Navajo Elementary

Navajo Elementary is a PK–5 school in Navajo, New Mexico — in McKinley County on the Navajo Nation near the Arizona line — serving about 310 students, the largest enrollment of any school in its local comparison group, as part of Gallup-McKinley City Schools. About 88.4% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024-25, down from 94.1% the year before and 100% in 2022-23. The school posted its strongest statewide standing in a decade in 2025-26 (26th percentile, 1 star), but it still sits in the bottom quartile of New Mexico elementary schools, and its district ranks 60th of 87 statewide.

Compared with nearby schools, Navajo Elementary trails. Twin Lakes Elementary, about 19.6 miles away, ranks at the 61st percentile with 3 stars, and Tohatchi Elementary, roughly 15.6 miles away, sits at the 47th percentile with 2 stars. Navajo is below its own district average in every subject tested: 33.3% proficiency in Language Arts (district 36.5%, state 43.3%), 18.8% in Math (district 23.8%, state 25.5%), and under 20% in grade-5 Science versus 41.7% at Twin Lakes. Navajo also reports 21.5 students per teacher — more than four times Twin Lakes' 4.9 — though such ratios are often calculated differently across sources, so that figure is worth verifying. Notably, Twin Lakes has a nearly identical poverty rate (87.1%) while exceeding state averages, which suggests demographics alone do not explain the results.

The improvement trend is real and broad. Language Arts proficiency rose from 18% (2023-24) to 25.7% (2024-25) to 32.6% (2025-26), and Math from 12% to 15.8% to 17.8%. Native American students ranked at the 47th percentile with 3 stars in 2025-26, up from the 3rd percentile a year earlier, and low-income students moved from the 5th to the 39th percentile. Grade-level results vary widely: 5th-grade Language Arts (44.1%) beats both district and state, while 4th-grade Language Arts (22.9%) falls far below. Math and 4th-grade reading are the clearest opportunities for growth.