The top reported proficiency rate is 30% in Science. The lowest is 0% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Longfellow School
Longfellow School serves students in third through sixth grade in Baker, Montana, a small county-seat town in the far eastern part of the state near the North Dakota border. It is one of the elementary-level buildings within Baker K-12 Schools, the local district. The school’s enrollment is small for its grade band, and the student body is predominantly white, with a modest share of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, a smaller share identifying as Hispanic, and very small numbers of students identifying as Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or two or more races. Roughly a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure that indicates a moderate level of economic need within the school community.
The most notable feature of the academic data is that state test results for math and English language arts are not available to report. The state testing program includes these subjects for grades three through eight, and Longfellow’s grade range falls squarely within that testing window, but the proficiency data for all students in both subjects was reported with a zero percent figure alongside a reported count of zero students tested. The reason for this absence is not clear from the available records. For science, the school did report results, with about three in ten students scoring proficient or above on the Montana Science Assessment. That figure places overall proficiency at the school, across the single available subject, well below the midpoint when compared with other districts in Fallon County. A parent evaluating academic performance here will want to look into what the school offers beyond the available state test results, and to ask directly about how student progress in reading and math is tracked and communicated.
The district, Baker K-12 Schools, does not appear to have undergone any recent publicly reported changes of lasting impact, based on a search of available sources. That leaves the narrative centered on the school itself and its place in Baker.
Baker’s character is shaped by two economic pillars: agriculture, centered on cattle ranching and dryland farming, and the oil and gas industry, tied to the Williston Basin and Cedar Creek Anticline. The town has lived through repeated oil boom-and-bust cycles, and its built environment reflects that, with a compact street grid, a stretch of highway-front motels and service businesses along US-12, and an industrial energy-sector overlay. Housing values in the area are well below the national and state benchmarks, and the local market carries signs of the turnover typical of oil-field worker housing, with a high vacancy rate and a recent uptick in homes listed for sale. The median household income for the national economy sits at a level that makes the typical home here more affordable than in many parts of the country. The economy is dominated by mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction, with public administration and retail trade as secondary sectors, and the most common occupations are in construction and extraction and in installation, maintenance, and repair.
For a family considering Longfellow School, the context is a small, rural school in a town with a volatile but high-wage energy economy, a moderate level of economic diversity among its students, and a clear gap in publicly available reading and math proficiency data that will need to be addressed directly with the school. The school itself occupies the middle elementary grades, a period when students either arrive prepared for the transition to middle school or need additional support to get there, and the absence of that foundational testing information makes it harder to gauge that readiness from the outside. The science results offer a window into one aspect of academic performance, but they are a single data point. A parent or guardian who values a small-school setting in a community with a working rural and industrial character may find Longfellow a natural fit, but they will want to press for a fuller picture of how the school measures student growth in literacy and mathematics.
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