The top reported proficiency rate is 40% in English language arts. The lowest is 22% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Silex High
Silex High serves grades six through twelve in a single building, the only secondary school in the Silex R-I district. It is a regular public school in a very small, rural Lincoln County village. The enrollment is small, and the student body is heavily homogeneous, with nearly every student identifying as White. About one in four students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that is lower than what is typical in many rural Missouri districts but still notable in a community where economic opportunity appears limited.
State assessment data is available only for the middle grades; high school results were not part of the available reporting, so a full picture of academic performance at the upper grade levels is not provided here. In the tested grades, math proficiency is a soft spot. Among sixth graders who took the state math assessment, just over one in three scored at the proficient or advanced level. Eighth-grade math results are markedly lower, with fewer than one in ten students reaching proficiency. English language arts results are somewhat stronger: eighth-grade ELA proficiency was just under two in five, a rate that, while below a majority, is notably better than the school’s math showing. Several grade-level results in both subjects, as well as eighth-grade science, were suppressed in the available data, a common occurrence when tested group sizes are very small and student privacy must be protected.
When Silex High is placed alongside the four school districts in Lincoln County, its overall proficiency across all tested subjects and grades lands in the bottom quartile. This comparison is useful for a parent weighing options in the county, but it should be read with the understanding that Silex’s small numbers make year-to-year swings more likely and that high school performance is not captured in this metric.
The town of Silex itself is tiny, a rural community shaped by its heritage and its highway-adjacent setting. The village covers a very small area, and distances within it are short, but the built environment is car-dependent, with no pedestrian-oriented street life. The school’s facilities are almost certainly integrated into or near the small town center rather than on a separated campus. Civic life is compact: the Boonslick Regional Planning Commission maintains an office on First Street, and the city provides basic utility services. Water infrastructure has been a serious and ongoing challenge, including a radium contamination shutoff and periods where water had to be imported. These conditions speak to the broader resource constraints that the community operates under.
The district has no major recent changes publicly reported that would alter a parent’s understanding of the school’s direction. No data was available on course offerings, Advanced Placement or dual-credit options, career pathways, or extracurricular programs. A parent interested in those academic pathways should ask the school directly. Similarly, information on discipline, staffing ratios, and attendance patterns was not included in the available record.
For a family already rooted in the Silex area, this school provides the convenience of a single campus for all secondary grades and a peer environment that is small and demographically uniform. For a family considering a move to the county and comparing options, the test results place the school behind its Lincoln County neighbors in the grades tested, and the absence of high school academic data makes it difficult to assess readiness for college or career at the upper level. The community’s rural character and its infrastructure struggles are real considerations, as is the very small size of the town itself. This is a setting that will fit a family comfortable with a tight-knit, resource-constrained rural school and a somewhat weaker academic profile in the early secondary years.
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