Summary:
There is just one elementary school serving the Tawas Area Schools district in the Tawas City area of Michigan: Clara B. Bolen Elementary School, which enrolls 433 students in grades PK through 4.
For parents considering this school, the standout strength is clearly 4th-grade English Language Arts. In the most recent testing year, 53.9% of 4th graders were proficient, which is nearly 13 percentage points above the state average of 41.3%. This represents a sustained area of success. The school also showed dramatic improvement in 3rd-grade ELA, jumping from 25.3% proficiency to 38.2% in one year, bringing it exactly in line with the state average. However, mathematics is a consistent weakness. In 3rd grade, only 31.6% of students were proficient in math, compared to the state average of 42.9%, and 4th-grade math proficiency dropped from 42.2% to 34.8%, falling below the state average of 39.4%. The gap between 3rd and 4th-grade ELA performance is also notable, with 4th graders outperforming 3rd graders by nearly 16 percentage points, which may point to a particularly effective 4th-grade teaching team or a challenging transition into 3rd grade.
On a positive note, despite 55.2% of students being economically disadvantaged, the school's chronic absenteeism rate of 18.3% is significantly better than the state average of 27.9%, suggesting strong family engagement. The school's state ranking has been somewhat volatile, sitting at the 53rd percentile (697th out of 1492 schools) in the most recent year, after dipping to the 48th percentile the year before. With a student-teacher ratio of 17.7 and per-student spending of $13,349, the school provides a solid foundation, but the persistent math scores and inconsistent year-to-year performance indicate a need for a more stable, school-wide instructional strategy to build on its clear strengths in reading.
Thank you for your feedback!