The top reported proficiency rate is 67% in English language arts. The lowest is 48% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lincoln Elementary School
Lincoln Elementary School serves students from prekindergarten through sixth grade in the small, unincorporated community of Lincoln, located in the Blackfoot River valley of western Montana. The school is part of the Lincoln K-12 Schools district, a unified PK-12 system that also includes the local high school. The community itself is rural and frontier-like, a former gold mining and logging town that now functions as a service center for outdoor recreation, surrounded by wilderness areas and positioned as a gateway for hikers heading into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. The population has been slowly declining, and the texture of daily life is one where driving is necessary for most errands, with a small downtown cluster along the highway that includes a post office, a community hall, and a library.
The student body at Lincoln Elementary is small, and the school is almost entirely white in its racial and ethnic composition, with a modest share of Hispanic students. Every enrolled student qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which is a marker of the economic profile of the community and places the school in a context where universal meal access is the norm rather than the exception. The district did not report data on students with disabilities or English learners, so a parent who needs specific information about those programs should ask the school directly.
Academically, Lincoln Elementary shows an uneven picture based on the most recent state testing results. In English language arts, a substantial majority of students in grades three through eight scored at or above the proficient level, a result that lands well above the median among elementary and K-8 schools in Lewis and Clark County when looking at an overall proficiency index. Science results, drawn from a smaller group of test-takers, also show a solid majority proficient. Math performance is weaker, with fewer than half of students reaching the proficient bar, which is below what the school achieved in reading. That gap between math and English language arts is a specific point where a parent may want to ask the school about instructional support and intervention approaches in mathematics.
Because Lincoln Elementary serves only through sixth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and the school does not have data on chronic absenteeism or discipline. The district itself, based on a search, has not made public any recent major strategic changes, facility projects, or program overhauls that would reshape a family's sense of what to expect in the near term. The school appears to be operating as a stable, long-standing institution in a community that is not growing.
For a family considering this school, the relevant questions are about fit. The peer environment is small, rural, and economically homogeneous. The academic results show a clear strength in reading and a soft spot in math that the school may be working on. The housing context in the area, based on home values in the zip code, is more affordable than the state benchmark, though the community's slow population decline and limited economic diversification are worth noting. A parent who values a tight-knit, rural school with a demonstrated record in literacy and who is comfortable with a setting where everyone qualifies for meal support and the local economy revolves around recreation and small services would find Lincoln Elementary a straightforward fit. A parent whose priority is strong math instruction or who wants a more diverse and growing community would want to look further into how the school addresses math achievement before making a decision.
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