Summary
Colton Elementary School is a small rural K–5 school serving about 171 students in Colton, Oregon, and is the elementary campus of Colton School District 53, with its nearest comparable schools 4 to 13 miles away in the Molalla River, Estacada, Oregon City, and Canby areas.
For 2025-2026 the school ranked 519th of 709 ranked Oregon schools (27th percentile, 1 star), second-to-last among its eleven-school comparison group — ahead of only Molalla Elementary School. That is a real improvement from 2024-2025, when it hit its lowest point on record (8th percentile, 0 stars), but it only returns the school to roughly where it sat in 2018-2019. Math is the deepest weakness: 19.8% proficiency is 13.1 points below the state and the lowest of all eleven peer schools. Science is the surprise bright spot at 30.0%, essentially at the state average and 7.9 points above the district. By grade, third-grade reading (45.9%) is above the state, but fourth grade drops sharply (17.2% reading, 10.3% math), and math is below state in all three tested grades — a pattern too consistent to be a single-cohort fluke.
Chronic absenteeism is 35.1%, above both the state (33.5%) and the district (30.9%), though down from 46.2% in 2021-2022. The school also spends $21,129 per student — the highest in its peer group — while its poverty rate rose from 36.22% to 63.74% in two years. The most telling comparison is Clarkes Elementary School, 4.4 miles away: smaller, with nearly identical poverty, yet at the 66th percentile with 54.5% reading and 43.3% math while spending about $4,500 less per student. Low-income students here rank better than the school overall, and staffing ratios are mid-pack, but the school remains below its earlier plateau and below state in two of three subjects.
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