Warrenwood Elementary

Warrenwood Elementary is a PK–5 school in Fayetteville, NC, serving 424 students in Cumberland County Schools. Its academic performance places it in the bottom tier of North Carolina elementary schools, ranking 1,296th out of 1,492 statewide (13th percentile). Test scores fall below district and state averages in nearly every grade and subject. The most concerning areas are 4th grade math, where only 31.7% of students are proficient — a nearly 30-point gap versus the state — and 3rd grade reading, which has stayed below 37.5% proficiency for four straight years. A relative bright spot is 5th grade science, where 57.9% are proficient. The school recently improved from the 9th to the 13th percentile, though year-to-year results have been volatile.

Perhaps the most striking insight is that nearby schools with similar poverty levels achieve much stronger results. Howard L Hall Elementary (2.8 miles away) and Long Hill Elementary (3.8 miles away) both serve student populations around 99% economically disadvantaged — nearly identical to Warrenwood's 96% — yet Howard Hall ranks in the 66th percentile statewide and Long Hill in the 74th. Average math proficiency is about 42% at Warrenwood, compared to 64% at Howard Hall and 75% at Long Hill. The gap is not explained by resources: Warrenwood spends more per pupil ($11,031) than Howard Hall ($8,556) or Long Hill ($8,174) and has a more favorable student-teacher ratio. School-level practices, not demographics or funding, appear to be the key difference.

One clear difference between Warrenwood and its stronger neighbors is attendance. Warrenwood's chronic absenteeism rate was 35.4% in the most recent year — above the district average and well above the state's 24.2% — and it has exceeded 35% every year since 2020-21. Howard Hall and Long Hill, by contrast, have rates near 18%. While attendance is not the whole story, it is one of the clearest operational gaps between Warrenwood and the higher-performing schools nearby. The bottom line: poverty is not destiny here. But parents should closely watch whether the recent uptick in scores, especially in early literacy and math, becomes a lasting trend.