Summary:
Zip code 74953 has two elementary schools in Poteau serving pre-K through grade 4, with 907 students combined: Poteau Primary Elementary School serves pre-K–grade 1, and Poteau Upper Elementary School serves grades 2–4. The schools have similar enrollments—439 at Primary and 468 at Upper—but the clearest academic signal is Upper’s split performance in 2025–26: math proficiency was above the state figure, while ELA was below it.
Upper stands out for math: 36% of students were proficient, compared with 25% statewide and 28% in the Poteau district. Its ELA proficiency was 21%, below both the state and district at 26%. In grade 3, Upper’s math result was 43%, 10 points above the state; in grade 4, it was 30%, 3 points below. ELA was 3 points below the state in both tested grades. For attendance, Upper had the lower chronic absenteeism rate, at 11% versus Primary’s 13% in 2025–26; both were below the state’s 16%. Test scores are supplied only for Upper, so Primary cannot be ranked against it academically.
Upper’s results declined from the prior year: all-grade ELA fell from 31% in 2024–25 to 21% in 2025–26, while math dropped from 42% to 36%. SchoolDigger’s ranking history also moved downward, from the 72nd percentile in 2023–24 to the 70th in 2024–25 and the 50th in 2025–26. The schools’ reported context measures are fairly close: in 2024–25, free/reduced lunch eligible students made up 71% at Upper and 66% at Primary, a 5-point gap; student-teacher ratios were 13.9 and 13.7, respectively. These figures describe differences between the schools, but do not show what caused their academic or attendance results.
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