The top reported proficiency rate is 12% in Math. The lowest is 7% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Southwest Es
Southwest Elementary School serves students in second through fourth grade in Clinton, a small city in western Oklahoma. The school is one of three elementary campuses in the Clinton Public Schools district. Because it serves only the early primary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and the school’s performance picture rests entirely on state assessment results for the grades it does teach.
In the most recent testing cycle, proficiency rates in both math and English language arts were well below state averages by a wide margin. In third-grade math, roughly one in ten students scored at the proficient or above level, and in fourth-grade math the figure was slightly more than one in seven. The reading and writing scores were even lower: roughly six percent of third graders and nine percent of fourth graders met the proficiency benchmark. Oklahoma changed its cut scores for these assessments in the same period, so the numbers reflect a new standard and may not be directly comparable to prior years. A parent considering Southwest would want to ask the school about the specific instructional strategies and interventions being used to address those results.
The school is the most populous of the district’s elementary sites. Its enrollment is heavily Hispanic, with white students making up a quarter of the student body, followed by smaller shares of students who are American Indian, two or more races, Black, and Asian. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, receive special education services, or are classified as English learners was not reported in the available records, so a family cannot assess those population dimensions from this profile alone.
Clinton itself is a Route 66 town that has seen a gradual population decline over recent decades. The local economy rests on a mix of agriculture, light manufacturing, automotive fabrication, tourism, and a tribal casino. Housing is more affordable than the national median, with home values rising modestly in the past year. The community is auto-oriented, with Interstate 40 bypassing the city to the south. Parents should expect a low-cost-of-living environment typical of rural western Oklahoma.
When compared with the other school districts in Custer County, Southwest Elementary sits in the bottom quartile for overall proficiency across the subjects and grades tested. The comparison set includes only four districts, so this is a small field. The overall proficiency index for the school, averaged across tested grades and subjects, was roughly ten percent, while the median district index in the county was above forty percent, a gap that merits serious attention. No data on chronic absenteeism was available in the county comparison set.
A parent looking at Southwest Elementary will find a school with a large student body for an early-elementary building, serving a predominantly Hispanic community in a small city that values its Route 66 heritage and offers low housing costs. The academic performance numbers are a clear soft spot, and the district has not publicly signaled recent curriculum or support initiatives, based on the available search results. That lack of visible district-level strategy leaves questions about how the school plans to improve student outcomes unanswered in this profile.
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