The top reported proficiency rate is 36% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Brentwood Colony Elementary - 05
Brentwood Colony Elementary - 05 sits in the Faulkton Area Schools 24-4 district, serving kindergarten through eighth grade from a rural address outside Faulkton, South Dakota. The school is very small, with total enrollment in the teens spread across the grade band, and some grades have no students at all in a given year. The student body is entirely White, with no racial or ethnic diversity reported. No free-or-reduced-price lunch data, English learner data, or special education data was available, so the economic and special-population picture is incomplete.
The name and profile point to a colony school, a pattern common in this part of South Dakota where small, rural, single-community schools serve tight-knit agricultural settlements. The setting itself reinforces that read. Faulkton is a small farming and ranching community and the county seat of Faulk County. Its economy runs on agriculture, with area crops including soybeans, corn, rye, and sunflowers, and beef cattle operations dominating the livestock side. The town sits along a U.S. Highway and is compact in land area, with civic functions like the courthouse centralized. Lake Faulkton, a recreational anchor fed by the South Fork of the Snake River, sits a few miles west. Publicly reported sources note the town has seen modest population growth since the 2020 census, and no major new housing developments or development projects were identified.
On state assessments, the school's math and English language arts proficiency rates for grades three through eight came in below the midpoint, with about a third of tested students reaching proficient or above in both subjects. Every student who was enrolled in the tested grades participated, so the results reflect the full cohort rather than a partial sample. That said, the testing pool is small, which means a single student's performance moves the proficiency rate considerably. A parent reading these results should keep that scale in mind. Science proficiency was suppressed, which often happens when the number of tested students in a subject is too small to report reliably. No multi-year trend data was available, so there is no way to tell from the provided data whether these results represent a steady pattern or a one-year snapshot.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate, no AP or career-technical data, and no dual-credit information to assess. No program offerings were listed in the data, and no staffing, attendance, or discipline information was provided, so the picture of day-to-day school environment is thin. No comparison data against neighboring schools in the county was available either.
The parent district, Faulkton Area Schools 24-4, had no publicly reported parent-relevant changes such as referendums, curriculum overhauls, or facility investments identified in the research window, so there is little to say about recent direction or strategic priorities.
What this school appears to be is a very small, rural, single-community elementary and middle school embedded in an agricultural region. A parent considering this setting would be looking at a close-knit, homogeneous peer environment with small class sizes and full participation in state testing, but also at proficiency results that sit below the state's midpoint and a data profile that leaves real gaps in understanding student support, staffing, and program offerings. A parent may want to ask the school directly about instruction in the untested grades, how the school supports students who are below proficiency, and what the transition looks like when students move on to high school in the broader district.
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