Summary:
In zip code 72432, there is one elementary school, Harrisburg Elementary School, serving grades Kindergarten through 5th grade with 428 students in the Harrisburg School District, a high-poverty area where 99.3% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Harrisburg Elementary School is a school on the rise, improving its state ranking from the 33rd percentile to the 53rd percentile over three years, earning a 3-star rating. The school is a standout in Mathematics and Science, with 50.5% of students proficient in Math and 56.1% proficient in Science in 2025-2026, significantly outperforming state averages of 44.1% and 44.0%, respectively. However, the school faces challenges in English Language Arts and Reading, where proficiency rates of 35.2% and 36.7% lag behind state averages of 39.4% and 40.4%. This weakness is most pronounced in 4th and 5th grades, where ELA proficiency drops to around 28.6%, compared to a stronger 47.8% in 3rd grade, suggesting a transition issue from "learning to read" to "reading to learn."
Despite high economic need, the school has shown remarkable year-over-year improvement, with Math proficiency jumping 17.0% and Science rising 16.5% from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026. Per-student spending is $14,289, and the student-teacher ratio is 15.2:1. The school's strong STEM performance, despite a 99.3% free/reduced lunch rate, indicates effective instruction in those areas, while the literacy gap suggests a need for targeted resources to improve reading and writing outcomes across all upper grades.
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