The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Power High School
Power High School occupies a distinct place in Montana’s educational landscape. It is the sole high school serving the Power H S district, a single-campus K-12 system in the unincorporated community of Power, about a half-hour drive northwest of Great Falls along Interstate 15. The school is very small, with an enrollment that reflects the scale of the rural population it draws from. Its student body is predominantly white, with small shares of Hispanic and American Indian students represented. Roughly a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure that places the school in the lower range of economic need compared to many districts nationally.
The community of Power itself is a homestead-era census-designated place with a stable, slow-moving population. There is no traditional downtown, no public library identified in available records, and no large private employer. The economy rests on agriculture—wheat, barley, and livestock—along with the school district itself, small retail businesses, and construction. Many residents commute to Great Falls for work. The school campus functions as the primary civic gathering point, which is typical for a small rural district where the school building doubles as a community anchor. Housing values in Power’s ZIP code are above both the Montana and national median, a pattern that may reflect the area’s proximity to Great Falls and the premium on rural land. Home values have appreciated moderately in recent years, but the area shows no signs of rapid growth or new development.
When it comes to academic performance, the available data is unusually thin and requires careful interpretation. State assessment results are reported only for grades three through eight, and Power High School serves grades nine through twelve. The school therefore has no reported proficiency rates from the state’s Smarter Balanced or science assessments for its own students. The zero values that appear in the data fields reflect that no students in those lower grades attend this school; they are not a measure of high school performance. The proficiency index that compares schools within Teton County also draws on those same third-through-eighth-grade tests, so Power High School’s placement in the bottom quartile of that comparison is not a meaningful reflection of its high school instruction. A graduation rate was not reported in the data, so families would need to ask the school directly for that figure, as well as for college-going and postsecondary readiness information. No information on Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, career and technical education, or other program offerings was available in the data provided.
The school’s small size shapes the peer environment in a way that will appeal to some families and not others. With an enrollment that numbers roughly a few dozen students across all four grade levels, class sizes are necessarily intimate, and students are likely to be well known to every teacher and administrator. The high school shares a campus with the elementary and middle grades, so students grow up together in a single school community. Extracurricular offerings, athletic teams, and course variety are inevitably constrained by the small student body, though rural Montana schools often participate in cooperative arrangements or share programs with nearby districts. Parents considering this school should expect a setting where the school is the center of community life and where a student’s experience is highly personalized.
The district itself has no documented recent changes—no bond elections, no curriculum shifts, no administrative turnover found in public records. That quiet profile is consistent with a very small, stable rural district where change comes slowly. For a family seeking a tiny high school in an agricultural community with strong local ties and a short commute to a mid-sized city, Power High School offers a clear option. For a family looking for extensive academic pathways, broad extracurricular choice, or published test-score data, this school may not provide enough information to make an easy assessment, and a direct conversation with the school would be essential.
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