The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 60%.
Original Research by School Decision on Mount Pleasant School
Mount Pleasant School is a small K-8 regular public school serving the Mount Pleasant School District, a single-school district in Skamania County, Washington. The school is located on a rural road east of Washougal, a residential community that functions as a bedroom suburb for workers commuting to Vancouver and Portland. The student body is small and predominantly white, with a modest share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report.
State testing results are limited, largely because the student population is too small for the state to publish most grade-level scores without risking identification of individual students. For the 2024-25 school year, the only proficiency result that was reported openly was for fourth-grade English language arts, where about three out of five students met the standard on the Smarter Balanced assessment. For all other tested grades and subjects in math, ELA, and science, the data was suppressed. The school’s overall proficiency index, which averages across all reported subjects and grades, placed it above the midpoint among the three Skamania County districts that had sufficient data to compare. That index for Mount Pleasant was slightly above the middle of the range, while the county’s highest was substantially higher and the lowest was below the midpoint. This suggests that where data is available, the school is holding its own relative to its immediate county peers, though the small size means year-to-year results can shift noticeably.
The multi-year academic trend shows only a single year of data, so no trend can be drawn. The school’s overall proficiency rate for math was higher than for ELA in that single reported year, but with such a small population, a single cohort’s performance may not be stable.
Nearly all of the school’s students are white; Hispanic students and students identifying as two or more races each make up a very small share. The school does not serve a high number of English learners or students with disabilities in the available data, though the district may serve some students with special needs. No information on chronic absenteeism, discipline, or staffing was available to include.
The district itself is exceptionally small, operating with a single K-8 building and a budget that reflects its size. A search for recent curriculum changes, tax referendums, or other policy shifts found none reported in recent years. The district appears to have remained stable in its operations and offerings.
The housing market in the Washougal area is costly. Home values are well above national benchmarks and have been rising, while rents are also high relative to incomes. The area’s median household income is higher than the national figure, but the cost of housing still challenges many families. The community is described as a quiet bedroom suburb with a small downtown and easy access to the Columbia River Gorge for outdoor recreation. Most employed residents commute to Vancouver or Portland.
For a family considering Mount Pleasant School, the defining feature is its size. With enrollment in the low dozens, every student is well known to staff, and the school operates as a close-knit community. The absence of a high school means that after eighth grade, students would need to transition to a larger school, likely in the Washougal School District or another nearby district, depending on attendance boundaries. The limited testing data makes it hard to gauge academic performance in a broader state context, but within Skamania County the school’s results are serviceable. A parent who values a very small, rural school environment and is willing to look into academic details with the school directly may find this a good fit. A parent seeking wide program offerings, advanced coursework, or comprehensive extracurriculars would need to look elsewhere, as those are not available in a school this size.
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