Crook County School District

Crook County School District serves about 3,279 students across 10 schools — seven elementaries, one middle school, and two high schools — in Prineville and the surrounding rural communities of central Oregon. The district ranks 14th out of 141 Oregon districts (90th percentile, 5 stars), beating the state by roughly 7 points in English language arts and 8 points in math. Enrollment is extremely uneven: Crook County High School (842 students), Crook County Middle School (616), Crooked River Elementary School (553) and Barnes Butte Elementary (510) hold about 61% of all students, while Brothers Elementary School has just 7.

Steins Pillar Elementary leads the district with 62.6% ELA proficiency, 18.8 points above the state, along with low chronic absenteeism (20.0%) and a climb from the 52nd to the 76th percentile. Crooked River Elementary is the math standout (52.8%, 19.9 points above state) and a big improver, at $18,117 per student — about $1,500 less than Barnes Butte. Powell Butte Community Charter School posts the district's best science (38.5%) at $6,191 per student, roughly a third the usual cost, though its math (34.4%) trails the district and its ranking fell from the 80th to the 51st percentile.

The district's headline is a 97.8% graduation rate, 14.8 points above the state, with Crook County High School at 98.4% and Pioneer Secondary Alternative High School at 97.3% — though Pioneer's 81.5% chronic absenteeism is far above the state. Science is the district-wide weak point (29.9% vs. state 30.6%). Test scores are suppressed for the high schools, Pioneer, Paulina School and Brothers, and Grizzly Mountain HomeLink is the only reporting school below state in every subject. Paulina and Brothers are too small to generalize from, but show the real cost of rural schooling.