Summary:
Zip code 21155 is home to a single school, Fifth District Elementary, a public K-5 school with 262 students that stands as a remarkable outlier of academic excellence within the Baltimore County Public Schools district.
Fifth District Elementary is a top-tier institution, earning a 5-star rating from SchoolDigger for three consecutive years and ranking in the 98th and 99th percentiles among over 850 elementary schools in Maryland. Its academic performance is dramatically higher than both its district and state averages. For the 2025-2026 school year, 76.2% of students were proficient in mathematics (compared to 21.9% for the district and 27.1% for the state), and 86.6% were proficient in English Language Arts (compared to 46.1% for the district and 51.7% for the state). This consistent, sustained excellence is not a one-year fluke, as test scores have remained nearly identical year over year.
Several key factors contribute to this success. The school has a very low chronic absenteeism rate of 9.7%, far below the district's 25.6%, indicating strong family-school engagement. With a student-teacher ratio of 15.6:1 and per-student spending of $21,235, the school is well-resourced. While only 15.65% of students are eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch, the sheer magnitude of the performance gap suggests the school adds significant value beyond what demographics alone would predict, creating a "pocket of excellence" in a district ranked 18th out of 25 in Maryland.
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