MSD Shakamak Schools

MSD Shakamak Schools is a small two-school Indiana district serving 679 students total — Shakamak Elementary School for grades PK–6 (384 students) and Shakamak Junior-Senior High School for grades 7–12 (295 students, with no separate middle school). The district ranks 291st of 374 in Indiana, in the 22nd percentile with 1 star, and about 42–49% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Shakamak Elementary School stands out for attendance and math: chronic absenteeism is 6.2%, well below the district's 8.7% and the state's 16.7%, and all-grade math proficiency is 41.71% versus the district's 30.77%. Fifth-grade math (45.95%) beats the state's 42%, and 5th-grade social studies improved from 28.95% to 40.54%. However, English language arts is weak in every tested grade — 3rd grade 26% vs. the state's 40.8%, 4th 21.67% vs. 42.2%, 5th 16.22% vs. 42.2%, and 6th 25% vs. 41.3%. The school also slipped from 3 stars and the 54th percentile in 2023–2024 to 2 stars and the 31st–33rd percentile in the two years since.

Shakamak Junior-Senior High School graduates 94.1% of students, above the state's 89.7%, and its Biology End-of-Course score was 58.7% in 2024–2025, well above the state's 45.6%. Its chronic absenteeism (12.2%) also beats the state's 16.7%, though it is nearly double the elementary school's rate. Math is the clear weakness: all-grade math is 10.1%, with 7th grade at 9.62%, 8th grade at 10.64%, and SAT math at 9.8% versus the state's 25.4%. The school's rank history is volatile — 2 stars at the 35th percentile in 2022–2023, 4 stars at the 72nd percentile in 2023–2024, then 2 stars at the 47th percentile in 2024–2025. Despite spending more per student ($11,965 vs. $10,743) and having a smaller student-teacher ratio (10.9 vs. 15.3), the high school's math results trail the elementary school's by a wide margin, making ELA across both schools and high-school math the district's main priorities.