Kilgour School vs Mariemont Elementary School

Kilgour School and Mariemont Elementary School earn identical overall ratings of 9.3/10, and both rank inside the top 50 elementary schools in Ohio out of 3,440 statewide — Kilgour School at #46 and Mariemont Elementary School at #49. A three-position gap at this altitude is statistically negligible; both schools are legitimately elite by any statewide benchmark. For Cincinnati parents, the headline number is a wash, and the real comparison lives in the sub-scores, class sizes, and demographic makeup that separate them.

On academic proficiency, Mariemont Elementary School scores 9.9/10 versus Kilgour School's 9.7/10 — a two-tenths edge that also holds on student growth, where Mariemont posts 9.3/10 against Kilgour's 9.1/10. What makes the Mariemont advantage meaningful is its consistency: it leads in both proficiency and growth simultaneously, which indicates students are arriving at a high baseline and continuing to accelerate past it. Kilgour's 9.7 academic score remains exceptional in absolute terms, but families placing maximum weight on measured outcomes will find the numbers consistently favor Mariemont Elementary School.

Kilgour School enrolls 567 students compared to Mariemont Elementary School's 499, a roughly 14-percent difference that shapes daily school life. The student-teacher ratio reflects this: Kilgour runs at 18.3:1 while Mariemont runs at 17.2:1, meaning Mariemont classrooms hold about one fewer student on average — a gap that accumulates across a six-year elementary span. On socioeconomic mix, Kilgour School's free and reduced-price lunch rate is 21 percent versus Mariemont Elementary's 16 percent. Neither school serves a high proportion of economically disadvantaged students, but Kilgour's five-point spread represents a modestly broader income range across its student body.

Both Kilgour School and Mariemont Elementary School serve kindergarten through sixth grade, so neither offers a longer grade span or earlier program entry point. Sitting just 2.5 miles apart in Cincinnati, they draw from overlapping geography. With grade structure and programmatic span identical on the available data, the practical decision pivots to three concrete levers: Mariemont's consistent academic and growth edge, Mariemont's slightly lower student-teacher ratio, and Kilgour's modestly more economically diverse enrollment.