Summary:
Sparta CUSD 140 serves three schools across preschool through grade 12: Sparta Lincoln School and Evansville Attendance Center serve elementary and middle grades, while Sparta High School serves grades 9–12. The most pressing concern is the breadth of Sparta High’s 2025–2026 grade 11 ACT results below state levels: 30% in ELA versus 50% statewide, 13% in math versus 40%, and 22% in science versus 48%. Its graduation rate was also 83%, compared with 90% statewide.
Among the elementary schools, Lincoln leads on the comparable all-grades results, while Evansville is lower; both are below state proficiency in ELA and math. In 2025–2026, Lincoln’s ELA rate was 49%, versus Evansville’s 42%, and its math rate was 28%, versus 25%—advantages of 7 and 3 percentage points. Lincoln was 8 points below the state in ELA and 12 in math; Evansville was 15 points below in both. Lincoln has bright spots by grade: seventh-grade ELA was 65%, 8 points above the state, and eighth-grade science was 59%, 7 points above. Its math results varied sharply by grade, including 13% proficiency in fifth grade, 23 points below the state.
Recent results show elementary ELA improving more consistently than math, while high-school trends differ by grade. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, ELA rose at both elementary schools, and their average increased by about 4 points; their average math result was essentially flat as the state improved. Sparta High’s ninth-grade PreACT scores rose substantially, including science from 21% to 47%, nearly matching the state, while its grade 11 ACT results fell from the prior year. SchoolDigger rankings also moved down over the reported histories: Sparta High went from the 41st to the 19th percentile, and Lincoln from the 35th to the 24th. School size and income figures offer context, not explanations: in 2024–2025, Evansville enrolled 109 students with a 9.9 student-teacher ratio, compared with Lincoln’s 735 students and 13.8 ratio; free/reduced lunch eligible students were 21% at Evansville, 66% at Lincoln, and 63% at Sparta High.
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