Dan Mills Elementary vs Waverly-Belmont Elementary School

Dan Mills Elementary ranks #60 of 1,785 Tennessee schools while Waverly-Belmont Elementary School sits at #12 of 1,785 — a 48-position gap in state standing that belies how close these two Nashville elementaries are in raw scores. The overall rating gap is just 0.4 points, with Waverly-Belmont Elementary School edging ahead at 9.5/10 versus Dan Mills Elementary's 9.1/10, a difference driven almost entirely by one sub-score rather than broad academic separation.

Both schools post identical academic scores of 9.5/10, meaning neither has a measurable edge in tested proficiency. The gap opens on growth: Waverly-Belmont Elementary School scores 9.5/10 in student growth versus Dan Mills Elementary's 8.6/10 — a 0.9-point delta that accounts for Waverly-Belmont's higher state rank. Growth scores measure how much students advance relative to their starting point, so Waverly-Belmont's lead signals that its students are consistently outpacing academic expectations regardless of where they begin.

Dan Mills Elementary enrolls 604 students compared to Waverly-Belmont Elementary School's 528, making Dan Mills the larger campus by 76 students. The student-teacher ratio flips the advantage slightly: Dan Mills Elementary runs 15.9 students per teacher versus Waverly-Belmont Elementary School's 16.5:1, giving Dan Mills fractionally smaller class sizes despite its larger total enrollment. Both figures are near the Nashville-area norm and unlikely to produce a meaningful day-to-day difference for most families.

Dan Mills Elementary serves grades PK through 5, offering a pre-kindergarten entry point that Waverly-Belmont Elementary School does not — Waverly-Belmont begins at kindergarten. The two schools sit 7.4 miles apart within Nashville, making geography a practical separator for families who live between them. For parents who weight accelerated student progress over raw proficiency, Waverly-Belmont's growth advantage at the same academic score level is the clearest data-driven differentiator on record.