Panaca Elementary School

Panaca Elementary School is a PK–6 school serving 193 students in the small rural town of Panaca, Nevada, and it is the largest of the three elementary schools in the Lincoln district. It has a strong recent statewide record: in 2025–2026 it ranked 97th of 376 Nevada elementary schools, at the 74th percentile with 4 stars, a step down from 28th of 379 (93rd percentile, 5 stars) in 2024–2025. The longer trend is notable—after sitting near the state median in 2018–2019, Panaca reached the top of the state from 2020–2021 through 2024–2025 and remains well above average.

In 2025–2026, all-grade proficiency was 45.9% in math and 55.1% in reading, both above the district (42.3% math, 54.2% reading) and the state (36.2% math, 45.2% reading). Reading has been the steadiest strength, above district and state every year, with 6th-grade reading at 61.9%—20.4 percentage points above the state. Chronic absenteeism is the standout improvement: 11.7% in 2025–2026, down from 19.7% and 23.7% in the two prior years, and well below the district’s 15.1% and the state’s 25.5%. That is far better than Caliente Elementary School (29.1%) and Pioche Elementary School (20.0%). Math is above district and state but below Caliente (60.5%) and Pioche (56.7%).

Panaca achieves these results with much lower reported per-student spending—$7,699 in 2023–2024, versus $18,046 at Pioche and $55,290 at Caliente, an extreme outlier that should be read cautiously—and a much higher student-teacher ratio of 23.1, nearly double the nearby schools’ 11.8–11.9. Free/reduced lunch was 47.15%, similar to Pioche and lower than Caliente. Keep in mind that many grade-level and science results are suppressed for privacy and should be treated as unknown rather than as weak. Caliente’s and Pioche’s latest rank data is from 2018–2019, so all-grade figures are the most reliable comparison.