Original Research by School Decision on Wyola Elementary
Wyola Elementary is a public school serving students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. The school is part of the Wyola Elem district and is located in the small, rural census-designated place of Wyola, Montana, on the Crow Indian Reservation. The community is very sparsely populated and agricultural in character, with farming, ranching, and coal mining shaping the local economy. Families here are a very short drive from Interstate 90, but the settlement pattern is so dispersed that there is no downtown or commercial corridor to speak of. The school itself is likely one of the few civic gathering points in the area.
The student body is small and demographically homogeneous. Every enrolled student is American Indian or Alaska Native. Every student at the school qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which is one measure of economic need. Data on students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and those who are English learners was not available.
Because Wyola Elementary only serves kindergarten through sixth grade, state testing is only administered in the tested grades, which are grades three through eight. For the 2023-24 school year, state assessment results in math, English language arts, and science for all students were suppressed, meaning the state did not release a proficiency rate. A parent reading this should understand that suppression typically happens when the tested group is very small. Twenty-two students were tested in math and English language arts, and six were tested in science. Without an official proficiency rate, it is not possible to make a direct statement about the school's academic performance from state test data. There are no multi-year trends available, so there is no way to see whether performance has been changing over time.
Wyola Elementary is not a charter school. There is no reported information on a range of other school features. The school environment section lacks data on discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance. Title I status was also not reported. The parent district, Wyola Elem, was searched for recent parent-relevant changes, such as boundary adjustments or new program launches, but no such information was found.
Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report. The same is true for the comparison fact-set that positions this school relative to districts in Big Horn County: the comparison metrics for proficiency, graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism were all marked as not applicable because the school does not have these reported outcomes. For a parent or resident, the key takeaway is that Wyola Elementary is a very small rural school with a single-race student population, universal economic need, and no publicly released state test results due to suppressed data. Families considering this school will want to reach out directly to the school or district for the most current information on academic programming, student supports, and day-to-day operations.
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