Summary:
Atchison has one listed high school, Atchison High School, serving grades 9–12 with 419 students. Its latest all-grade results, for 2025–2026, show proficiency of 23% in English language arts (ELA), 23% in mathematics and 27% in science. The clearest concern for families is that proficiency is below Kansas results in every subject, with the largest gap in ELA: 23 points below the state, compared with 18 points in math and 11 points in science.
Because it is the only listed school, Atchison High School is both the highest- and lowest-scoring school in the area; there is no meaningful school-to-school comparison. Science is its strongest subject relative to Kansas: the school is 11 points below the state and 2 points above Atchison Public Schools in science. In contrast, it is 8 points below the district in ELA and 4 points below in math. Other outcomes are mixed: the graduation rate is 95%, about 6 points above the state and roughly level with the district, while chronic absenteeism is 31%—13 points above the state and 6 points above the district.
ELA proficiency fell from 37% in 2024–2025 to 23% in 2025–2026, while the state result rose; the school’s ELA gap widened by 15 points. Math slipped from 25% to 23%, and its gap with the state widened by 4 points. SchoolDigger ranked the school 271st of 340 schools and in the 20th percentile in 2025–2026, with 1 star; the previous year it ranked 222nd of 332 and had 2 stars. The school’s student–teacher ratio is 12.1, and 58% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024–2025; that rate is context, not an explanation for results. With only one school listed and a changing pool of schools in SchoolDigger’s rankings, neither local school-to-school comparisons nor a fully like-for-like rank comparison is available.
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