The top reported proficiency rate is 26% in English language arts. The lowest is 21% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Taholah Elementary & Middle School
Taholah Elementary & Middle School serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade in the small, unincorporated village of Taholah on the Quinault Indian Reservation in Grays Harbor County, Washington. The school is part of the Taholah School District, which serves this single, remote coastal community at the mouth of the Quinault River. Enrollment is small, and the student body is overwhelmingly Native American, with a much smaller number of students who are Hispanic or identify as two or more races. A very substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating the school serves a population with significant economic need. The village itself is undergoing a major, publicly reported relocation effort due to tsunami and sea-level-rise risk, with new civic infrastructure, such as a senior and children center, already built uphill. The school’s setting is rural and integrated into the village fabric, with tribal government as the dominant local employer.
Because the school serves only through eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. State testing data is available for the most recent school year, and performance fell below the median when compared with other districts in Grays Harbor County. The proficiency rate in math was low, and the rate in English language arts was also low. A single year of data is available for each subject, so there is no multi-year trend to examine. A parent reviewing these results should note that the school’s small size means that the performance of a relatively small number of students can have a large effect on the reported percentages, and the state suppresses data for very small groups to protect student privacy; most grade-level results were in fact suppressed for that reason. For third grade, the only grade with reported rather than suppressed results in both subjects, roughly a quarter of students met the state’s proficiency benchmark in English language arts, while roughly a fifth did so in math. For all other tested grades, data was suppressed, so a full picture of academic performance across the school is not available from the public test results.
The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. No information on specific programs such as advanced coursework, career and technical education, or extracurricular offerings was provided in the data. Similarly, no data on chronic absenteeism, discipline, staffing ratios, or course access was available, so those dimensions of school environment cannot be assessed here. For a parent considering this school, the most directly relevant facts are its small size, its location within a tribal community that is the center of the Quinault Indian Nation, the high level of economic disadvantage among its students, and state test results that were well below the county median. A parent may want to ask the school directly about academic supports, enrichment opportunities, and how the school addresses the challenges that come with high poverty, as well as what the path looks like for students after eighth grade, since the district does not operate its own high school.
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