Payette Primary School

Payette Primary School is a public elementary school in Payette, Idaho, serving 477 students in grades PK through 4 as part of the Payette Joint District. The school serves a predominantly economically disadvantaged community, with about 71% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—the highest poverty rate among all nearby elementary schools. Academically, the school is one of the lowest-performing in the state, ranking 339th out of 346 Idaho elementary schools for the 2025-2026 school year, placing it in the 2nd percentile with a 0-star rating.

Test scores at Payette Primary are dramatically below state averages and well behind every school in the surrounding region. On the 2025-2026 ISAT assessments, just 26.1% of students were proficient in math and 24.2% in English Language Arts, compared to state averages of 43.1% and 54%. Within the Payette Joint District, the school's math scores are above the district average of 21.6%, but its ELA scores trail the district's 29.1% average. Nearby schools perform considerably better: Fruitland Elementary School posted 40.2% math and 47.0% ELA proficiency, while Maxine Johnson Elementary—a school about 20 miles away that also serves a majority low-income population—achieved 63.4% math and 61.5% ELA proficiency. The gap is especially wide at 4th grade, where the school's ELA proficiency rate of 22.1% is between 14 and 51 percentage points lower than every nearby school reporting 4th-grade data.

Payette Primary also has a higher student-to-teacher ratio (19.0 to 1) than most nearby schools, and its per-student spending of $7,674 is near the bottom of the comparison group. However, there are encouraging signs. Chronic absenteeism has fallen dramatically—from 24.1% in 2023-2024 to 12.2% in 2025-2026—and is now below the state average of 13.8%. Yet this improvement has not yet translated into higher test scores, which dipped slightly over the same period. While Maxine Johnson Elementary demonstrates that schools serving majority-low-income families can achieve strong results, Payette Primary remains near the very bottom of the state rankings—a signal that significant challenges persist despite the positive attendance trend.