Westfield Elementary

Westfield Elementary is a PK–5 school serving about 275 students in Westfield, a small community in rural Marquette County, Wisconsin, and it is the largest of the three elementary schools in the Westfield School District.

Statewide, the school ranks 776th of 1,039 ranked Wisconsin elementary schools in 2025–26 — the 25th percentile, or 1 star. That is a meaningful slide: the school sat at the 45th percentile in 2021–22 and has slipped in four of the last five reporting years, a net drop of about 20 percentile points. Within its own district, it is the lowest-ranked of the three elementaries — Oxford Elementary is 19 percentile points higher, and Coloma Elementary ranks slightly above it. Compared with nearby schools outside the district, only Adams-Friendship Elementary ranks lower, while Forest Lane Community School reaches the 61st percentile. Westfield is below the state proficiency mark in all eight tested grade-and-subject combinations on the 2025–26 Forward Exam, with the widest gaps in 4th-grade science (25 points below state) and 3rd-grade reading (24 points below).

Two things stand out for parents. First, attendance has become a real weak spot: chronic absenteeism rose to 20.9% in 2024–25, now worse than both the district and the state and roughly 2.5 times Oxford's 8.2%, even though the two schools have nearly identical funding and class sizes. Second, the school's results are uneven rather than uniformly low. Students with disabilities are served at the 57th percentile — a 3-star result in a 1-star school and far above its overall standing — and 3rd-grade math and 5th-grade ELA are broadly competitive with neighboring schools. The low-income subgroup, which makes up more than half of enrollment, has fallen from the 58th to the 18th percentile in two years, and that trajectory closely tracks the school's overall decline. Class sizes have improved and per-pupil spending has risen 27.7%, so the challenge does not appear to be resources alone.