Best Public Schools in Zip Code 27024

ZIP code 27024 contains one public elementary school, Cedar Ridge Elementary, serving grades PK–5 in Lowgap, NC, and is part of Surry County Schools; there are no middle or high schools within this ZIP code, so families with older students would need to look elsewhere in the district. Because Cedar Ridge is the only school in 27024, comparisons are best made against its district and the state of North Carolina rather than against neighboring local schools.

Cedar Ridge serves an extremely high-poverty student body, with 99.14% of students eligible for free/reduced lunch in 2024–25. The school’s overall ranking has slipped from 3 stars (51st percentile) in 2023–24 to 1 star (29th percentile) in 2025–26, placing it in the bottom third of North Carolina elementary schools. However, the story is not uniform across grades: in 2025–26, 3rd graders outperformed both district and state averages in math (73.2% proficient vs. 66.4% statewide) and reading (57.1% vs. 55.6%). That early strength largely disappears by 4th and 5th grade, where proficiency falls well below district and state levels in math, reading, and science. The widest gap is in 5th-grade reading, where only 38.1% of students are proficient, about 17 points below the state average.

Chronic absenteeism is another concern: 25.6% of students were chronically absent in 2024–25, considerably higher than the district’s 17.9% but close to the state’s 24.2%. Year-to-year changes at Cedar Ridge should be interpreted with caution because individual grade-level cohorts are small — roughly 50 students per grade. That makes a 15–20 point proficiency swing equivalent to only 7–10 students. For parents, the key takeaway is that Cedar Ridge currently offers strong 3rd-grade instruction, but families should watch how students transition into upper elementary, where performance drops sharply. Since this is the only public school option within ZIP 27024, understanding these grade-level patterns is especially important when planning for your child’s elementary years and beyond.