The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Big Rose Colony School
Big Rose Colony School is a small, rural elementary and middle school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in Toole County, Montana, and is part of the Shelby Elementary district. The school is located outside the town of Shelby, a county seat that sits at the intersection of two major highways and has historically been shaped by the railroad, agriculture, and oil development. Shelby itself has seen a population decline over recent decades, and the school reflects that small, shrinking community context. The school's enrollment is very small, with a handful of students in each grade from second through eighth, and most of the younger grades have no students enrolled at all. This pattern suggests the school serves a specific, limited population, likely children from the surrounding rural colony area rather than the broader Shelby community.
The student body is racially homogenous, with all enrolled students reported as white. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that a large portion of the families face economic challenges. Data on the share of students with disabilities and English learners is not available in the source materials, so a parent or resident would need to ask the school directly about those support services.
Academically, the picture is essentially a blank slate due to the school’s size and grade span. For the most recent testing year, no students in the tested grades (three through eight) took the state math or English language arts assessments, so there are no proficiency results to report for those subjects. The science assessment was administered to a very small number of students, but the results are suppressed to protect student privacy, as is standard when the group is that small. The school serves no high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to consider. Because the school’s enrollment is so minimal at the tested grade levels, the state’s academic accountability system does not produce a meaningful performance profile for it. A parent looking for test score data will not find any here, and that is a direct consequence of the school’s size rather than a sign of poor performance; it simply means the numbers are too small to report or no students were tested.
The school itself is not a charter or magnet institution, and data on whether it receives Title I funding is missing. Information on course offerings, staffing ratios, discipline rates, and chronic absenteeism is also absent from the available records. The district brief for Shelby Elementary turned up no recent notable changes or strategic initiatives worth reporting.
For a family considering this school, the most relevant context is its scale and rural location. Big Rose Colony School is a tiny, single-building school that serves a small, economically modest, and entirely white student population from the surrounding colony area. It does not and cannot offer the breadth of programs, elective choices, or extracurricular activities that a larger school would. The school’s academic record is essentially undocumented in state testing data, so a parent would need to rely on direct conversations with the school about curriculum, instruction, and student progress. The housing market in the area is modest: home values in the surrounding zip code are well below the state and national averages, and the town of Shelby has seen a population decline and limited new development, so this is not a high-growth or high-cost area. The overall profile fits a family seeking a very small, close-knit rural school setting where the peer group is narrow in both size and demographics, and where the academic record is not publicly documented through standard metrics. Anyone wanting more concrete information about the school’s day-to-day academic program or student support should reach out to the school directly, as the public data available does not provide much depth.
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