Blue River Elementary

Blue River Elementary is a K–5 school in Overland Park, Kansas, serving 472 students in the Blue Valley district. SchoolDigger ranks the district fourth of 268 in Kansas and the school 28th of 657 statewide for 2025–26, placing it in the 96th percentile with five stars. One important concern is attendance: chronic absenteeism rose from 9% to 15%, the highest rate among the 11 nearby schools. The central takeaway is that Blue River’s strong academic standing comes alongside a sharp, recent attendance increase that merits attention.

Science is Blue River’s strongest subject: 77% of students were proficient, compared with 62% in the district and 38% statewide; the school ranked second among nearby schools, just behind the local leader at 78%. English language arts is also a strength, at 76% versus 70% in the district and 46% statewide, placing fourth locally. Math is the relative weak spot: 68% were proficient, slightly below the district’s 69%, though well above the state’s 41%; Blue River ranked sixth locally, close to the nearby-school average of 67%. At each grade level, results were not uniform: fifth-grade ELA was especially strong at 85%, while fourth-grade ELA was 65%, below the district’s 72%.

All three subjects improved from 2022–23 to 2025–26: ELA rose 12 percentage points, math 5, and science 11. Science’s advantage over the state grew by 4 points, while the ELA and math advantages narrowed by about 1 and 4 points. Blue River’s overall SchoolDigger percentile also recovered from 86 in 2020–21 to 96. Its student–teacher ratio is relatively low at 13.1, compared with a nearby-school average of 14.3; its free/reduced-lunch rate is 14%, the second-highest locally. SchoolDigger’s statewide effectiveness ranking is much lower for Asian students—45th percentile versus 96th overall—and fell from the 79th percentile in 2022–23; for students receiving special education, it is 71st percentile, down from 87th in 2023–24. The Asian-student comparison includes only 20 schools.