Summary
Parnell Elementary in Jasper, TX, serves 3rd through 5th grade students in the Jasper Independent School District (Isd) and faces significant challenges, with over 85% of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch and academic performance consistently ranking in the bottom 10% of Texas elementary schools.
Parnell Elementary is the lowest-performing school in its immediate area, with a statewide rank of the 6th percentile for the 2025-2026 school year. This contrasts sharply with nearby schools like Brookeland Elementary (61st percentile) and Spurger Elementary (45th percentile). The most significant academic gap is in math, where Parnell's proficiency rates are roughly half the state average. For example, only 20.7% of 3rd graders were proficient in math, compared to 60.7% at Brookeland Elementary. Science is also a critical weakness, with just 12.9% of 5th graders proficient versus 29.6% statewide. Additionally, Parnell has a higher student-to-teacher ratio (15.5) than all nearby schools, which are under 12.5, and its per-student spending ($13,195) is lower than Brookeland Elementary ($13,274), despite serving a population with greater economic need.
Despite these struggles, there is a notable bright spot: Hispanic students at Parnell ranked in the 50th percentile statewide in the 2025-2026 school year, earning the school's only 3-star rating for any subgroup. This success is an outlier, as other subgroups perform much lower, but it proves that the student body can achieve at a higher level. The school's best recent performance was during the 2020-2021 school year (18th percentile), followed by a sharp decline, suggesting that the standard instructional model is not effective for its students. The feeder school, Jean C Few Pri, has an even higher poverty rate (92.3%) but a lower student-to-teacher ratio (12.4), indicating that students may be losing ground as class sizes increase in grades 3-5.
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