Education begins at a prekindergarten level, and those living in the Charleston area attend Mark Twain Elementary School, which prepares early youth for schooling by taking them through prekindergarten and kindergarten under the supervision of principal Denise Titus.
[1] Students who live in the far east reaches of Coles County may attend Ashmore Elementary School, which is based in a northeasterly village by the same name; Ashmore's distance from the other schools permits it to educate a larger range of students for the sake of efficiency.
[2] Students who graduate from Mark Twain move onwards to Carl Sandburg Elementary School, which educates those in grades one, two, and three under principal Abigail Schmitz.
The middle school's Scholastic Bowl team advanced as far as to achieve fourth place at the State competition in the year 2007 and went to regionals in 2016.
The project, known as "Jefferson Elementary Thanking Soldiers" (or JETS) was organized and coordinated by a then-sixth grader named Carley Coffey, and grew to become a communitywide effort.