Summary
Baird Elementary is a small, rural PK-5 school in Baird, TX, serving 208 students within the Baird Independent School District (Isd), and it has experienced a sharp two-year decline in overall academic performance, dropping from the 55th percentile to the 30th percentile. Despite spending significantly more per student ($12,975) than nearby high-performing schools like Wylie East Elementary ($5,901), the school’s outcomes are among the lowest in the area, with 72.6% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. A critical red flag is the recent collapse in early-grade math: only 11.54% of 3rd graders were proficient in math in 2025-2026, compared to the state average of 44.33%, though the school shows some ability to catch students up by 5th grade, where reading and math scores exceed state averages.
The most striking differentiator is a massive and growing performance gap by gender, with female students ranking in the 53rd percentile while male students plummeted to the 8th percentile—a 45-point gap that emerged from a situation just two years prior where boys outperformed girls. Additionally, the school’s ability to serve low-income students has been highly volatile: after ranking in the 70th and 71st percentiles for two consecutive years, that ranking dropped to the 29th percentile in the most recent data, suggesting a systemic breakdown. Hispanic students have consistently ranked in the 6th or 7th percentile for three years, indicating a chronic challenge that has not improved.
Geographically, Baird Elementary is sandwiched between two very different districts: the elite, 5-star Wylie Independent School District (Isd) schools with low poverty rates (~25%) and the struggling 1-star Abilene Independent School District (Isd) schools like Thomas Elementary and Taylor Elementary, which have high poverty rates (64-75%) and low test scores. Baird’s demographic profile is much more similar to the struggling Abilene schools, but it does have a bright spot: in 2024-2025, its 5th-grade science proficiency rate was 58.33%, nearly double the state average and far exceeding all nearby schools, indicating a specific instructional strength that could serve as a model for improvement.
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