The top reported proficiency rate is 32% in English language arts. The lowest is 16% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Shiwi Ts'ana Elementary
Shiwi Ts'ana Elementary sits in Zuni Pueblo, a primarily residential Native American community in southwestern New Mexico, about an hour's drive south of Gallup. The community is home largely to members of the Zuni people, and the local economy centers on traditional artisan work like stone fetish carving, inlay silverwork, and pottery, alongside farming of maize and wheat. The pueblo sits in a scenic valley surrounded by mesas, with the Zuni River running through it and the Dowa Yalanne mesa rising just to the southeast. Tribally-run A:shiwi Transit connects Zuni Pueblo and the neighboring community of Black Rock with Gallup to the north. The pueblo itself, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as the cultural and civic heart of the community. No public library was identified in publicly reported sources, and we found no information on recent housing development or growth trajectory for the area.
The school is a regular public school serving prekindergarten through fifth grade, part of Zuni Public Schools. Its enrollment is modest for its grade band. The student body is overwhelmingly American Indian and Alaska Native, which reflects the surrounding community. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations could not be characterized here.
On the most recent state assessments, ELA proficiency sits above what the school posts in math and science but remains a metric a parent may want to look into further with the school. Math proficiency is low, and science proficiency is similarly low, with fewer than one in five tested students reaching proficiency in either subject. ELA is the relative bright spot, with roughly a third of tested students scoring proficient or above. Only one year of data was available, so no trend could be assessed. Average scale scores and participation rates were not reported.
Zuni Public Schools has been undergoing a restructuring, publicly reported as bringing changes in instruction along with initiatives to improve attendance and graduation rates and structured parent and community involvement aimed at academic success. The district has also redesigned its Bilingual Multicultural Program to provide Zuni language instruction to all students at the elementary and middle school levels, with Zuni language electives available at the high school level where students can work toward the State Seal of Bilingualism and Bi-Literacy. For families at Shiwi Ts'ana, this means Zuni language instruction is embedded in the regular elementary program, which connects the school day to the cultural and linguistic life of the pueblo in a direct way.
No data was available on staffing ratios, discipline, course access, attendance, Title I status, or school locale classification. We looked for a neighbor comparison or county-level positioning and found none provided for this entity. Program offerings beyond the Zuni language instruction noted in the district brief were not available. Housing values and rents were not included in the data provided for this community.
Because Shiwi Ts'ana serves only early grades, it has no graduation rate, and prekindergarten and kindergarten students are not part of the state testing picture. The assessment results reflect grades three through five. The gaps in staffing, discipline, attendance, and enrollment detail mean the portrait here is thinner than a parent would want when weighing options. What is clear is that this is a community-rooted elementary school serving a nearly entirely Zuni student body, with a district actively rebuilding its instructional approach and weaving Zuni language into the elementary curriculum. The academic results are weak in math and science and middling in ELA, and a family considering or already enrolled in the school would be right to ask how the restructuring is translating into classroom-level changes and what supports are in place for the many students who are not yet meeting proficiency benchmarks.
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