The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 21%.
Original Research by School Decision on Box Elder 7-8
Box Elder 7-8 is a tiny middle school in the unincorporated rural community of Box Elder, Montana, serving only seventh and eighth graders. The school is part of the Box Elder Elem district and sits on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, home of the Chippewa-Cree Tribe. Every single student enrolled, a small group, is American Indian or Alaska Native, and the entire student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the community’s high poverty levels. The community itself is a very small reservation town with few employers—the tribal government, a casino, a grain elevator, and the school district—and median household income is well below state and national averages. Housing is sparse, the population has been flat or slightly declining, and there is no meaningful commercial or residential growth happening.
Academically, the picture is limited by what the state testing data can show. In the most recent year, the school’s proficiency rate in English language arts was just above a fifth of students tested, placing Box Elder 7-8 above the midpoint among the very small number of districts in Hill County that reported results for this grade band. The math and science proficiency results were suppressed for privacy reasons, which is common when student groups are very small, so there is no public reading on those subjects. Given the school’s size, a parent should not assume suppressed results indicate anything about performance—they simply reflect the state’s policy of not releasing data that could identify individual students. The school tested about a few dozen students in each subject, so the numbers are fragile year to year.
Because this is a middle school without high school grades, there is no graduation rate to review. The data also does not include information on chronic absenteeism, discipline, course offerings, staffing, or special education and English learner enrollment. Those are real gaps. A family considering this school would want to ask the district directly about how it supports students with disabilities and students learning English, what opportunities exist beyond core academics, and what the day-to-day attendance and behavior climate looks like. The district brief turned up no recent major changes or initiatives, so the school appears to be operating on a steady, long-standing footing.
The physical setting is rural and remote. U.S. Route 87 is the only road through town, and the nearest city of any size, Havre, is about a half-hour drive northeast. There is no downtown, no public transit, and almost no pedestrian infrastructure. The school building is embedded in the settlement itself, not on a separate campus, and civic functions like the post office and tribal government offices are nearby. For a family living in or near Box Elder, this is the local public middle school and the only option for these grades unless a family chooses to drive a significant distance. For a family moving into the area, this is a school where every student shares the same tribal community background, where economic need is universal, and where academic proficiency as measured by state tests is low in the one subject that can be reported. A parent should pursue a direct conversation with the school to fill in what the public data leaves blank.
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