to go directly to the school and the Cabell County district office to fill in the picture before making a decision.
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