Powers Elementary School

Powers Elementary School is a very small rural K–6 school in Powers, Oregon, in Coos County, serving 62 students as the elementary building of Powers School District 31. It has ranked in the bottom quarter of Oregon elementary schools in every year on record. In 2025–26 it placed 567th of 709 schools (20th percentile, 1 star), its best showing in three years, after dipping to the 9th percentile in 2024–25. Because the school is so small, single-year numbers can swing widely and are best read as rough estimates rather than precise measurements.

Academically, the school's overall results are better than its low ranking suggests. Across all grades, 41.7% of students met standards in English language arts (state: 43.8%) and 30.6% in math (state: 32.9%) — both close to the state average and well above the district. Science is the clear weak spot: 21.4% proficient versus 30.6% statewide. Grade-level detail is only reported for grade 5, where ELA proficiency is 28.6%, far below the state's 47.1%; grades 3, 4, and 6 are suppressed by the state, meaning those results are unknown, not zero. That gap suggests the school's oldest tested students are not performing as well as its younger ones.

Chronic absenteeism is the biggest shared concern. In 2024–25, 37.1% of Powers students were chronically absent, above the state's 33.5% and nearly identical to nearby Myrtle Crest School (37.5%), a K–5 school of 271 students 12.8 miles away. Powers spends more per student ($26,984 vs. $23,378) and has much smaller classes (10.4 students per teacher vs. 16.9), yet ranks below Myrtle Crest and performs worse in science. Most families here are low-income, and getting more students to school regularly would likely help more than any curriculum change.