The top reported proficiency rate is 87% in Math. The lowest is 70% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Hite Saunders Elementary School
Hite Saunders Elementary School sits on Green Valley Road in Huntington, a mid-sized river city that functions as a regional hub for transportation, healthcare, and higher education in southwestern West Virginia. The school is part of Cabell County Schools and serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. It is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and its enrollment is small for its grade band. The student body is predominantly white, with a small group of multiracial students and a handful of Black and Asian students. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not available, and information on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so a parent looking for details on how the school serves those populations would want to ask the school directly.
On state assessments, the most recent results paint a strong picture. Third-grade math proficiency sits above what West Virginia typically sees, and fourth- and fifth-grade math results are very strong, with nearly all tested students reaching proficiency. English language arts follows a similar arc: third grade is more middling, but fourth and fifth grade show high proficiency. Fifth-grade science results are also solid. Every tested grade had full participation. The one caution is that third grade, particularly in reading, is the relative soft spot, with a noticeable gap between it and the upper grades. A parent whose child is entering the early grades may want to look into this further with the school, though the upper-grade results suggest the school builds momentum as children move through the program. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent a recent improvement or a longer-standing pattern.
Huntington itself is a city with a layered identity. Founded as the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, it was one of the nation's first planned communities built around rail and river industries. Its industrial base in coal, oil, chemicals, and steel largely collapsed after World War II, and the city has lost a substantial share of its population since its peak. Today it blends a historic downtown commercial core, the Marshall University campus, established residential neighborhoods, and a remaining industrial and transportation sector anchored by the Port of Huntington Tri-State, publicly reported as the second-busiest inland port in the United States. Marshall University sits directly adjacent to downtown and is deeply intertwined with the city's restaurants, retail, and housing. Major employers include the university and its affiliated Marshall Health Network, Cabell Huntington Hospital, CSX Transportation, and city and county government. Walkability is strongest downtown and near the university; the surrounding hills and suburban-style neighborhoods are more car-dependent. Ritter Park, recognized by the American Planning Association as one of America's Great Public Spaces, anchors a walkable residential corridor.
The housing market around Hite Saunders is affordable by almost any benchmark. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below the national figure and below the West Virginia state benchmark, and rents are correspondingly modest. The price-to-income ratio is low, meaning a family earning a typical income can buy here more easily than in most of the country. Huntington's population has been in long-term decline, but the city has active housing and revitalization planning efforts, including a Housing Needs Assessment and a Huntington Investment Plan. The broader Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area provides a larger regional market that partially offsets city-level population loss.
Information on Title I status, discipline, course access, staffing, attendance, and specific program offerings was not available in the data provided, so those aspects of the school environment cannot be characterized here. Civil-rights data was also absent. A parent weighing this school should treat the strong upper-grade assessment results as the clearest signal and ask the school to fill in the gaps around early-grade reading, student support services, and how the small enrollment shapes the day-to-day classroom experience.
See more original research from School Decision →