Best Public Schools in Riddle, OR

Riddle, Oregon is a small community served by two public schools in Riddle School District 70: Riddle High School, which serves grades 7–12 with 178 students, and Riddle Elementary School, which serves grades K–6 with 168 students. Together they enroll 346 students, and there are no middle or alternative schools in the city. Both schools serve a high-poverty population—about 75% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch—and per-student spending is relatively high, at $23,521 at the high school and $21,104 at the elementary school. The district overall ranks 138 out of 141 Oregon districts.

Academically, both schools score below Oregon averages on state tests, but Riddle Elementary is the stronger of the two. Elementary proficiency beats the high school's in all three subjects—22.9% versus 15.4% in English language arts, 21.9% versus 10% in math, and 16% versus 12.5% in science—and the elementary school also exceeds the district average in all three, while the high school falls below it in all three. The high school's clearest strength is not test scores but completion and attendance: an 88.1% graduation rate, above the state's 83%, and 13.3% chronic absenteeism, far below the district's 22.1% and the state's 33.5%.

Chronic absenteeism runs the other way at the elementary school, at 31.1%—more than double the high school's rate. Bright spots there include 6th-grade math at 29.6%, essentially matching the state's 29.7%, and 6th-grade ELA at 37%, only 4.8 points below the state's 41.8%. The weakest result is 3rd-grade ELA, under 5%, compared with 41.5% statewide. At the high school, the strongest grade-level result is 11th-grade ELA at 23.8%, still roughly half the state rate, while 7th-grade math is the lowest at 5.6%.