Summary:
The city of Mount Rainier, Maryland, is served by two public elementary schools, Thomas S. Stone Elementary and Mt Rainier Elementary, both part of the Prince George's County Public Schools district and serving grades Pre-K through 5th, with a combined enrollment of 891 students and a very high rate of economic disadvantage.
When comparing the two schools, a clear paradox emerges. Thomas S. Stone Elementary is the higher-performing school, ranking 770 out of 864 in the state (11th percentile) compared to Mt Rainier Elementary's rank of 805 (7th percentile). It also outperforms Mt Rainier in math proficiency (9.9% vs. 5.1%) and science proficiency (17.9% vs. 11.4%). However, Mt Rainier Elementary has a lower student-to-teacher ratio (12.2:1 vs. 14.6:1) and spends over $1,500 more per student annually ($22,889 vs. $21,387). This suggests that factors beyond class size and spending, such as curriculum or leadership, are critical to academic success. Interestingly, Mt Rainier Elementary has a lower chronic absenteeism rate (28.3%) than the district average, while Thomas S. Stone Elementary has a higher rate (34.4%), a counterintuitive finding given the latter's better test scores.
Both schools share a critical weakness in mathematics, with proficiency rates in the single digits for most grades, including a mere 2.9% in 4th-grade math at Thomas S. Stone and 1.8% at Mt Rainier. A glimmer of hope exists in early literacy at Mt Rainier Elementary, where 3rd-grade ELA proficiency reaches 30.4%, the highest single-grade score in either school. However, Mt Rainier Elementary shows a concerning declining trajectory, dropping from the 20th percentile in 2023-2024 to the 7th percentile in 2025-2026, while Thomas S. Stone Elementary has shown more volatility with a recent improvement to the 11th percentile.
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