The top reported proficiency rate is 28% in Science. The lowest is 14% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Rattan Jhs
Rattan Junior High School serves seventh and eighth graders in the small, rural town of Rattan, Oklahoma, deep in Pushmataha County. The school operates under the Rattan district and is housed in a historic Works Progress Administration building constructed from native stone, a structure that remains in use today and serves as a civic anchor for a community with very little other commercial infrastructure. The town itself sits at the intersection of Oklahoma State Highways 3 and 93, a low-density settlement whose economy has long been based on wheat and cattle farming, and where a significant portion of residents are American Indian, reflecting the area’s history within the Choctaw Nation.
The student body at the junior high is small, split roughly evenly between seventh and eighth graders. In terms of racial and ethnic composition, the largest group of students is white, followed closely by American Indian or Alaska Native students. Smaller shares of the student population are Hispanic, identify as two or more races, Asian, or Black. The data did not include information on the share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, nor on students with individualized education programs or English learner classifications, so a complete picture of economic and special-education needs is not available from the record.
On state assessments administered through the Oklahoma School Testing Program, the school’s results showed proficiency rates that a parent would want to examine closely. In mathematics, the eighth-grade proficiency rate was well below a quarter of students, while the seventh-grade math rate was suppressed in the data and not reported. In English language arts, about a fifth of seventh graders and roughly a tenth of eighth graders scored at the proficient or above level. Science, tested only in eighth grade, produced a higher proficiency rate, though still below a third of students. These are soft spots in the school’s academic profile. It is worth noting that the state changed its cut scores for math and English language arts in recent years, which makes year-to-year trend comparisons unreliable.
When placed next to the other districts in Pushmataha County, Rattan Junior High’s overall proficiency index – a mean of the reported proficiency rates across tested subjects and grades – falls in the top quartile. This means that while the rates are low in absolute terms, they sit above the midpoint of this specific, rural set of peer districts, where the range of proficiency is narrow and the median is very low.
Because the school serves only seventh and eighth grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and the data did not include information on discipline, chronic absenteeism, or staffing. No program offerings such as career-technical pathways or advanced coursework were available in the record, and no recent district-level changes, bond referendums, or curriculum shifts emerged from public searches.
For a family considering Rattan, the junior high is a very small school in an extremely rural setting with limited commercial infrastructure and no major development or growth documented in the area. The town’s population has fluctuated over decades, and there is no public library or transit system described in available sources. The academic picture is one of low absolute proficiency rates that nonetheless place the school near the top of its local county cohort, though a parent should look into the seventh-grade math suppression and the broader context of state assessment changes when evaluating the school’s current performance.
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