Summary:
Waterloo, Wisconsin has just one elementary school: Waterloo Elementary, a PK–4 school with 281 students in the Waterloo School District. Because there are no other city elementary schools to compare it with, the most useful benchmarks are the district and the state of Wisconsin. The school reported 43.77% of students eligible for free/reduced lunch in 2024–2025, spent $16,900 per student, and had a student-teacher ratio of 11.4.
The clearest strength is attendance. Waterloo Elementary's chronic absenteeism rate was 10.4% in 2024–2025, below the district's 11.8% and well below the statewide 17.3%. Its school ranking also improved sharply, moving from 857th of 1,061 (19th percentile, 1 star) in 2023–2024 to 596th of 1,044 (43rd percentile, 2 stars) in 2024–2025, then easing to 644th of 1,039 (38th percentile, 2 stars) in 2025–2026 — still much better than two years earlier. That 38th percentile places it above the Waterloo School District overall, which ranked 348th of 432 (19th percentile, 1 star). Academically, 3rd-grade math was the standout: proficiency rose from 42.55% to 53.33%, cutting the gap to the state from 12.45 points below to just 1.42 points below.
The main challenge is that in 2025–2026 the school scored below the state average in every tested subject and grade. Its highest result was 4th-grade Social Studies at 63.41% (2.10 points below state) and its lowest was 3rd-grade ELA at 46.67%. Fourth-grade scores fell in all four subjects versus the prior year's 4th grade, though the 2025–2026 4th graders were the previous year's 3rd graders, and that same cohort improved in ELA (+4.10 points) and math (+6.23 points) as it advanced. With only 281 students, grade-level cohorts are small, so year-to-year swings should be read cautiously.
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