Mound Valley Elem, Mound Valley KS

Original Research by School Decision on Mound Valley Elem

Mound Valley Elem is the only public school serving the unincorporated town of Mound Valley, a small, rural community in Labette County. The school enrolls students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade under the county-wide Labette County school district. The grade band means this school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate or college-career readiness metric to consider; the academic picture is limited to state assessments through grade seven.

The school is small and its student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of students who are American Indian or Alaska Native, multiracial, Black, and Hispanic enrolled. A substantial share of students come from low-income households as measured by free and reduced-price lunch eligibility. The school’s size and rural setting have shaped its character. Mound Valley has experienced long-term population decline and is primarily residential with a limited local economy; most residents likely commute elsewhere for work. The town has a community center, a volunteer fire department, and police protection from the county sheriff, with Big Hill Lake nearby as a recreational anchor. This is a tight-knit, quiet place where the school sits at the center of civic life.

State test results, from the Kansas Assessment Program, show a mixed academic picture across grades and subjects. Proficiency rates in both English language arts and mathematics vary noticeably from one grade to the next, a pattern that in a very small school can reflect the makeup of a single cohort rather than a stable program. Schoolwide proficiency, when averaged across tested subjects and grades, places Mound Valley Elem in the top quartile relative to other schools in Labette County’s small group of districts, which is a positive signal overall. Parents looking at the grade-level breakdowns will see that some grades, such as fifth grade, performed strongly in both math and science, while other grades, notably sixth grade, showed much lower proficiency in both math and ELA. The school’s third-grade reading results were solid. The pattern of grade-to-grade swings suggests a family may want to ask the school about how it supports students during transitions and whether class size or particular teacher assignments are factors.

No information was available about the school’s programs such as gifted services, art, music, or after-school activities. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes such as boundary redraws or program closures. The housing market in Mound Valley’s zip code is more affordable than both the state and national benchmarks, and home values have been relatively flat, reflecting the area’s slow population growth.

For a family considering this school, the key takeaway is that they would be enrolling in a very small, rural elementary and middle school within a county-wide district, where academic results vary by grade and classroom. The school’s overall standing in the county is above the middle, but the grade-level swings mean a parent would want to talk directly with the principal and teachers about the school’s approach to consistent instruction across all grades. The community is quiet and low-cost, with limited local amenities, and the school itself is the main public institution in town.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 363%

School 63% · District 57% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▲ 22 pts above state median

Grade 436%

School 36% · District 51% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 586%

School 86% · District 58% · ▲ 28 pts above district

▲ 45 pts above state median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 51% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 754%

School 54% · District 44% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 19 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 369%

School 69% · District 65% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median

Grade 450%

School 50% · District 56% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 571%

School 71% · District 56% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▲ 22 pts above state median

Grade 619%

School 19% · District 51% · ▼ 32 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median

Grade 746%

School 46% · District 44% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 5 pts above state median

Science

Grade 579%

School 79% · District 63% · ▲ 16 pts above district

▲ 34 pts above state median

This schoolLabette County, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.