The top reported proficiency rate is 49% in Math. The lowest is 11% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Mary Ingles Elementary School
Mary Ingles Elementary School sits on Big Bottom Hollow Road in Tad, a tiny unincorporated stretch of Kanawha County with only a post office and a handful of homes. The community has no downtown, no commercial center, and no civic anchors beyond that post office. Residents who need goods, services, or employment make the short trip toward Charleston. The school itself is a regular public elementary serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, part of the Kanawha County Schools district, and it draws from this quiet rural setting.
The enrollment is small, with roughly two dozen or fewer children per grade. The student body is almost entirely white, with a small number of children identifying as multiracial and a very small number identifying as Black. No other racial or ethnic groups are represented in the reported data. Information on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special-education enrollment, and English-learner status was not available, so the economic and special-population profile of the school cannot be characterized from the data on hand.
State testing covers grades three through five under the West Virginia General Summative Assessment. Results are reported for the most recent school year, and with only a single year of data available, no trend can be drawn. Participation was full in math and English language arts across all three tested grades, which gives the scores a reasonable basis for reading.
In math, third graders performed well, with a clear majority reaching proficiency. Fourth-grade math was the weakest result in the building, with only about a third of students proficient. Fifth grade landed in between, with close to half proficient. The pattern across grades suggests a cohort or instruction variation worth asking about rather than a uniformly low or uniformly strong program. In English language arts, the picture reverses somewhat. Third grade was the lowest, with roughly a third proficient. Fourth grade was the strongest, with a slight majority proficient. Fifth grade fell in the middle, with a smaller share proficient than fourth grade but ahead of third.
Science is tested only in fifth grade among the grades this school serves, and the result was low. Very few fifth graders reached proficiency, and participation dipped slightly below full. This is a soft spot a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly given the small number of tested students, which means a few children's scores move the proportion sharply. Still, the result is what was reported and it stands as the weakest academic signal in the data.
Because Mary Ingles is an elementary school, there is no graduation rate, no AP or career-pathway data, and no dual-credit information to report. Those measures apply to secondary schools and do not exist for this grade band. Program offerings, staffing details, discipline data, and course-access information were not provided, so nothing can be said about those dimensions. Housing values and rental data for the immediate area were also absent from the available material.
The locale itself gives a parent a clear picture of the setting. Tad is rural, sparsely settled, and offers little beyond residences. No growth or development data was found for the community, and no recent district-level changes such as consolidations, curriculum shifts, or levy decisions surfaced in the research. The district brief returned only basic directory information without evidence of changes meeting a lasting-impact threshold.
What the data supports is a reading of a small rural elementary school with mixed academic results that vary by subject and grade. Third-grade math is a bright spot. Fourth-grade math and fifth-grade science are the areas of clearest concern. The rest sits in a middle range. For a family living in or near Tad, Mary Ingles offers a close, small-scale environment where children are known individually, and where the rural character of the community shapes the daily experience. The gaps in the available data, particularly around economic disadvantage and special populations, mean a parent would want to ask the school directly for those details before forming a full picture.
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