The top reported proficiency rate is 18% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Fanshawe Public School
Fanshawe Public School sits along a highway corridor in a very small, deeply rural town in southeastern Oklahoma, serving students from prekindergarten through eighth grade. The school is the community’s central institution and, by publicly reported accounts, has been the largest local employer for some time. The town itself has no downtown to speak of; a fire destroyed most of the business district years ago, and the school building along the highway functions as the primary civic anchor. The population has been declining for decades, and there is no evidence of new housing development or commercial growth.
The student body is small, and the racial and ethnic composition is largely White and American Indian or Alaska Native, with smaller shares of students who identify as two or more races or as Hispanic. No data on economic disadvantage, special education, or English learner status was available in the source material. Because the school serves only grades PK through eight, there is no high school graduation rate to report, and no information on advanced coursework or career pathways would apply to this grade band.
State testing results are reported for the 2024-25 school year, though the picture is fragmentary. In mathematics, the data show proficiency rates that fall in a low single-digit range for the grades where rates could be reported at all. Several grade levels had results suppressed, typically because very small testing populations cannot be reported without compromising student privacy. In English language arts, results were similarly suppressed in most grades, with only grade four yielding a reported rate that was markedly higher than the math rates in that same grade. In science, only the grade eight rate was reported, and it was very low. The overall proficiency index, which averages reported rates across tested subjects and grades, places this school in the bottom quartile relative to other school districts in Le Flore County. A parent should note that the state changed the cut scores for both math and English language arts assessments in this year, which means the results cannot be directly compared to prior years’ scores.
The school’s comparison framework uses the other districts in Le Flore County as its reference group. Within that set, this school’s proficiency index is near the lower end of the range. The context of a very small, high-poverty rural community where the school is also a major employer may be relevant to understanding that position, but the data does not elaborate on that relationship.
The student population by grade is uneven, with noticeably fewer students in some middle grades than in others. That pattern is common in very small schools where a single family’s move can meaningfully shift a grade level’s enrollment. The school has no charter or magnet designation.
For a family considering this school, the most important facts are that it is a very small, PK-through-eight public school in a slowly depopulating rural town, that the reported test scores are very low, and that the school has no high school grades, which means students must transition elsewhere for ninth grade. The school’s role as the community’s anchor and largest employer is a distinctive part of its character, and families who value a tight-knit, rural setting may find that appealing, but the academic outcomes as measured by state assessments are a clear soft spot that a parent would want to investigate further directly with the school.
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