The top reported proficiency rate is 42% in Math. The lowest is 37% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Beloit Jr-sr High
Beloit Jr-Sr High is the only public secondary school in the Beloit district, serving students in seventh through twelfth grade under one roof in a rural north-central Kansas community. The school sits within the town of Beloit itself, a compact county seat that functions as a regional hub for healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, and technical education, including a campus of North Central Kansas Technical College. The student body is modest in size for a combined junior-senior high school, and the demographic picture is one of limited diversity: the vast majority of students are White, with small shares of Hispanic, multiracial, Black, Asian, and Native American students. More than two out of five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which signals that economic need touches a meaningful portion of the school community.
Academically, state testing data is available for grades seven and eight in math, English language arts, and science. Performance varies by grade and subject. In seventh grade, about half of students met proficiency benchmarks in both math and ELA. By eighth grade, proficiency rates drop noticeably, with about a third of students proficient in math, just over a quarter in ELA, and about a third in science. The state changed its cut scores for both math and ELA in the most recent testing year, so these results cannot be directly compared to earlier years. When placed alongside the other two school districts in Mitchell County, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits in the bottom quartile. No state testing data was present for high school grades, which means a parent cannot assess eleventh-grade performance from this source. The school’s graduation rate also was not available in this data, so that metric cannot be evaluated here.
The academic program receives a noted boost from the district level. The Beloit district was awarded a CTE Capital Improvement grant for career and technical education facility upgrades, an investment that expands hands-on learning pathways for students. The district also approved an energy performance contract to improve building efficiency, which carries implications for school facilities and operational spending over time.
Housing in the Beloit area is priced well below the national median. Values have seen a modest uptick over the past year, but the overall cost of homeownership remains relatively low compared to much of the country. The community itself is experiencing population contraction, a demographic pattern that shapes the school’s enrollment context and the town’s tax base. Beloit’s role as a regional service center—with a hospital, manufacturing employers like AGCO and Landoll, and the technical college—gives it economic anchors that stabilize the local job market and draw some families to the area even as the broader population declines.
The school’s surroundings in Beloit offer a traditional downtown centered on the Mitchell County Courthouse, along with Chautauqua Park on the Solomon River and the NCK Wellness Center. Schools and civic institutions are integrated within the town rather than isolated on separate campuses.
Data on several factors that matter to families was absent from the available information. There was no data on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, staffing ratios, class sizes, or the range of advanced coursework and elective programming offered at the school. A parent considering Beloit Jr-Sr High would need to ask the school directly about course selection, support services, and the specific opportunities available in the upper grades, particularly since the picture for high school performance and completion is incomplete from this record. The school fits a family looking for a combined junior-senior high experience in a small, rural town where housing is affordable and the community is tightly knit, but where academic proficiency across the middle grades falls behind most neighboring districts.
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