Elizabeth M Cashwell Elementary

Elizabeth M Cashwell Elementary is a large, high-poverty PK-5 school in Fayetteville, NC, serving 576 students within Cumberland County Schools, a district ranked in the middle of North Carolina. The school’s most recent state ranking places it at the 24th percentile with a 1-star rating, a slight improvement from the prior year but still far below its pre-pandemic standing at the 41st percentile in 2018-19. Nearly 99% of students qualify for free/reduced-price lunch, and surrounding schools share similarly high poverty rates.

Cashwell’s academic performance trails district and state averages in every grade and subject, with reading the most persistent weakness — roughly 44% proficiency compared with 53% for the district and 56% for the state. However, the school has a notable attendance advantage: its 27.9% chronic absenteeism rate is higher than the state average of 24.2% but better than the district’s 33.7%, and it sits below many nearby schools like Sherwood Park Elementary (36.3%) and Walker-Spivey Elementary (42.6%). With 576 students, Cashwell is also one of the largest elementary schools in its cluster, and its student-teacher ratio of 16.2-to-1 is higher than many neighbors, meaning more students per teacher. Subgroup results are uneven: African American and Hispanic students rank near the statewide median (53rd and 51st percentiles), and Gifted and Talented students rank at the 96th percentile, yet low-income and Special Education subgroups sit below the 30th percentile.

Cashwell is showing a quiet recovery. Chronic absenteeism has dropped from 48.6% in 2021-22 to 27.9% in 2024-25, and math scores have improved notably — 4th-grade math rose from 33.8% to 48.8%, while 5th-grade science jumped from 48.7% to 59.2%. The school’s statewide rank has edged up from the 11th percentile in 2020-21 to the 24th percentile now. Still, reading remains a major hurdle, with no grade level reaching 50% proficiency; 3rd grade sits at 42.9% versus 52.8% for the district. Cashwell outperforms lower-ranked neighbors like Walker-Spivey but lags stronger schools such as Sherwood Park, suggesting that closing the reading gap is the highest-leverage step to lift its overall rating.