The reported proficiency rate for Science is 0%.
Original Research by School Decision on Turner 7-8
Turner 7-8 is a very small public middle school serving seventh and eighth grades in the unincorporated agricultural community of Turner, a census-designated place in Blaine County about a dozen miles south of the Canadian border. The school sits in the same compact footprint as the village itself. The enrollment is tiny. All students are white. The district is Turner Elem, which serves pre-kindergarten through eighth grade; a separate district covers high school.
Academic performance data is almost entirely suppressed. On the state’s Smarter Balanced assessments for math and English language arts, results were withheld because the tested group was very small. On the Montana Science Assessment, no students were reported as tested, and the proficiency rate was zero. Because of the suppression and the small numbers, no meaningful picture of academic performance at this school can be assembled from state testing data. The school’s overall proficiency index, which combines what little is available across subjects and grades, sits in the bottom quartile relative to other districts in Blaine County, but that comparison is based on a very thin data set.
The school itself is a two-grade building within a small rural district. There is no publicly reported information on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education enrollment, English learner status, chronic absenteeism, or discipline. Graduation rate is not applicable to a middle school. The community context offers some grounding: Turner is an agricultural village with a population of roughly 90 at the last census, with a post office, an airport, and the school as its primary civic institutions. The closest medical facility is in Chinook, a drive away. The district brief turned up no evidence of recent referendums, curriculum changes, tax shifts, or other parent-relevant developments.
For a family considering this school, the central fact is its scale. A seventh and eighth grade program with only a handful of students means very small class sizes and a high degree of individual attention from staff. The trade-off is that any measure of academic performance, program breadth, or peer comparison is hard to gauge from available data. A parent would need to talk directly with the school or visit to understand what instruction looks like day to day, what elective or extracurricular opportunities exist, and how the school prepares students for the high school years to come in a district that splits middle and high school into separate entities. The rural, agricultural character of Turner means the school is deeply embedded in a small, tight-knit community where the school building and the village are effectively one.
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