Salmon District

The Salmon District in Idaho serves approximately 647 students across 3 schools spanning grades PK through 12, including Salmon Junior/Senior High School, Salmon Pioneer Primary School, and Salmon Alternative High School. The district is currently ranked 84th out of 101 Idaho districts with a 1-star rating, placing it in the bottom 17% of districts statewide.

Salmon Pioneer Primary School is the clear standout in the district. Despite serving a higher-poverty population (58.4% free/reduced lunch), it outperforms Salmon Junior/Senior High School in both math (40.0% vs. 23.5%) and ELA (43.1% vs. 40.5%). Pioneer has improved from the 27th to the 32nd percentile and earns 2 stars, while the junior/senior high school dropped from the 44th to the 25th percentile with a 1-star rating. The high school's graduation rate of 82.5% matches the state average, and its chronic absenteeism rate of 11.6% is below the state's 13.8%. Salmon Alternative High School, with just 12 students, has almost no performance data available.

The most striking pattern is the sharp decline in academic proficiency as students advance through grades. At Pioneer, 3rd grade math proficiency is a solid 52.7%, but it collapses to 21.3% by 5th grade. Similarly, Salmon Junior/Senior High School's 8th grade math proficiency is just 15.1% compared to the state average of 41.2%. Science proficiency also took a dramatic drop district-wide, falling from above state averages in 2024-2025 to 29.1% in 2025-2026. On a positive note, chronic absenteeism is not a major issue in either regular school, and the elementary school is improving. The district's highest-leverage opportunity is addressing the transition into 5th grade and the middle school years.