Elementary Schools in Grand Prairie Independent School District (Isd)

The Grand Prairie Independent School District (Isd) oversees 22 elementary schools that serve students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade (and some through eighth grade), and the district is ranked in the 41st percentile in Texas, indicating below-average performance overall. The data reveals a stark divide between a few high-performing schools and many that struggle, with the majority of students facing significant economic disadvantage.

The standout school is the School For The Highly Gifted, a magnet school ranked #6 in Texas (100th percentile) with near-perfect test scores, the lowest student-teacher ratio (9.2:1), and the highest per-student spending ($14,603). In contrast, the top traditional neighborhood school is Colin Powell Elementary, ranked in the 88th percentile with strong scores like 78% of 5th graders proficient in Reading. The most improved school is Juan N Seguin Elementary, which jumped over 1,800 places in state ranking from the 11th to the 50th percentile. At the other end, Florence Hill Elementary (9th percentile) and Hector P Garcia Elementary (12th percentile) face the most significant challenges, with critically low math and reading scores.

Key takeaways include that spending does not guarantee success—Suzanna Dickinson Montessori Academy spends the second-most per student but ranks in the bottom 22% of the state. Additionally, 5th Grade Science is a universal weakness across the district, with even top schools like Colin Powell Elementary seeing only 43% proficiency. Schools serving grades PK-8, such as William B Travis World Language Academy, show a dramatic drop in middle school math performance, with 7th-grade math proficiency as low as 3.33%. Finally, in several schools with high Hispanic populations, students taking the Spanish version of the STAAR Reading test often outperform those taking the English version, suggesting native-language instruction can be more effective for English Language Learners.