Original Research by School Decision on Preston High School
Preston High School sits on Knight Drive in Kingwood, the county seat of Preston County, and serves grades nine through twelve as the county's main public high school. It is a large school for this part of West Virginia, drawing students from Kingwood itself and the surrounding rural communities. The student body is overwhelmingly white, with only a small number of students identifying as multiracial, Hispanic, Asian, or Black. Data on free or reduced-price lunch, special education, and English learner populations was not reported, so it is hard to say from the available information how the school serves its most vulnerable students. A parent may want to ask the school directly about those supports.
On state testing, the picture is thin and partly explains itself. The West Virginia General Summative Assessment covers grades three through eight, and Preston High does not serve those grades, so those grade-level results are missing for the straightforward reason that the school has no students in them. What the data does show is a single year of all-grades proficiency in math and science, and the reported rates are extremely low, close to zero. Because only one year is available, there is no trend to assess. No English language arts proficiency figure was reported at the school level for the same period. State testing data for grade eleven, the high school grade that West Virginia does test, was not available in this dataset. A parent trying to judge academic performance from these numbers alone would have very little to go on, and asking the school for its most recent eleventh-grade results and any internal benchmarks would be a reasonable next step.
No graduation rate was provided, and no information on Advanced Placement, career and technical education, dual-credit, or other program offerings was available. This is a real gap. For a high school, those pathways are often what families most want to understand. The absence here means a family would need to contact the school or the district to learn what courses and postsecondary options are on the table.
Kingwood itself is a small mountain town with a history in coal and timber. The built environment centers on a compact downtown grid listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with the county courthouse, a public library, a hospital, and the schools all within the city limits. A rails-to-trails greenway runs from Kingwood to Tunnelton, giving residents a walking and biking corridor. The town hosts the annual Buckwheat Festival, a four-day community event. Major employers include Preston Memorial Hospital, county government, and Camp Dawson, a National Guard training site just to the northeast. The town has been losing population slightly, and no major new housing developments are noted.
Housing in the area is affordable by national standards. Typical home values in the school's zip code sit well below both the state and national benchmarks, and the price-to-income ratio is low relative to the national figure, meaning a family earning a typical income faces a lighter purchase burden than in most of the country. Rent data was not available. For families considering a move, this is a place where homeownership is relatively attainable but where the local economy is modest and the tax base is limited, which can shape what a school is able to offer.
Preston County Schools, the parent district, recently added the Rowlesburg Opportunity Center, established in 2025. That change may affect school assignments or educational options for families in the Rowlesburg area, though it does not directly alter Preston High's attendance zone.
What kind of place is this? It is a large, conventional public high school in a small, affordable mountain county seat, serving a predominantly white student body in a community where civic life and schools are woven into the town rather than separated on sprawling campuses. The academic evidence available is too sparse to render a confident judgment. The extremely low proficiency figures that were reported deserve a direct conversation with the school, and the missing data on programs, graduation, and student supports means a family would be making a choice with an incomplete picture unless they fill those gaps themselves.
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