Summary:
Zip code 66713 has two Baxter Springs elementary schools: Lincoln Elementary, serving pre-K through grade 2, and Central Elementary, serving grades 3–6, with 468 students combined. Test results are available only for Central, so the schools cannot be compared directly on achievement. Central’s 2025–26 proficiency rates were above Kansas’s in all three reported subjects: by 19 points in ELA, 19 in math, and 12 in science.
Central stands out on the achievement data, with its clearest grade-level advantage in grade 4: 30 points above the state in ELA and 23 in math. Its grade 5 advantages were narrower—7 points in ELA and 11 in math. Lincoln cannot be ranked for achievement from the available results. On attendance, however, Central had the lower chronic absenteeism rate: 11%, compared with Lincoln’s 16%, a 5-point difference; Central was also below the Baxter Springs district rate of 19%. Central’s student–teacher ratio was 12.0, compared with 15.3 at Lincoln. Their reported free/reduced-lunch rates were 68% and 65%, respectively.
Central’s all-grades proficiency rates were nearly flat from 2024–25 to 2025–26: ELA rose by 1 point, math changed very little, and science fell by 1 point. Its advantage over state rates narrowed by 1 point in ELA and 2 in math, but widened by 2 in science because the state’s science rate fell more sharply. SchoolDigger’s statewide ranking for Central moved from 65 of 653 schools in 2023–24 to 124 of 657 in 2025–26, while its percentile declined from 90th to 81st. The district’s SchoolDigger rank of 10 out of 268, at the 96th percentile with five stars, is a district rating—not a rating of either school.
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