Best Elementary Schools in Zip Code 28351

Laurel Hill Elementary is the only elementary school serving zip code 28351 in Laurel Hill, North Carolina, providing instruction for grades PK–5 to 662 students as part of the Scotland County Schools district. Because no other elementary schools exist within this zip code, direct school-to-school comparisons are not possible here; the most useful benchmarks are the district and statewide averages.

While Scotland County Schools itself ranks in the bottom quarter of North Carolina districts (204th out of 246 with a one-star rating), Laurel Hill Elementary stands out as a relative bright spot. On the 2025–2026 EOG exams, the school outperformed its district in six of seven grade/subject comparisons and matched it in the remaining one. Its clearest academic strength is 3rd-grade math, which reached 70.5% proficiency — above both the district (54.8%) and the state average (66.4%). However, compared to North Carolina as a whole, the school remains in the lower quarter of elementary school rankings, with proficiency gaps of roughly 20 percentage points or more in 4th-grade reading, 4th-grade math, and 5th-grade reading.

Nearly all of the school’s students (98.6%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, yet its chronic absenteeism rate of 23.8% is below the district’s 30.6% and essentially matches the statewide 24.2% — a meaningful positive given the link between poverty and attendance challenges. A low student-teacher ratio of 13.1 may also signal additional staffing resources. One notable concern is the sharp drop in math proficiency observed from 3rd grade (70.5%) to 4th grade (40.9%) in the same school year, though these represent different cohorts of students. Following cohorts over time reveals mixed and volatile results in both reading and math as students advance, suggesting achievement gains are not evenly distributed. Overall, Laurel Hill Elementary performs well relative to its district but still faces substantial achievement gaps relative to the state, particularly in reading and upper-elementary math.