Summary:
ZIP code 62901 has five schools serving PK–12: three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school, with 2,671 students enrolled overall. The schools cover different grade ranges, from PK–1 at Parrish Elementary School through grades 9–12 at Carbondale Community High School. The clearest shared concern is chronic absenteeism: in 2025–26, all five schools exceeded the state rate of 24%, averaging 38%; rates ranged from 30% at the high school to 47% at Parrish.
Carbondale Community High School stands out as closest to state benchmarks in its reported 2025–26 results: its 11th-grade ACT gaps were 3 points in ELA, 3 in math and 4 in science. Among the largest gaps, Thomas Elementary School’s all-grades ELA result was 36 points below the state benchmark, while its third-grade math result was 29 points below. Carbondale Middle School’s seventh-grade ELA result was 30 points below state. A relative bright spot at Lewis School was fifth-grade science, 12 points below state—closer than its fifth-grade math result, which was 23 points below.
Recent changes are mixed rather than consistently improving: Lewis’s all-grades ELA score rose 8 points and its fifth-grade science score rose 9, while its all-grades math score fell 2; Thomas’s all-grades ELA fell 5 points, and Carbondale Middle’s all-grades ELA rose 5. SchoolDigger’s rankings also show declines in relative standing: the high school moved from the 73rd to the 41st percentile between 2023–24 and 2025–26, Carbondale Middle from the 16th to the 6th, and Lewis from the 28th to the 11th. For context, the 2024–25 free/reduced lunch eligible measure ranged from 61% at the high school to 79% at Parrish; student–teacher ratios ranged from 12.9 at Carbondale Middle to 14.7 at Parrish, with no clear pattern linking either measure to results.
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