Artemus Ward

Artemus Ward is a PK–8 neighborhood school at 4315 W 140th St on Cleveland's West Side, serving 487 students in the Cleveland Municipal district. In 2025–26 it ranked 1,223rd of 1,560 Ohio schools (22nd percentile, 1 star), but that single number undersells a real trend: four consecutive years of improvement lifted the school from its 2021–22 low of 8th percentile to 22nd, roughly double its district's standing. Its enrollment is the second largest among the nearby schools examined, behind only Garfield Elementary School.

The school's most distinctive feature is that it is strong in the early grades and weak in the middle grades. Third grade is a genuine bright spot: math proficiency of 60.9% is nearly double the district rate and essentially matches the state (62.1%), and ELA at 68.1% beats both. By 8th grade the picture reverses — math falls to 8.1% and science to 13.3%, well below the district. This is not simply what the neighborhood produces: Robinson G Jones Elementary School, 0.76 miles away in the same district, ranks 58th percentile with 3 stars and posts 8th grade math at 93.9%, while Garfield Elementary School (0.93 miles) ranks 41st percentile. Nearly every cohort at Artemus Ward loses ground as it moves up the grades.

Chronic absenteeism is 45.6%, better than the district's 54.3% and mid-pack locally, though it has crept up from 41.0% since 2022–23 even as test scores rose. Subgroup results are mixed: the school ranks higher for its African American students (45th percentile, 2 stars) and English learners (34th) than it does overall, while special education students rank 2nd percentile. Per-student spending of $12,165 and a 19.4:1 student–teacher ratio sit in the middle locally, and neither explains the gap with higher-performing neighbors, which spend both more and less than Artemus Ward.