The top reported proficiency rate is 49% in Math. The lowest is 11% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Sharon Dawes Elementary School
Sharon Dawes Elementary sits along Cabin Creek Road in Miami, an unincorporated community in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Miami is a quiet, rural place without its own municipal government; county services handle most civic functions. The community lies south of East Bank and carries a name drawn from the Miami Indians. Home values and household incomes in the area run well below national averages, and publicly available information describes a residential community with little in the way of commercial anchors or pedestrian infrastructure. The school is part of Kanawha County Schools, a district for which recent parent-relevant changes such as referendums, curriculum shifts, or consolidation decisions were not surfaced in the search results, so this account leaves that space open rather than guessing.
The school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and operates as a regular public school. Its enrollment is small for its grade band, with each tested grade cohort numbering in the low to mid-twenties or fewer. The student body is nearly entirely white, with only a handful of students identifying as multiracial, Black, or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Information on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education enrollment, and English learner status was not available in the data provided, so those characteristics of the school's population remain undescribed here.
State assessment results come from the West Virginia General Summative Assessment for the most recent school year, covering math, English language arts, and science. Because the school ends at fifth grade, results for sixth through eighth grade are absent by design; those grades are not part of Sharon Dawes Elementary and are not tested here. Participation was full across every tested grade and subject, which speaks to consistent engagement with the state assessment.
In math, the third-grade cohort posted a strong proficiency rate, with most tested students clearing the proficient bar. Fourth grade landed closer to the middle, with roughly half reaching proficiency. Fifth grade dropped further, with only about a quarter of tested students proficient. This pattern of decline from third to fifth grade is visible in the data, though the very small cohort sizes mean that a few students moving above or below the line can shift the picture considerably from one year to the next. A parent looking at the upper grades may want to ask the school how it supports math instruction as students advance.
English language arts results followed a similar arc, though the drop was less steep. Third grade showed a slim majority proficient, fourth grade dipped below half, and fifth grade came in lower still. Science, tested only in fifth grade at this school, was the weakest result, with very few students reaching proficiency. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, particularly how science instruction is structured and resourced across the grade band.
Only one year of assessment data was available, so no trend over time can be drawn. Average scale scores were not reported in the data provided, leaving a more granular view of performance unavailable.
Beyond academics, several categories that parents often weigh were not represented in the data. No information on discipline, course access, staffing ratios, attendance patterns, or Title I status was available. No program offerings such as gifted services, after-school activities, or early childhood programming beyond pre-kindergarten enrollment were surfaced. No comparison fact-set positioning the school against neighboring schools or districts was provided. The locale brief offered community context but no details about employers, growth, or development trajectory, so the picture of what surrounds the school remains limited to what was found.
What the data does give a parent is a small, rural elementary school where younger students show comparatively stronger results and where upper-grade proficiency declines across subjects. The full participation rate and the strong third-grade math result are genuine bright spots. The drop in fifth-grade math and science, and the thin results in ELA in the upper grades, are areas a parent would reasonably want to discuss with the school. The missing demographic, staffing, and program data mean that some questions a family might ask about peer environment and student support cannot be answered from the available record.
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