Tatum H S, Tatum TX - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Tatum H S

Tatum High School is a four-year school serving grades nine through twelve in Tatum, a small East Texas town in Rusk County's Piney Woods region. The school sits in a settled residential and recreational community oriented around Lake Cherokee waterfront neighborhoods and wooded lots, where most daily life is car-dependent and civic anchors include the Tatum Public Library, the Santa Fe Museum, and a small historic downtown core.

The student body numbers around 450, roughly balanced across all four grades, and reflects the town's mixed racial and ethnic composition: a substantial plurality white, with meaningful shares of Hispanic and Black students. About half the enrollment qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, situating Tatum High in a population where economic pressure is a real factor for many families.

On Texas state assessments for 2024-25, the school shows middle-range proficiency. Across all tested subjects, most students reach the "approaches grade level" threshold, indicating they grasp the basic content. In English and social studies, students land solidly in the approaches range, while math proficiency is lower, with notably fewer students reaching the "meets" standard. Science is the school's strongest area, with proficiency rates well above those in other subjects. The pattern is fairly common for schools in this region: reading and general content knowledge sit at workable levels, but math skills and the deeper mastery needed to reach "masters" levels lag. Only modest shares of the student body cross into the top proficiency tier in any subject.

The school is part of Tatum Independent School District, which passed a property-tax increase in November 2024 aimed at raising teacher salaries, improving retention, and upgrading safety and security infrastructure including surveillance and access controls. That vote signals the district's bet that better pay and safer facilities will help stabilize staffing and the school environment.

A parent evaluating Tatum High should know that this is a foundational, resource-constrained setting where strengths in science and broad content exposure exist alongside work needed in mathematics and advanced skill development. The school serves a genuine cross-section of the town: working families, students with economic need, and a diverse peer group. A parent might want to look into what specific support or tracking the school offers in mathematics, whether any dual-credit or career-technical pathways are available to upper-grade students, and how the recent tax increase is being deployed to help students achieve the higher proficiency tiers. State testing data available to date covers only one year, so trend or growth patterns are not yet visible.

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Academic performance

How students graduate and prepare for what comes next.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

>=95%Cohort of 118 students · Class of 2021

The federal source publishes a banded range instead of an exact rate when the graduating cohort is small enough that an exact number could risk identifying individual students.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

1,779 schools plotted. 59 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.