Summary:
Winston, Oregon, a small city in Douglas County, has just four public schools serving about 1,120 students — all of them part of a single system, Winston-Dillard School District 116. Together they form one continuous PK–12 pathway: Brockway Elementary School (PK–2, 224 students) feeds McGovern Elementary School (3–5, 229), which feeds Winston Middle School (6–8, 310), which feeds Douglas High School (9–12, 357). The district as a whole is rated 129th of 141 Oregon districts. That backdrop matters, because the four schools are not performing alike.
McGovern Elementary School is the clearest bright spot: it is the only school here beating the state in any core subject, doing so in science (35.4% vs. the state's 30.6%) and 4th grade ELA (45.7% vs. 43.5%), and it is the only school with a rising rank trend, from the 21st to the 36th percentile. Douglas High School shows the opposite: its state ranking fell from the 70th to the 46th to the 19th percentile in two years. Yet it graduates 85.1% of students, above both its district (80.0%) and the state (83.0%) — a real tension between finishing school and reaching grade level. Winston Middle School is the weakest performer, never above 1 star, with math proficiency of 11.9% and the city's highest chronic absenteeism at 39.9%.
Math is the district-wide weak point, and it worsens as students advance: 26.5% proficiency at McGovern, 11.9% at Winston Middle, and just 7.0% at Douglas High, against a state rate of 32.9%. Absenteeism moves in step with achievement across all four schools. Brockway Elementary School is the highest-need school, with 91.96% of students on free or reduced lunch; it receives the most funding per student ($21,240) and has the smallest classes (13.4 students per teacher), though it serves grades too early for state testing, so its results only surface later. Note that all four schools are small, so year-to-year swings can reflect modest numbers of students.
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