Summary
Liberty Elementary School is a PK–5 school of 402 students in Caledonia, Ohio, a small community roughly 8–11 miles north of Marion, and one of two elementary schools in the River Valley Local district. For 2025-26 it ranks 794 of 1,560 Ohio elementary schools — 49th percentile, 2 stars — which sits in the middle of its own ten-year record, since it spent eight of the last ten reported years at 3 stars.
Liberty's strengths are attendance and efficiency. Chronic absenteeism is 11.1%, the second-lowest of the eleven nearby schools compared, against 22%–34% at Marion City schools. Its composite proficiency of 64.5% is about a point above Ohio's 63.8% average and roughly 14 points above the median nearby school, even though its reported per-pupil spending of $8,395 (2018-19 figures) is the lowest in that comparison group. Its low-income students rank in the 70th percentile statewide (3 stars), reaching the 74th percentile with 4 stars in 2023-24 — a higher rating than the school as a whole earned that year. Within its own district, however, Heritage Elementary School sits five and a half miles away, spends nearly the same amount, and outranks Liberty on all seven measures it reports, with 4 stars to Liberty's 2.
Fifth grade is Liberty's clearest instructional strength: science has scored 74.6%, 74.1% and 73.8% over three straight years, about 10 points above the state each time, and fifth-grade reading has also stayed at or above state. The chronic soft spot is fourth-grade reading, below the state in three of the last four years (49.3%, 67.2%, 54.0%, 51.6%) and 10.2 points below it in 2025-26. That same group of students underperformed in reading two years running, though its math jumped 21.7 points in a single year, showing the school can move a cohort quickly. Because results swing hard from one group of students to the next, any single year's headline deserves caution.
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