Summary:
Zip code 26335 in Burnsville, West Virginia, is served by a single school, Burnsville Elementary School, a small rural institution within the Braxton County Schools district that serves grades PK through 5 with an enrollment of just 88 students.
For parents considering this school, the most important takeaway is that Burnsville Elementary offers an exceptional student-teacher ratio of 10.3:1, which allows for significant individualized attention. Academically, the school shows a clear split: mathematics is a relative strength, with overall proficiency at 45.5%—beating the state average of 39.4%—and 5th-grade math scores (47.1%) also exceed state norms. However, English Language Arts is a major concern, with only 30.3% of students proficient compared to 47.6% statewide, and 3rd-grade ELA proficiency sits at just 20%. Science performance is also weak at 23.5% proficiency, though this represents a notable improvement from the previous year. The school's state ranking has declined over three years, from the 24th percentile to the 16th, despite its favorable class sizes, suggesting that small classes alone are not driving academic gains.
The school's small size is a double-edged sword: it fosters a close-knit community, but it also means test scores can fluctuate dramatically from year to year based on the abilities of individual cohorts. The data reveals a mixed picture relative to its district—Burnsville Elementary outperforms the district in math by over 13 points but lags by nearly 11 points in ELA. With per-student spending of $11,671, the school has reasonable resources, but the declining trajectory suggests that targeted interventions in literacy and science, along with leveraging its successful math strategies, could be the key to reversing the trend and improving outcomes for its small student body.
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