The reported proficiency rate for Science is 0%.
Original Research by School Decision on Grant School
Grant School is a tiny rural school serving prekindergarten through eighth grade in the Grant Elem district, located on a state highway outside Dillon in southwestern Montana. This is a one-school district, so what applies to the school applies to the district as a whole.
The school has a very small enrollment, with a handful of students concentrated in the early elementary grades. For the most recent school year, the student body was entirely white, consistent with the surrounding region’s demographics. Data on free or reduced-price meal eligibility, special education services, and English learner status were not available in the records provided.
State testing results from the most recent year are largely suppressed due to the very small number of test-takers, a common practice when student counts are this low to protect student privacy. In math and English language arts, the proficiency rate is suppressed because only a couple of students were tested. In science, no students were tested at all, so a proficiency rate of zero appears in the record but reflects the absence of test-takers rather than a meaningful measure of student performance. Any parent considering this school should speak directly with staff to understand how the school measures academic progress, because the published data cannot provide a reliable picture of student achievement here.
The district itself has no notable parent-relevant changes, such as boundary adjustments or program additions, from recent years. This is not unusual for a rural single-school district where operations are straightforward.
Grant School is located in Beaverhead County, a landscape defined by ranching, mining, and outdoor recreation. Dillon is the county seat and home to the University of Montana Western, a small public university. The town itself has a walkable downtown with shops and restaurants, and the surrounding area offers ready access to national forest land, fishing on the Beaverhead River, and historic sites like Bannack State Park. The local economy includes talc mining, healthcare, county government, and agriculture. The population is growing modestly, with housing values in the area around the national midpoint. For a family used to a rural setting, this is a familiar environment; for a family coming from a suburban or urban area, the remoteness and limited services would be a major shift.
Because Grant School serves only through eighth grade, there is no high school graduation rate to report. A family with children who will eventually need a high school would need to plan for the transition to high school elsewhere, likely in Dillon or through an alternative arrangement. The comparison data that would typically position this school against other districts in Beaverhead County could not be calculated because the cohort of schools with reported testing data was too small to draw comparisons.
In sum, Grant School is an exceptionally small, rural, single-school district with a young grade span and no meaningful public test-score profile due to that size. It is a place that suits a family seeking a very small school environment in an agricultural and outdoor-recreation community, and where direct conversations with the school will be essential to understanding the academic experience.
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