Caston School Corporation

Caston School Corporation is a small, high-poverty two-school district in Rochester, Indiana, made up of Caston Junior-Senior High School (grades 6–12, 435 students) and Caston Elementary School (grades K–5, 381 students), serving 816 students in all. About 61% of junior-senior high students and 64% of elementary students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the district spends $12,372 per student at the junior-senior high and $11,125 at the elementary.

Caston Junior-Senior High School posts the district's strongest outcomes in graduation and science: a 94.5% graduation rate (state: 89.7%), Biology end-of-course proficiency near 59.5% (state: 45.6% in 2024–2025), and above-state 6th-grade science and 6th- and 7th-grade math. Its weak spots are SAT college-readiness benchmarks—36.76% met ERW and 16.18% met math in 2025–2026, well below the state—and its rating slipped from 4 stars in 2023–2024 to 2 stars in each of the last two years. Because it serves grades 6–12, its all-grade ILEARN numbers include middle grades the elementary does not, so all-grade comparisons between the two schools should be read with care.

Caston Elementary School's standout is attendance: 9.4% chronic absenteeism in 2024–2025, below the district's 12.0% and far below the state's 16.7%. Academically, though, its picture is uneven—2025–2026 all-grade ELA, math, and science all fell below the district, ELA was below state at every tested grade, and 5th-grade math was a severe outlier at 19.67% versus the state's 42.0%. 5th-grade social studies also dropped from 53.73% (above state) to 40.98% (below state). Across both schools, reading and writing is the clearest shared concern.