Best Public Schools in Protection, KS

Protection, Kansas, has two listed public schools in Comanche County, serving preschool through grade 8: South Central Elementary School (PK–4, 121 students) and South Central Middle School (grades 5–8, 113 students); no high school is listed. Both schools’ 2025–26 all-grades results exceeded state results in the subjects with comparisons: ELA was 60% at each school versus 46% statewide, and math was 49% at the elementary school and 54% at the middle school versus 41% statewide. The most important finding is that these strong overall results conceal grade-level differences: grade 3 was below state in both ELA and math, as was grade 8 in math and science.

The middle school leads the all-grades comparison, especially in math: its results were 54% in math and 60% in ELA, compared with 49% and 60% at the elementary school—a 5-point math advantage and a 0.4-point ELA advantage. Grade-level results show stronger contrasts: elementary grade 4 was 26 points above the state in ELA and 22 points above in math, while grade 3 was 16 and 21 points below, respectively. At the middle school, grade 7 math was 41 points above the state, while grade 8 math and science were 11 points and 11 points below. No elementary science result is supplied for comparison.

Recent trends favor the middle school, while the elementary school’s scores fell: from 2024–25 to 2025–26, middle-school ELA rose 4 points and math 8 points; elementary ELA fell 10 points and math 17 points. SchoolDigger gives the elementary school 3 stars and a 52nd-percentile rank (317th of 657) in 2025–26, down from the 92nd percentile the prior year; the middle school has 4 stars and ranks at the 79th percentile (78th of 368), following two years of improvement. The middle school’s student–teacher ratio is higher, 16.6 versus 14.1, and its free/reduced-lunch rate is lower, 58% versus 64%. Chronic absenteeism is below the state’s 18% at both schools: 4% at the middle school and 6% at the elementary school.