Summary:
ZIP code 27342 contains just one public elementary school — Sedalia Elementary — which enrolls 535 students in grades PK–5 within Guilford County Schools; because there is only one school, this summary focuses entirely on Sedalia’s performance, demographic context, and year-over-year trends.
Sedalia Elementary is a high-poverty school, with 98.88% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, alongside a solid 14.7-to-1 student-teacher ratio. The school has received a 2-star SchoolDigger rating in each of the past three years, ranking 989th out of 1,492 state elementary schools (34th percentile) in 2025-2026. Yet the overall rating masks real strengths in the early grades: 3rd grade math proficiency hit 68.9% in 2025-2026, beating both the district (62.4%) and state (66.4%), and 4th grade reading improved sharply to 58.8%, also above district and state averages. Chronic absenteeism is 23.3% — better than the district’s 29.2% and just below the state rate — which is encouraging given the school’s poverty level, though still meaning roughly one in four students misses significant school time.
The biggest concern is 5th grade. In 2025-2026, proficiency fell to 37.2% in math, 38.5% in reading, and 39.7% in science — trailing the district by roughly 15 to 22 points and the state by even more. That creates a 31.7-point gap between 3rd grade math (68.9%) and 5th grade math (37.2%) in the same year, far larger than the statewide grade-level spread. The cohort that scored 50.7% in 4th grade math in 2024-2025 appears to have dropped to 37.2% as 5th graders, suggesting an upper-elementary slide rather than a schoolwide problem. Families should look beyond the 2-star rating to grade-level results, and given there is no other elementary school in ZIP 27342, tracking these trends at Sedalia year to year is especially important for the community.
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