The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in English language arts. The lowest is 22% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Clendenin Elementary School
Clendenin Elementary School sits on Elk River Road in Elkview, a small community along the I-79 corridor east of Charleston in Kanawha County. The school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and is part of Kanawha County Schools. Elkview is a highway-oriented place; its commercial life clusters around the interstate exit, with a shopping center, a grocery store, and fast-food restaurants built for vehicular access. There is no traditional walkable downtown. The Elk River runs through the area, and the community's recent history is shaped by the devastating West Virginia flood that damaged the former Herbert Hoover High School in nearby Clendenin, leading to a new high school building constructed in Elkview with groundbreaking in 2020. Population in the area has been relatively stable but slightly declining over decades. Publicly reported sources did not identify major employers beyond the retail establishments at the interstate interchange.
The school's enrollment is modest for its grade band, with a fairly even distribution across the early grades. The student body is almost entirely white, with only a handful of students identified as two or more races and no students reported in any other racial or ethnic category. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education counts, and English learner counts were all missing from the available data, so it is not possible to characterize the economic profile of the student population from these sources. A parent wanting to understand the school's poverty rate or special-population services would need to ask the school directly.
State assessment results from the most recent year tell a mixed story. In English language arts, proficiency rates across third, fourth, and fifth grade hover in a similar range, with the fifth-grade rate coming in somewhat higher than the earlier grades. This is a reasonably stable ELA picture for an elementary school. Math tells a different story. Third-grade math proficiency is the school's strongest result, with a solid share of students meeting the proficiency bar. By fourth grade, that rate drops meaningfully, and by fifth grade it falls further, leaving a relatively small portion of fifth graders proficient in math. Fifth-grade science proficiency is also low. The decline in math as students move up the grades is a pattern a parent may want to look into further with the school, asking what interventions or curricular adjustments are in place for upper-elementary math. Average scale scores were not reported for any subject or grade, and no multi-year trend data is available beyond a single year, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement or decline over time.
Participation rates on the state assessment were high across all tested grades, which means the proficiency figures reflect nearly the full student body rather than a skewed subset. No graduation rate applies here, and there are no middle-school or high-school assessment results to report, since the school serves only through fifth grade. Civil-rights data, discipline information, course access, staffing, attendance, and Title I status were not available in the provided data, so those dimensions of the school environment cannot be characterized. The school is not a charter school and has no magnet designation.
Housing in the school's zip code is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit below the state benchmark and well below the national figure, and estimated monthly mortgage costs are modest. Rent data was not available. No major new housing developments were identified in the available sources, and the community's growth trajectory is flat to slightly declining, which means the school's enrollment is unlikely to reflect rapid population expansion. A family buying into this area would find housing costs relatively low compared with most of the country, though economic data specific to Elkview suggests a portion of the community lives below the poverty line.
For a family considering Clendenin Elementary, the school offers a small, homogeneous peer environment in a quiet, rural-adjacent community along the Elk River. The academic picture is stronger in the early grades, particularly in third-grade math, and weaker in upper-elementary math and fifth-grade science. English language arts is the steadier subject across the grade levels. The gaps in available data mean that questions about economic disadvantage, special education services, discipline, and staffing will need to go directly to the school or district for answers.
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