The top reported proficiency rate is 67% in Science. The lowest is 57% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Canyon Elementary School
Canyon Elementary School sits in Kemmerer, the county seat of Lincoln County, Wyoming, and serves kindergarten through sixth grade. It is part of Lincoln County School District #1, operating alongside Kemmerer High School and New Frontier High School on separate campuses. The school draws from a town shaped by coal mining and power generation, a place with a historic commercial core anchored by Herschler Triangle Park and the original J.C. Penney store, surrounded by low-density residential neighborhoods. The enrollment is modest for its grade band, with roughly even distribution across grades, and the student body is predominantly white with a small Hispanic presence and a handful of students from other racial backgrounds. Data on free or reduced-price lunch, special education, and English learner populations was not reported, so those dimensions of the school's student support picture are not available here.
On state assessments, Canyon Elementary shows solid, consistent results across the tested grades. The school uses Wyoming's WY-TOPP assessment, and participation is effectively universal in nearly every grade and subject. In math, proficiency rates sit around the mid-fifties to mid-sixties percent range across grades three through six, with fourth grade the strongest. English language arts follows a similar pattern, with fifth and sixth grade reaching into the mid-sixties and the younger grades landing just above the halfway mark. Science, tested only in fourth grade, was the school's highest result, with a clear majority of students proficient. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it above the midpoint relative to districts in Lincoln County, which is a two-district set. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement, stability, or decline over time.
Because Canyon is an elementary school serving only through grade six, it has no graduation rate, and that metric does not apply. Chronic absenteeism data was not reported. Discipline, course access, staffing, and Title I status were all absent from the available data, so those pieces of the school environment cannot be characterized here. Program offerings were not provided either. A parent wanting to understand enrichment, intervention, or specialized programming would need to ask the school directly.
Kemmerer itself is a working-class town with an industrial identity. The Kemmerer Coal Company mine still operates south of town, and the Naughton Power Plant on the southwest edge has long been a major employer. The power plant is scheduled to stop burning coal in the near term, and TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed nuclear energy company, has begun site preparation for a sodium-cooled nuclear reactor nearby, with a publicly reported target opening around the end of the decade. That project could reshape the local economy and labor market in coming years. The town's population has been gradually declining since the nineteen eighties, and no large new housing developments were identified in available sources. Fossil Butte National Monument lies a short drive west, and the Hamsfork Recreation Area offers camping, fishing, and hunting nearby.
Housing in the Kemmerer zip code is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. The typical home value sits well below the Wyoming state level and the national level, and the price-to-income ratio is moderate. Rent data was not available. For a family considering a move, this means homeownership is within reach by national standards, though the housing market is thin in a small, slowly declining town.
What the picture adds up to is a small, stable elementary school with respectable state test results in a town navigating a generational economic transition. The academic results are genuinely solid, particularly in the upper elementary grades and in science. The gaps in available data, especially around student support services, staffing, and program offerings, are real enough that a parent would want to fill them in conversation with the school. The community context is distinctive: a coal-and-power town preparing for a nuclear future, with outdoor recreation close at hand and housing costs that do not present the barrier they would in many parts of the country.
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