Summary:
Janesville School District is home to 12 public elementary schools serving students in grades PK–5, enrolling 4,029 children in total — about 336 per school on average, ranging from 256 at Wilson Elementary to 412 at Roosevelt Elementary.
The district as a whole is rated 257 of 432 Wisconsin districts (41st percentile, 2 stars), but that district-wide figure hides large differences between schools. Five schools earn 4 stars: Roosevelt Elementary (87th percentile, the highest in the group), Kennedy Elementary (85th percentile three years running, with the lowest chronic absenteeism at 10.1%), Monroe Elementary (85th), Harrison Elementary (84th, and the lowest free/reduced-price lunch rate at 32.33%), and Van Buren Elementary (71st, with the lowest per-student spending at $12,978 and the highest science proficiency at 75.36%). Some schools are improving quickly: Lincoln Elementary posted the biggest gain in test composite, Jefferson Elementary rose sharply, and Washington Elementary moved from the 48th to the 62nd percentile.
At the other end, high poverty and chronic absenteeism go hand in hand with lower scores. Schools with more than 75% free/reduced-price lunch average roughly 20 points lower on the test composite than lower-poverty schools, and Wilson Elementary faces the most concentrated challenges — 92.19% free/reduced lunch, 33.3% chronic absenteeism, 22nd percentile, and 1 star — despite having the highest per-student spending ($19,683) and the smallest classes. Adams Elementary, Madison Elementary, and Jackson Elementary face similar combinations of high need and lower results. Notably, higher spending and smaller classes cluster at the higher-need schools rather than the highest-performing ones, so families should look at each school's own data rather than the district average.
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