Thoreau High

Thoreau High is a grades 9–12 school in Thoreau, NM, serving 389 students in a rural part of northwestern New Mexico as part of Gallup-McKinley City Schools, with 88.69% of students eligible for free/reduced lunch in 2024–2025.

Thoreau High’s statewide performance is very low and has declined over the past decade. In 2025–2026 it ranked 127th of 132 New Mexico high schools—the 4th percentile—with 0 stars. A decade earlier, in 2014–2015, it was at the 35th percentile with 2 stars, and it has received 0 stars in each of the last four school years shown. Test scores are also low: in 2025–2026, 11th-grade ELA proficiency was 13.92 versus a state average of 36.78, and science was 20.25 versus 34.02. Math proficiency is reported only as under 10%, which is a bound, not an exact score, and is below the district’s 23.81% and the state’s 25.54%.

Crownpoint High is in the same district and only about 19 miles away, but it ranks much higher—62nd of 132 in 2025–2026 (53rd percentile, 3 stars)—and its 11th-grade ELA (36.84) and science (38.6) are at or above the state average, with math under 20%. Wingate High School has 362 students and a much lower student-teacher ratio (8.6 in 2024–2025), but no academic outcomes are provided; Thoreau High’s ratio was 21.6 in 2023–2024, though the years do not match. Thoreau High’s graduation rate has been a relative bright spot: 78.9 in 2024–2025, above the district’s 75.8 but below the state’s 80.6, after being above the state in 2020–2021 through 2022–2023. Support for some student groups, including low-income students, has been uneven, and math suppression limits comparisons. Overall, Thoreau High is a bottom-decile school with low proficiency and a declining state rank, though its graduation rate has been comparatively stronger than its test scores.