Summary:
ZIP code 46385 is home to two elementary schools — Union Center Elementary School and John Simatovich Elementary School — both serving grades K–5 in Union Township School Corp in Valparaiso, Indiana, with 666 students combined. The district itself is highly rated, ranking 14th of 374 districts (96th percentile, 5 stars), and both schools earned 5-star ratings in 2025–26, so families here are choosing between two strong options rather than a strong and a weak one.
Union Center Elementary is the picture of consistency. It has earned 5 stars in each of the last three years and never ranked below the 93rd percentile, placing 30th of 1,011 schools in 2023–24 and 66th of 1,015 in 2025–26. Its 2025–26 all-grades proficiency is 71.3% in both ELA and Math, and it posts the higher 3rd-grade Math (85.14%) and 5th-grade Math (56.92%) results in this pair. Most strikingly, its chronic absenteeism is just 2.6%, well below the district's 6.9% and the state's 16.7% — the lowest figure in this data set.
John Simatovich Elementary is the improvement story. Its school rank jumped from 221st of 1,005 (4 stars) in 2024–25 to 100th of 1,015 (5 stars) in 2025–26, and its 5th-grade Social Studies proficiency rebounded from 26% to 62.79%. Science is its sharpest strength: 78.95% proficient, far above Union Center's 57.14% and the state's 43.8%. Its 4th-grade Math score of 89.47% is the highest single grade-level math result at either school. John Simatovich also serves a higher-poverty population (45.71% free/reduced lunch vs 19.43%), spends more per student ($13,068 vs $9,519), and has smaller classes (14.7 vs 17.5 students per teacher).
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