Tatum High

Tatum High is a small public high school in Tatum, New Mexico, serving 129 students in grades 9–12 as part of Tatum Municipal Schools, in a rural area where no other schools are located within 20 miles — so the most useful comparisons are to its own district and to the state. In 2025–2026, Tatum High ranked 37th of 132 ranked New Mexico high schools, placing in the 72nd percentile with 4 stars. That is a rebound from 2024–2025 (66th percentile, 3 stars) and slightly above 2023–2024 (69th percentile, 4 stars), though still below the 81st–89th percentile range the school generally held from 2013–2014 through 2018–2019.

Several measures stand out favorably. The 2024–2025 graduation rate was 94.2%, well above the state's 80.6% and identical to the district's rate. In 2025–2026, 11th-grade English/language arts proficiency was 47.83% versus 37.07% statewide, and science was 52.17% versus about 34% statewide; ELA has climbed steadily from 36.11% in 2023–2024. Math is a blank spot — the school's math proficiency is suppressed in the data, so it cannot be judged either way, though the district's all-grades math rate of 35.88% is above the state's 25.54%. The student–teacher ratio improved to 9.1 in 2024–2025, down from 12.8 and 14.0 in the two prior years, roughly a 35% reduction.

The school also earns strong effectiveness rankings for how well it serves some groups of students: in 2023–2024 it placed in the 83rd percentile for students from low-income families and the 82nd percentile for Hispanic students, both with 4 stars. These rankings vary by group and by year. With only 129 students in grades 9–12, a small number of students can swing year-to-year percentages and rankings noticeably, so multi-year trends are more meaningful than any single year. Because no nearby schools were part of this data, no peer-school comparison is possible.