The top reported proficiency rate is 49% in English language arts. The lowest is 23% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Webster County High School
Webster County High School sits in Upperglade, a small unincorporated community in the hills of Webster County, West Virginia. The school serves grades seven through twelve, drawing students from a rural area where the local economy leans on natural resource industries and agriculture. Upperglade has no downtown core; homes and civic buildings are scattered along rural state routes, and a personal vehicle is essential for getting anywhere. The school itself is one of the few institutional anchors in the immediate area, alongside the local post office. The setting is quiet, forested, and spread out, which families should understand as a plain fact of life here rather than a drawback or a selling point.
The enrollment is modest for a combined middle-high school spanning six grades. The student body is nearly entirely white, with very small numbers of students identifying as Black, Hispanic, or multiracial. We looked for data on free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, individualized education programs, and English learners, and none was available. The absence of these figures limits the picture of student support needs, and a parent may want to ask the school directly about how it serves economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities.
State assessment results from the most recent school year are available only for the middle grades, seventh and eighth, which is consistent with the grades this school serves. West Virginia tests younger grades as well, but those results do not appear here because the school does not enroll students below seventh grade. High school grade assessment data was not available in the provided records.
In English language arts, the school's seventh graders showed proficiency at a level that sits in the upper range, with roughly half of tested students meeting or exceeding the state bar. Eighth grade ELA results were somewhat lower but still approached the halfway mark. These are reasonably solid reading and writing outcomes for a small rural school. In math, the picture is weaker. Seventh grade math proficiency landed well below the midpoint, and eighth grade was lower still. Science results for eighth grade were also low. The contrast between ELA and math is clear: students are reading and writing at a higher level than they are performing in quantitative subjects. A parent whose child tends toward humanities may find reasonable traction here, while families with students who need strong math support may want to look into how the school structures math instruction and intervention.
We searched for program offerings, advanced coursework, career and technical education pathways, dual-credit opportunities, and staffing ratios, and none of that information was available in the provided data. The same was true for discipline data, attendance patterns, and Title I status. Without these pieces, it is hard to characterize the academic pathways the school offers beyond the tested middle grades. The district brief for Webster County Schools turned up little in the way of recently reported changes, strategic initiatives, or notable shifts, so there is no broader district-level context to add. Housing values, rents, and broader economic context for the area were also absent from the data, so we cannot speak to what living near the school costs or how the housing market behaves.
What the available evidence does show is a small, rural, combined secondary school where reading outcomes outpace math and science outcomes, in a community where daily life runs on cars, forests, and resource-based work. The gaps in the data are substantial enough that a family considering this school should treat this account as a starting point and ask the school to fill in what the public records do not cover.
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