Summary:
Zip code 36748 is home to a single elementary school, Linden Elementary School, which serves grades PK through 5 and enrolls 184 students in the Linden City district.
For parents, the most important takeaway is that Linden Elementary is a school with high economic need—81.52% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch—and it currently holds a 1-star rating, ranking in the bottom third of Alabama elementary schools. However, the school shows a clear upward trend in its state ranking over the past three years, improving from the 25th percentile to the 32nd percentile. The most striking finding is the dramatic difference between grade levels. In the most recent school year, 3rd graders outperformed the state average in math (58.62% vs. 44.89%) and nearly matched it in English, while 5th graders lagged far behind in both subjects, with only 14.29% proficient in math compared to the state's 39.06%. This suggests the school may have a strong early-grade program that struggles to maintain momentum in upper grades, or that different cohorts of students have very different academic foundations.
Test scores also fluctuate significantly year to year—3rd-grade math proficiency jumped from 34.38% to 58.62% in one year, while 4th-grade science dropped from 30.77% to 13.79%. With only 184 students, a single class can heavily skew the data. The school spends a substantial $12,533 per student, yet this funding has not translated into consistently high scores, a common challenge for schools serving high-poverty communities. Chronic absenteeism is 12.7%, slightly above the state average but below the district's 15.6%. The student-teacher ratio is a favorable 13.1, and the recent improvement in rankings, combined with the strong 3rd-grade performance, offers cautious optimism that Linden Elementary may be on an upward trajectory, even if it still has significant ground to cover.
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