Statewide, Idaho students fared worse than last year on one of the principal benchmarks for measuring learning, the Idaho Standards Achievement Test — and they fell short of the state’s goals for proficiency in math and English. 

But there are some bright spots around the state, where schools and districts outshone their peers. To celebrate their success, EdNews has mined statewide data to come up with top 10 lists that showcase those schools and districts.  

Below, we take a look at the highest performers in these categories:

• Traditional public schools
• Charter/magnet/nontraditional public schools
• Traditional districts
• Large traditional districts
• Nontraditional local education agencies (charters)

We broke down the lists in this way in an effort to compare the most similar types of schools and districts. 

For example, certain charter schools and magnets might be able to attract a primarily college-bound clientele who are especially self-motivated to achieve academic success. Essentially, some of those become de-facto advanced or honors schools, so comparing them to a traditional public school isn’t necessarily equitable. 

Enrollment numbers also impact test results. In smaller schools and districts, it can be easier to achieve high proficiency rates than in large schools/districts because data more easily skews high or low based on the performance of a relative few. 

For that reason, we included a top 10 list for just the state’s largest districts. 

While we strive to compare apples to apples in these top 10 lists, they’re still imperfect. For example, they don’t take into account factors such as student grade levels or demographics (a student body’s affluence, English proficiency, and other such factors can affect a school’s test results). But it gives the public a glimpse at some of the state’s high performers. 

It’s also worth noting that the State Board of Education’s data management council sets rules to redact certain test results or other student information for a number of reasons.  Therefore, some schools’, districts’, and/or charters’ data has been redacted or masked to protect student privacy, so they won’t be represented on these lists.

To see the complete dataset of ISAT math and ELA results for schools, click here. To see the complete dataset of ISAT math and ELA results for districts, click here. 

The ISAT also includes a science portion, and EdNews plans to provide coverage of those results in coming days. 

Top 10 Traditional Public Schools

Schools in the West Ada School District claim four of the top spots for English performance, and five of the highest-performers are from North Idaho. And 90% were high schools. Troy Junior/Senior High, an especially small school, is a notable outlier that often makes these lists. 

West Ada also dominates the top performers in math, with five schools in the top 10. Seven are in the Treasure Valley, and 90% of the schools are located in larger cities and towns. Prairie Elementary, a rural one-room schoolhouse, is the only smaller school to make the list. 

Top 10 Charter/Magnet/Nontraditional Public Schools

Traditional public schools had to have 81% of their students score proficient or higher to make the ELA top 10 list, while nontraditional schools had a much lower entry score of 69.4 or above. 

Once again, half of the schools on the list are from West Ada. And most are magnet schools that are associated with a traditional district. 

The West Ada takeover continued on the math ISAT, with 90% of the schools on this list from the large, urban district. All were magnets associated with a traditional district, and once again, the threshold for getting on the list (65.6) was lower than it was for traditional schools (74). 

Top 10 Public Traditional School Districts

A number of smaller districts — which also have fewer students, and data that’s more easily skewed — prevail on these lists. West Ada, which had a significant number of high-performing individual schools, was down at the number eight spot. 

Again, this list is mostly comprised of smaller districts, with only West Ada making the cut for those with higher enrollment.

Top 10 Large Public Traditional School Districts

These lists rank Idaho’s 10 largest districts: West Ada came out on top in both, while Nampa fell to the bottom. The two districts are both in the Treasure Valley, but had differences in student performance that ranged from about 20% (math) to 44.3% (ELA). 

Top 10 Charter schools

The threshold to get on these top 10 lists was higher than it was for the traditional school districts: a charter had to have an ELA proficiency rate of 73.3% or above, compared to 63.2% or above for districts. For math, charters had to have 69.6% proficiency or better, and for districts it was 55.2%.

EdNews Data Analyst Randy Schrader contributed to this report.