Summary:
Pendleton, Oregon has 9 schools serving students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade: 4 elementary schools, 1 middle school, 3 high schools, and 1 alternative K–12 school, with a combined enrollment of about 3,008 students. Eight of them belong to Pendleton School District 16, while InterMountain Virtual Learning Academy is part of the InterMountain Education Service District. The district as a whole is rated at only the 22nd percentile (1 star), but that rating hides large differences between individual schools.
McKay Creek Elementary School is the clear standout: it ranks at the 62nd percentile with 3 stars and posts the best scores in the group — 50.8% in ELA, 38.3% in math, and 34.0% in science, all above state levels — along with the lowest chronic absenteeism at 14.1%. By contrast, Sherwood Heights Elementary School (23rd percentile) and Washington Elementary School (28th percentile) sit below state averages despite similar free/reduced lunch rates. Among high schools, Pendleton High School is the strongest, with a 94.6% graduation rate and 45.3% science proficiency above the state, though its ELA (37.3%) and math (20.8%) lag.
Math is the biggest system-wide weakness: only McKay Creek exceeds the state's 32.9%, and the district's 23.8% is well below it. The most acute challenges are concentrated in the alternative and community high schools — Hawthorne Alternative High School reports 94.2% chronic absenteeism, a 72.2% graduation rate, and the highest student-teacher ratio at 31.1, while Nixyaawii Community School has 56.4% absenteeism and math proficiency under 5%. Pendleton Early Learning Center (PK–K) and InterMountain have no test or rank data, and Hawthorne's math score is suppressed by the state, so those gaps should be read as unknown rather than zero.
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