Olympia CUSD 16

Olympia CUSD 16 has five schools—three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school—serving students from elementary through high school. In 2025–26, the elementary schools’ results varied substantially: ELA ranged from 50% to 72%, and math from 31% to 51%. The middle school was above state results in ELA, math and science, while high school results differed sharply by grade and subject. The clearest area-wide takeaway is that a student’s school, grade and subject matter: results are not uniformly strong or weak across the district.

Olympia West Elementary led elementary ELA at 72% and fifth-grade science at 67%; its ELA result was 16 percentage points above the state. Olympia North Elementary led elementary math at 51%, 12 points above the state, and had the highest third-grade math result. Olympia South Elementary was lowest in both all-grades subjects, with 50% in ELA and 31% in math—6 and 9 points below state results, respectively. Olympia Middle School was above the state in ELA and science; its math was only slightly higher (39.8% versus 39.6%). At Olympia High School, ninth-grade PreACT results were above state results in all subjects, while tenth-grade science was 13 points below and 11th-grade ACT ELA was 9 points below.

Recent changes reinforce those differences: South’s ELA and math fell 11 and 7 points, while North’s ELA rose 6 points; middle-school ELA, math and eighth-grade science rose 4, 3 and 9 points. The average of the elementary schools’ results remained above state results, but its advantage narrowed from 12 to 6 points in ELA and from 9 to 3 in math. SchoolDigger percentile rankings also declined year over year for all five schools, including South’s drop from 62 to 32; rankings are not proficiency scores. As context, free/reduced lunch eligible figures for 2024–25 were 54% at South, 40% at North and 36% at West; North and South had similar student-teacher ratios (16.4 and 16.5). Olympia High combined a 97% graduation rate with 26% chronic absenteeism, above the state’s 24%; chronic absenteeism at the other schools ranged from 7% to 13%.