Summary:
Zip code 67579 has two schools in the Sterling area: Sterling Grade School, serving prekindergarten through grade 6, and Sterling Junior High/Senior High, serving grades 7–12. In 2025–26, both schools’ all-grades ELA and math results were above state results, but science was a notable weak spot at the secondary school: its 30% proficiency was 8 points below the state.
Sterling Grade School stands out for the strongest all-grades results: it reached 70% in ELA, 80% in math, and 59% in science, compared with 49%, 57%, and 30% at the Junior High/Senior High. That is a school-to-school gap of 21 points in ELA, 23 in math, and 28 in science. The grade school is especially strong in math, 39 points above the state; the secondary school is 16 points above the state in math and 3 points above in ELA. SchoolDigger ranks the grade school 39th of 657 (94th percentile, 5 stars) and the secondary school 162nd of 340 (52nd percentile, 3 stars). These all-grades comparisons span different grade ranges, so they are not same-grade comparisons.
Recent results show a mixed trend, with science the clearest concern: from 2024–25 to 2025–26, science proficiency fell 16 points at the grade school and 29 points at the secondary school. ELA rose 2 points at both; math fell 3 points at the grade school but rose 8 at the secondary school. Both schools also reported lower chronic absenteeism than the state: 7% and 8%, versus 18%. In 2024–25, the grade school had a higher student–teacher ratio (12.2 versus 11.5) and free/reduced-lunch rate (42% versus 38%), despite its stronger all-grades scores. The secondary school’s 94% graduation rate was 5 points above the state.
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