Best High Schools in Zip Code 28711

Zip code 28711 contains one high school, Owen High, which serves grades 9–12 with 649 students in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and is part of Buncombe County Schools, a 3-star district ranked 109th out of 246 districts statewide. As the only high school in this zip code, Owen High carries the full educational responsibility for its attendance zone, and the most useful benchmarks are the Buncombe County district averages and North Carolina state averages.

Owen High serves a student population where 98% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, yet its outcomes are steady. Its graduation rate is 89.7%, slightly above the state's 88.8% and just below the district's 90.8%. The most striking figure is attendance: chronic absenteeism is just 13.8%, far better than the district's 18.7% or the state's 24.2%. Academically, the school improved in three of four End-of-Course subjects in the most recent year. English II proficiency of 68.8% tops both the district (65.1%) and the state (64.6%), and Math I jumped from 28.8% to 44.4%, now beating both the district (38.5%) and the state (42.1%). Math III proficiency of 69.0% remains strong, and Biology surged by 26.5 percentage points to 62.0%, above both district and state averages.

Owen High's primary academic concern is Math I, which still trails all other subject areas despite its recent improvement; the large gap between Math I (44.4%) and Math III (69.0%) proficiency is unusual and worth understanding. The school's statewide rank has been volatile, moving from the 60th percentile, down to the 45th, then back to the 52nd in the most recent year alongside a return to a 3-star rating. Given the high poverty rate, graduating nearly 90% of students and maintaining such low chronic absenteeism is commendable. For parents, the picture is of a mid-ranked school with genuine strengths in literacy, attendance, and recent science gains, and one that is holding its own — and in several areas outperforming — both its district and state benchmarks.