The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Red Lodge High School
Red Lodge High School serves grades nine through twelve in a small mountain town that doubles as the Carbon County seat and a tourism gateway. The school sits within the compact historic core of Red Lodge, a community that has shifted from coal mining to tourism, recreation, and ranching as its economic base. The downtown along the main street is walkable and lined with locally owned shops, galleries, and restaurants, and the town’s population swells notably during summer tourist season. For families considering this school, the setting offers a blend of small-town routines and seasonal visitor energy.
The high school enrolls a relatively small student body. The student population is predominantly white, with a Hispanic share and a small Native American presence, reflecting the demographics of the broader region. Roughly a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that gives a sense of the economic mix in the community. The school is part of the Red Lodge H S district, which also includes an elementary and a middle school within the same small town.
Academic performance data requires careful reading here. The state testing results available in this dataset cover math, English language arts, and science for grades three through eight only. Because Red Lodge High School does not serve those grades, the proficiency rates reported as zero percent are not meaningful for this school—they reflect no students tested in those grade bands. Parents looking for high school–level state assessment results will not find them in this profile. The graduation rate is also absent from the data. A neighbor comparison places the school’s overall proficiency index in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Carbon County, but that comparison is based on the same uninformative middle-grade data. Any real judgment about academic performance at this high school would require the school’s own assessment results, which this dataset does not contain. A parent may want to ask the school directly about its state testing outcomes, college readiness measures such as the ACT, and graduation rates.
Housing values in the Red Lodge area sit above both the state and national benchmarks, a pattern common in gateway communities near Yellowstone National Park and the Beartooth Mountains. The local market reflects demand from second-home buyers and tourism-related investment. The town’s growth has been slow and modest; its population peaked during the historical coal boom, declined, and has since recovered gradually. A major flood in 2022 caused significant damage, a reminder that this mountain setting carries environmental risks.
At the district level, two recent developments stand out. The district undertook a major capital construction project in fiscal year 2021–2022, representing a large infrastructure investment that has likely improved school facilities and will affect the local tax base for years to come. For the 2025–2026 school year, the district also implemented a new cell phone use policy that sets expectations for student phone use during the school day—a practical change that may matter to families concerned about distraction.
Red Lodge High School is a good fit for families who want a small high school in a historic mountain town with outdoor recreation at the doorstep and a tourism-driven local economy. The school’s academic profile is not clearly visible from the data available here, so a prospective parent should treat that as an open question to explore with the school itself. The community offers a walkable downtown, civic anchors like the Carnegie Library and arts guild, and easy access to national forest and wilderness. The housing market is expensive relative to national averages, and the seasonal tourist influx changes the town’s character through the year. For a family that values a small, place-based high school experience in a scenic setting, Red Lodge High School is worth a closer look—but with the understanding that the numbers typically used to compare schools are simply not on the page for this one.
See more original research from School Decision →