Best Public Schools in Bennington, KS

Bennington has two schools in the Twin Valley district: Bennington Elementary serves prekindergarten through grade 6, and Bennington Junior High/High School serves grades 7–12; they enroll 235 and 219 students, respectively. The clearest shared academic concern is science: in 2025–2026, proficiency was 29% at the elementary school and 33% at the junior/high school, compared with 38% statewide.

Bennington Elementary leads the supplied all-grades ELA and math results, with 54% proficiency in ELA versus 32% at the junior/high school, a 22-point gap, and 46% in math versus 35%, a 10-point gap. Its ELA and math results are also 8 and 5 points above state rates. The junior/high school leads in science by 3 points, but remains 5 points below the state rate. Grade-level results reveal important differences behind those overall figures: elementary grade 3 and 4 ELA and math exceed state rates, while grade 5 math is 13 points below and grade 5 science is 16 points below. At the junior/high school, grade 7 and 8 math is modestly above state rates, but grade 10 ELA is 22 points below. Because the schools serve different grades, their all-grades results are not grade-matched comparisons.

Recent results are mixed, with several declines: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, elementary math fell 4 points and science fell 11, while ELA was nearly unchanged; junior/high ELA fell 6 points and science fell 4, while math rose 1 point. SchoolDigger’s elementary percentile ranking fell from 72 to 54 over three years, and its current rating is 3 stars; the junior/high percentile fell from 35 to 26 in the latest year and is rated 1 star. The schools have similar student-teacher ratios (12.1 and 11.7) and free/reduced-lunch rates (43% at each), while chronic absenteeism differs sharply: 7% at the elementary school versus 26% at the junior/high school. The junior/high school’s 2023–2024 graduation rate was 91%, above the state’s 90%.