Summary
Riverview Elementary is a PK-5 school in Murfreesboro, NC, serving 372 students as part of Hertford County Schools and currently ranking among the lowest-performing elementary schools in the state, at the 1st percentile with a 0-star rating. Nearly all of its students (99.2%) come from low-income households, and the school has never been high-performing, but it was clearly a mid-low school before the pandemic, ranking in the low 20s statewide as recently as 2018-19. Since 2020-21, it has almost always stayed in the bottom few percentiles, with 2025-26 representing its lowest point on record.
Test results reinforce this picture. Riverview trails state averages by roughly 25 to 45 percentage points in most subjects and grades. For example, only 31.5% of third graders pass math, compared with 43.8% districtwide and 66.4% statewide. The gaps are just as large in reading and science. Comparisons with nearby schools are telling. Ahoskie Elementary, in the same district, also ranks very low (4th percentile) yet outperforms Riverview in fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading, and fifth-grade science. Bearfield Primary, another district peer with similarly high poverty, beats Riverview in third-grade math by nearly 18 percentage points. Meanwhile, Gatesville Elementary and Buckland Elementary in Gates County serve far fewer low-income students and rank in the 57th and 46th percentiles, respectively.
Attendance, staffing, and spending add important context. Chronic absenteeism at Riverview is 33.3%, well above the state average of 24.2%, but better than the district average of 38.2% and far better than Central Elementary’s 52.6%. Riverview also has a low student-teacher ratio of 12.8 and higher per-pupil spending than several nearby schools, meaning larger class sizes and tighter budgets aren’t the whole story. The school once showed notable strength in serving special education students, ranking above most North Carolina schools in that area before the pandemic. That ground has since been lost. For parents, the key takeaway is that Riverview faces serious, persistent challenges—yet because other in-district schools are achieving better results with similar populations, these outcomes are not inevitable.
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