C A Beard Memorial School Corp

C A Beard Memorial School Corp is a small Indiana district serving about 1,077 students across three schools that together cover the full PK–12 pipeline: Knightstown Elementary School (PK–3, 372 students), Knightstown Intermediate School (4–8, 387 students), and Knightstown High School (9–12, 318 students). The district is ranked 205th of 374 Indiana districts, at the 45th percentile with 2 stars—neither among the state's lowest performers nor above average overall.

The three schools are quite different from one another. Knightstown Intermediate School is the strongest on recent momentum, improving to 221st of 486 schools, 55th percentile, 3 stars, with ELA rising from 30.55% to 40.21% and science above state in 4th and 6th grades. Knightstown Elementary School stands out for math (52.44%, slightly above the state's 51.9%) and has the district's lowest chronic absenteeism at 13.6%, below the state's 16.7%—though its ELA and math both fell sharply year over year.

Knightstown High School shows the widest split: a 98.5% graduation rate, 8.8 points above the state's 89.7%, alongside weak college-readiness results—SAT Math at 10.96% (14.64 points below state), SAT Reading and Writing at 45.21%, and Biology at 23.61%. Its chronic absenteeism of 23.2% is the district's highest and 6.5 points above state, and it slipped to 298th of 415 schools, 28th percentile, 1 star. Notably, math is a strength in early grades but weakens badly later: 7th- and 8th-grade math sit roughly 10–11 points below state. Higher spending and smaller classes at the high school ($14,649 per student, 12.0 ratio) have not translated into stronger test outcomes than the lower-spending elementary school.