Summary:
Zip code 37366, covering the town of Pelham, Tennessee, contains exactly one elementary school: Pelham Elementary School, a small school serving 165 students in grades PK through 8 within the Grundy County Schools district. Despite its size, Pelham stands out as a bright spot in a district that earns only 1 star and ranks 106th out of 141 districts in Tennessee. Pelham itself earns 3 stars and ranks 414th out of 1,019 schools statewide, placing it in the 59th percentile and well above the district's 25th percentile ranking.
Pelham outperforms its district in every tested subject. Proficiency rates at Pelham are 43.1% in English Language Arts, 52.9% in Science, and 57.1% in Social Studies — all above both the district and state averages. The school also leads the district in Mathematics at 40.2%, though this remains slightly below the state average of 43.0%. The school has also shown real progress from the prior year, improving in every subject, with a remarkable 14.1-point jump in ELA proficiency from 29.0% to 43.1%. That improvement helped the school climb 147 places in the statewide ranking.
The most impressive results come from 5th grade, where Science proficiency reaches 81.3% — more than 34 points above the state average — and Math reaches 62.5%, well above both district and state. The main area of concern is middle school mathematics; 6th grade Math (21.4%) and 8th grade Math (26.7%) fall well below state averages, and 6th grade overall appears to be a challenging transition year. Chronic absenteeism at 16.4% is better than the district (16.8%) and state (18.3%). At $14,659 per student, spending is relatively high, likely reflecting the costs of running a small rural PK-8 school, but small cohorts of one or two students can swing percentages significantly, so grade-level results should be interpreted with some caution.
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