The top reported proficiency rate is 53% in Math. The lowest is 47% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Turner School
Turner School serves students from prekindergarten through sixth grade in the unincorporated agricultural community of Turner, Montana, a tiny village on the Big Flat of Blaine County about a dozen miles south of the Canadian border. The school is the elementary arm of the Turner Elementary School District, and the building sits right within the community’s small footprint on First Street East rather than on a separated campus. With roughly ninety residents in the 2020 census, Turner is a place where civic life and the school are effectively the same thing. The post office, a public-use airport, and the school district itself are the primary named institutions; agriculture—farming and ranching—is the area’s economic base.
Enrollment at Turner School is very small, and the student body is overwhelmingly white, with a very small number of American Indian or Alaska Native students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a community with modest household incomes. The grade configuration spans prekindergarten through sixth grade, and families with older children will need to look to the next level of schooling elsewhere, as this school does not serve grades seven through twelve. No information was available on the share of students receiving special education services or English learner support, so a parent with a child in those categories would want to ask about those supports directly.
State testing results are available for math and English language arts from a small group of test-takers. On the Smarter Balanced Assessment, a little more than half of students scored at the proficient level or above in math, and a little less than half did so in English language arts. These are single-year figures from a very small cohort, and they place the school’s overall proficiency index in the top quartile relative to other districts in Blaine County. The county comparison set includes thirteen districts, and Turner School’s composite sits above the county median. Science results were suppressed due to a very small number of test-takers, which is typical of a school this size. Because the school serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report. Chronic absenteeism data was also unavailable.
No major referendums, property tax changes, curriculum shifts, or other parent-relevant developments were found in the available record for the Turner Elementary School District in recent years. The district is very small, and any changes that have occurred appear not to have been publicly documented in a way that is easy to locate. A parent considering this school should recognize that they are looking at a rural elementary environment with limited scale, where the academic data comes from a very small number of students and should be interpreted with that context in mind. The school’s strength in the county comparison is notable, but the small cohort means year-to-year swings are possible. For families rooted in the Turner area or drawn to a tight-knit agricultural community, this school offers the elementary years in a setting where the school and the town are one and the same.
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