Summary
McCandless Elementary serves 346 students in pre-K through grade 6 in Hutchinson, Kansas. Its 2025–2026 results were below the state in English Language Arts (ELA), math and science, and the most urgent concern is fourth-grade math: 5% of students were proficient, compared with 16% in the district and 44% statewide.
Science is the school’s strongest subject relative to nearby schools and its district, while math is its weakest. McCandless had 36% proficiency in science, 27% in ELA and 16% in math; the nearby-school averages were 42%, 44% and 38%, respectively. Among the 11 schools compared, McCandless ranked in the middle for science, last for ELA and second-lowest for math. Compared with Hutchinson Public Schools, McCandless was 10 percentage points higher in science, but 5 points lower in ELA and 8 points lower in math. Statewide, it was 2 points below in science, 19 below in ELA and 25 below in math.
Over four years, proficiency rose by 16 points in ELA and 22 in science, but by only 3 in math; science also climbed 13 points in the latest year. SchoolDigger gives McCandless 1 star and an 11th-percentile statewide ranking, up from the 6th percentile the prior year, but it remains near the bottom of the nearby group. SchoolDigger’s measure of how well the school serves Hispanic students stands out at the 30th percentile, compared with the school’s overall 11th; for students receiving special education services, it is at the 3rd percentile, down 17 points in one year. As context, McCandless had 11.7 students per teacher, versus a nearby-school average of about 14, and its free/reduced-lunch rate was 94%, compared with 60% nearby; these figures describe the school and do not explain its test results.
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