The top reported proficiency rate is 41% in English language arts. The lowest is 34% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Idaho Science and Technology Charter School
Idaho Science and Technology Charter School sits in Blackfoot, a small agricultural city that serves as the county seat of Bingham County. Blackfoot calls itself the Potato Capital of the World, and its economy centers on potato growing and processing. The town has a traditional grid layout with a business district along Broadway, tree-lined streets that once earned it the nickname Grove City, and a semi-arid setting near the confluence of the Snake and Blackfoot rivers. Jensen Grove Park and the Eastern Idaho State Fairgrounds anchor civic life, and the nearby Idaho National Laboratory has historically drawn development to the region. Walkability is limited outside the downtown core, as is typical for small Idaho agricultural cities. The housing market in the school's zip code sits below the state benchmark and roughly in line with the national figure, making it relatively accessible compared with much of Idaho. Rents are modest. Population growth has been gradual rather than rapid.
This is a charter school serving kindergarten through ninth grade, though its ninth-grade enrollment is zero, making it effectively a K-through-eight school. The enrollment is small for a school spanning that many grades. The student body is predominantly white, with a Hispanic representation that is meaningful but not large, and very small counts of other racial and ethnic groups. The school's name signals a science and technology orientation, but no program-specific data was available to confirm particular STEM offerings, career pathways, or dual-credit arrangements. A parent interested in the school's thematic focus would want to ask directly what that looks like in daily instruction. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education rates, and English learner figures were all missing from what we received, so we cannot characterize the economic profile of the student body or the level of specialized support populations served.
State assessment results from the most recent ISAT show a clear pattern across both math and English language arts. In the younger tested grades, proficiency rates are modest, with roughly a quarter to a third of students meeting or exceeding standards in math and a similar band in ELA. As students move into the middle grades, proficiency climbs. By seventh grade, a larger share of students reach proficiency in both subjects, and eighth-grade math shows the school's strongest result, with a clear majority of tested students proficient. Eighth-grade ELA results were reported only as a wide range, and third-grade ELA, fifth-grade science, and eighth-grade science results were similarly suppressed or given as ranges, likely reflecting small tested groups in those grade-subject combinations. The upward trajectory from lower to upper grades is consistent across the data we have. Average scale scores were not available, and participation rates were missing, so we cannot speak to those dimensions.
Because the school does not graduate a high school cohort, there is no graduation rate to report. Civil-rights data, discipline information, course access details, staffing figures, and attendance data were all absent from what we received, so we cannot describe those aspects of the school environment. No neighbor comparison fact-set was provided, so we cannot position this school against nearby peers.
The district brief turned up no parent-relevant changes with lasting impact. This is a single-school charter district, and the search found only basic directory and fiscal information rather than strategic priorities or recent initiatives.
For a family considering this school, the academic picture is one of growth across the grade span, with the strongest results concentrated in the upper grades. The lower-elementary proficiency levels are soft, and a parent may want to look into how the school supports early-grade learners and whether the science-and-technology theme translates into specific curricular choices. The small size means small tested groups, which can make year-to-year results volatile. The setting is a quiet agricultural town with affordable housing and a short commute to outdoor recreation along the Snake River. Who this fits depends on whether a family values a smaller charter environment with an apparent upward academic trajectory in the middle grades and is comfortable asking the school directly about the gaps in publicly available information.
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