Southwestern Heights Junior/Senior High

In rural Kismet, Kansas, Southwestern Heights Junior/Senior High serves 310 students in grades 6–12. Its 2025–26 proficiency rates were 30% in English language arts, 25% in math and 28% in science, all below state results. The most important finding is that the school’s results remain behind the state overall, even though the gaps have narrowed since 2022–23.

Science is Southwestern Heights’ strongest subject relative to the state and Kismet-Plains, while math is weakest relative to the state and nearby Meade High. The school trailed state results by 10 percentage points in science and 16 points in both ELA and math; its district gaps were 1 point in science, 4 in ELA and 5 in math. Eighth grade is a bright spot: its math and science rates were 43% and 40%, above state results of 40% and 39%. In contrast, 11th-grade science was 12%, 18 points below the state and 42 points below Meade. Meade is 17.78 miles away and serves grades 9–12, so all-grade comparisons are not perfectly like-for-like; SchoolDigger ranks it at the 92nd percentile with 5 stars, compared with Southwestern Heights at the 10th percentile with 1 star.

Proficiency has improved in every subject since 2022–23: ELA rose from 11% to 30%, math from 8% to 25%, and science from 8% to 28%. The gaps to the state narrowed by 7 points in ELA, 8 in math and 13 in science. Attendance also improved: chronic absenteeism fell from 24% to 13%, below the state’s 18%. SchoolDigger’s overall percentile nevertheless slipped from 17 in 2024–25 to 10 in 2025–26. Its statewide measure of how well the school serves low-socioeconomic-status students fell from the 52nd percentile to the 11th; for English language learners, it was at the 0th percentile in 2025–26, down from the 69th in 2022–23. The school’s student–teacher ratio was 10.9, versus 9.1 at Meade, and its free/reduced-lunch rate was 74%, versus 48%.