The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Bainville 7-8
Bainville 7-8 is a small public middle school serving grades seven and eight in the tiny working prairie town of Bainville, Montana. It is part of the Bainville K-12 Schools district, which covers the town's entire pre-K through 12th grade educational pathway. The school sits in a community historically defined by agriculture and cattle ranching, transformed in the early 2010s by the Bakken oil boom, and now in a post-boom contraction phase with a declining population. The town is vehicle-dependent, with most broader services located in neighboring communities across the border in North Dakota. There is no single large employer; jobs are distributed across farming, rail-served industrial facilities, and the school itself.
The school's enrollment is very small. The student body is overwhelmingly white, with a small Hispanic population. About a fifth of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure that reflects the working-class character of the town. Because the school serves only two grade levels, there is no graduation rate to consider—it does not apply here. No data was available on special education or English learner enrollment, staffing, discipline, or attendance.
The most notable gap in this profile is the absence of usable state testing results. For the most recent school year, the state's math and reading assessments reported zero students tested. This is unusual for a school serving tested grades; it may reflect a reporting anomaly or a data suppression due to very small numbers. Science testing was conducted for a handful of students, but those results were suppressed. As a result, there is no reliable measure of academic proficiency or attainment for Bainville 7-8. The available comparison to other districts in Roosevelt County places the school in the bottom quartile for overall proficiency, but that figure is based on an index that could not include meaningful data from this school. A parent would want to contact the school directly for a clearer picture of student performance.
The school's program offerings are not reported in the available data. Given its tiny size, it is reasonable to assume a limited but focused curriculum, likely aligned with the broader district's offerings. The district itself has no reported recent changes of note.
In sum, Bainville 7-8 is a very small rural middle school in a community shaped by agriculture and energy work. For a family considering this school, the most important unknown is academic performance—publicly available testing data does not provide a clear answer. The town is tight-knit and working but remote, with declining population and minimal walkability. The school fits a family seeking a small, local setting in a rural eastern Montana town, but they will need to look beyond the numbers to understand what the classroom experience looks like day to day.
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