Summary:
Zip code 35806 in Huntsville, Alabama, is served by a single public high school, Columbia High School, which enrolls 916 students in grades 9-12 as part of the Huntsville City School District.
For families in this area, Columbia High School is the only high school option, so understanding its performance is critical. The school faces significant academic challenges, with 11th-grade proficiency rates well below both district and state averages. In mathematics, only 7.21% of students are proficient compared to 30.67% district-wide and 27.21% statewide. Science proficiency stands at 16.29% versus 38.65% for the district and 36.17% for the state. English proficiency improved notably from 11.34% to 20.47% year-over-year, but still trails the state average of 33.73%. The school has consistently ranked in the bottom fifth of Alabama high schools (17th-19th percentile) over the past three years, earning a 1-star rating. With 57.53% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch, the school serves a predominantly low-income population, and per-student spending is $10,661.
Despite the low test scores, Columbia High School maintains a graduation rate of 90.6%, close to the state average of 91.5% and only slightly below the district's 94.5%. Chronic absenteeism at 10.1% is actually better than the state average of 12.0%, suggesting attendance is not the primary issue. The student-teacher ratio is 16.9:1. The gap between Columbia and its own district is striking—the Huntsville City district performs near or above state averages, while Columbia lags far behind. This suggests the school faces unique challenges not shared by other schools in the district. Parents should be aware that while the school shows some improvement in English and maintains reasonable graduation rates, the persistent low proficiency in math and science, combined with the school's stable bottom-quintile ranking, indicates systemic academic struggles that warrant close attention.
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