The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in English language arts. The lowest is 15% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Prescott Middle School
Prescott Middle School is a regular public school serving grades six through eight in the town of Prescott, a very small, rural community in central Walla Walla County. The town is a car-dependent agricultural hub near the Snake River and Blue Mountains, with a local economy concentrated in retail trade, manufacturing, and agriculture. The district-level research found little in the way of recent publicly reported changes, so this account focuses on what the school’s own data shows for the most recent year.
The school has a small enrollment for a middle school, with a student body that is predominantly Hispanic or Latino, followed by a smaller share of White students. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a high level of economic need. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and the data does not specify whether it receives Title I funding.
State testing results are available only for the seventh grade; results for sixth and eighth grade, as well as eighth grade science, were suppressed for the most recent year, which often happens when the number of tested students is very small. For the seventh grade, the reported proficiency rates were low in both English language arts and math. The school’s combined proficiency index across all tested subjects and grades, which is the mean of the proficiency rates that were reported, places it in the bottom quartile relative to other districts in Walla Walla County. This is the metric that positions the school among its peers. A single year of data is available, so there is no trend to examine.
Because the school only serves through eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. Data on chronic absenteeism, special education identification, and English learner status were not available in the source data. Information on course offerings, staffing, discipline, and attendance patterns was also absent, so a parent looking into student life and program depth would need to reach out to the school directly.
For families considering the school, the picture is one of a very small, rural middle school serving a high-poverty community, with state test results that are well below the county average in the one grade level for which they were reported. The suppressed results for the other grades likely reflect very small class sizes rather than a deliberate withholding of information, but they do limit a full view of the school’s academic performance. The school fits a family seeking a close-knit, small-town setting for these middle grades, with the understanding that academic proficiency, as measured by state assessments, is a soft spot that warrants direct inquiry. A prospective parent may want to ask the school about curriculum, support for students who are below grade level, and how the school engages families given the high rate of economic disadvantage.
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