Summary:
Zip code 46979 in Russiaville, Indiana contains three public schools — Western Primary School (K–2, 527 students), Western Intermediate School (3–5, 622 students) and Western Middle School (6–8, 589 students) — all belonging to the single-district Western School Corporation, which shares one campus and serves 1,738 students in a K–8 pipeline with no high school in the zip code.
The two tested buildings are strikingly complementary. Western Intermediate School is the math specialist: all-grades math is 50.66% proficient against the district's 46.08%, and 3rd grade math reaches 56.38% versus 51.9% statewide. It also has the best attendance in the zip code at 9.6% chronic absenteeism and the lowest per-student spending ($8,908), but its ELA (40.1%) and science (36.73%) trail the district, and it ranks at the 52nd percentile with 3 stars. Western Middle School is the mirror image, and the academic standout: 74th percentile, 4 stars, 8th grade math 43.15% vs. 34.2% state (+8.95, the largest above-state gap in the data), 8th grade ELA 50.76% vs. 44%, and 7th grade ELA 48.31% vs. 41.7%. Western Primary School has no test scores, since ILEARN begins in grade 3, but carries the highest poverty rate (44.4% free/reduced lunch), the highest absenteeism (11.6%) and the highest spending ($10,654) with the smallest student-teacher ratio (14.8).
All three schools beat the district (13.7%) and state (16.7%) absenteeism rates, and achievement broadly tracks poverty across the grade bands. Watch items for parents: rank percentile has slipped every year at both ranked schools (Intermediate 63 → 57 → 52; Middle 86 → 80 → 74), 4th and 5th grade ELA fall below state, 5th grade social studies lags state by 8.14 points, and Intermediate science dropped from 45.08% to 36.73% in one year. The district's overall standing is currently carried more by history than by trajectory.
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