Summary:
Tatum Municipal Schools is a small district in southeastern New Mexico that serves exactly one high school program, Tatum High, which covers grades 9 through 12 for 129 students at 307 West 3rd Street in Tatum, NM 88267. The district is ranked 19th of 87 in New Mexico (78th percentile, 4 stars), and Tatum High is ranked 37th of 132 high schools for 2025–2026 (72nd percentile, 4 stars) — placing it in the top quarter of the state.
Because there is only one high school here, families get a single, consistent picture rather than a choice between campuses. The standout strengths are graduation and science. The graduation rate is 94.2%, a full 13.6 percentage points above New Mexico's 80.6%, and the district rate is the same since Tatum High is the district's only high school. In 2025–2026, 11th-grade science proficiency was 52.17% versus state rates of 34.02% and 34.27%, an advantage of roughly 18 points, and 11th-grade language arts reached 47.83% against state rates near 37%. Language arts also improved year over year, from 40.00% in 2024–2025, when it sat just 1.56 points above the state, to a double-digit lead now. The school reports a 9.1 student-teacher ratio and a free/reduced lunch rate of 43.41%.
One important gap: all school-level mathematics proficiency figures are suppressed by the state. That means math is unknown here, not zero, missing, or weak, and it should not be read as a shortcoming; it is simply a metric families cannot yet judge. The district's all-grades math proficiency is 35.88% versus the state's 25.54%, though that is district-wide rather than 11th-grade specific, while state 11th-grade math sits low at 12.72% (NM Combined) and 12.53% (SAT School Day). The rank trend has been broadly positive — 53rd of 172, then 44th of 131, then 37th of 132, with a 3-star rating in 2024–2025 followed by a 4-star rebound. With a cohort this small, year-to-year score swings should be expected and read with caution.
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