Summary:
Nehalem, Oregon is served by a single public elementary school: Nehalem Elementary School, a PK–5 campus with 171 students in the Neah-Kah-Nie School District 56. Because it is the only elementary school in the city, there are no local peers to compare it against; the meaningful benchmarks are its own district and the state of Oregon, both of which are reported alongside nearly every metric for the 2025–2026 school year.
Academically, this school is beating the state. On the 2026 OSAS exams it exceeded Oregon's average in all three tested subjects: English Language Arts at 55.7% proficient versus 43.8% statewide, math at 42.5% versus 32.9%, and science at 43.3% versus 30.6% — an edge of roughly 10 to 13 points in each. Fourth grade is the standout, with 66.7% proficient in ELA (23.2 points above the state) and 51.9% in math (13.0 points above). The school also outperforms its own district in math by 4.0 points, and it sits inside a district ranked 10th of 141 in Oregon.
Three things temper that picture. Fifth grade math is the only assessment where the school trails the state, at 27.6% versus 32.4%, though its district scores nearly identically (27.1%). The school's state rank among elementary schools has slipped three years running — from the 85th to the 76th to the 72nd percentile — even as the comparison pool held steady at roughly 706–710 schools. And chronic absenteeism runs at 32.9%, about one in three students, slightly better than the state (33.5%) and its district (37.7%), but still a significant headwind for a school where 80.7% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and per-student spending is $26,184.
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