The top reported proficiency rate is 69% in Math. The lowest is 57% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Hollywood Elementary
Hollywood Elementary sits on Old Mill Road in Beckley, the county seat of Raleigh County and the regional hub for southern West Virginia. It is a regular public school serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, part of Raleigh County Schools. The enrollment is small for its grade band, with roughly even distribution across the early grades and a pre-kindergarten classroom that gives families an on-ramp before kindergarten.
The student body is predominantly white, with very small numbers of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students. The school's racial and ethnic makeup is fairly typical for Raleigh County, though the available data does not include free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, English learner rates, or special education enrollment, so a parent wanting to understand the economic and linguistic diversity of the classroom would need to ask the school directly. Title I status was also not available in the data we received.
On state assessments, the most recent results from the West Virginia General Summative Assessment tell a story of a school that gets stronger as students move up through the grades. Third grade is the soft spot. Both math and English language arts proficiency in third grade land below the midpoint, with fewer than half of tested students reaching proficiency in either subject. A parent might want to look into this further with the school, particularly how early literacy and numeracy instruction are structured in the primary grades and what intervention supports are available.
The picture brightens substantially in fourth and fifth grade. Fourth grade math proficiency jumps to a very high level, with nearly all tested students proficient. Fourth grade English language arts is also strong, and fifth grade English language arts is stronger still. Fifth grade math proficiency sits at a solid level, well above the midpoint. Science, tested only in fifth grade, lands in the moderate range. Participation was full across every tested grade, which means the results reflect the whole cohort rather than a subset. Average scale scores were not reported, so we cannot speak to how students are performing at the top of the proficiency range versus the middle of it. No multi-year trend data was available beyond the current year, so there is no way to judge whether these results represent steady performance or recent improvement.
Because the school ends at fifth grade, there are no sixth, seventh, or eighth grade results and no graduation rate to report. Those gaps reflect the grade band, not a missing expectation.
Beckley itself is a city that has remade itself economically. Publicly reported sources describe a transition from a coal mining base toward retail, service, and tourism, a shift that began after mining losses in the 1980s. Healthcare is now the largest employment sector, with four hospitals operating in the city. Several higher education campuses, including WVU Institute of Technology and University of Charleston-Beckley, sit within the city limits. The city sits at the junction of Interstates 64 and 77 and U.S. 19, which attracted business investment in the 1990s and continues to make Beckley a commercial draw for surrounding communities. Cultural anchors include the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine, Tamarack Marketplace, and Theatre West Virginia's outdoor productions at Grandview, part of the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
Housing in the school's zip code is quite affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Home values sit well below the state midpoint and far below national levels, and rents are similarly modest. Home values have eased slightly over the past year while rents have ticked up a small amount. For a family considering a move to the area, the cost of ownership here is low by almost any standard, and the rent-to-income burden is light. The trade-off is that the housing market has not seen the appreciation common in many other parts of the country, which reflects the broader economic trajectory of the region rather than anything specific to this neighborhood.
We looked for recent parent-relevant changes in Raleigh County Schools, such as curriculum updates, facility investments, or policy shifts, and found little in the available sources, so we left that out rather than guess. No neighbor comparison data was provided for this school, so we cannot position its results against nearby elementary schools in the county. Discipline data, course access, staffing ratios, and attendance figures were also absent from what we received.
For a family weighing Hollywood Elementary, the core question is the third grade results. The upper grades perform well, and the trajectory from third to fifth grade suggests the school is doing something right as students advance. A conversation with school leadership about how the early grades are supported would help a parent understand whether that third grade dip is a consistent pattern or a cohort effect, and what the school is doing about it.
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