Best Public Schools in Valley Center, KS

Valley Center, Kansas, has seven schools—four elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools—serving different grade spans, including The Learning Center for grades 6–12. Grade-by-grade comparisons are more useful than treating all schools as directly alike. The main takeaway is that academic results vary sharply across the area, with strong results at some elementary schools and especially low reported results at The Learning Center.

Wheatland Elementary leads reported all-grade results in English language arts and math, with 68% and 63% proficient, respectively; Abilene Elementary is close behind at 67% in ELA and 56% in math. In grade 3, both schools exceed state results in ELA and math, while West Elementary is 2 points below the state in ELA and 10 points below in math. Valley Center Intermediate School leads reported science results at 41%, versus 38% statewide. At the other end, The Learning Center reports 15% proficiency in ELA and science and 11% in math—31, 23 and 30 points below state results, respectively. SchoolDigger ranks Valley Center Intermediate at the 63rd percentile in its ranking category, compared with the 8th percentile for The Learning Center.

Recent all-grade averages have moved closer to state results, mainly because several schools declined while state scores rose: the seven-school ELA average fell from 59% to 48%, and the math average from 46% to 41%, between 2024–25 and 2025–26. Wheatland Elementary bucked that pattern, gaining 9 points in ELA and 8 in math; West Elementary and Abilene Elementary both had substantial declines. For additional context, West and Wheatland serve grades K–3 and have similar enrollments, but West’s student–teacher ratio is 11.3 versus 12.2 at Wheatland, and its free/reduced-lunch rate is 53% versus 44%; these figures describe school differences but do not explain them. Because schools serve different grades, all-grade figures and year-to-year changes should be read as broad comparisons rather than like-for-like measures.