Best Public Schools in Zip Code 97056

ZIP code 97056 covers six schools — five brick-and-mortar and one online alternative serving grades K–12 — all part of Scappoose School District 1J, with a combined enrollment of about 1,930 students.

The three largest schools — Scappoose High School, Otto Petersen Elementary School, and Grant Watts Elementary School — enroll 78.1% of the ZIP's students. Academically, the picture varies sharply by school. Scappoose Online Academy posts the highest all-grade proficiency rates in every subject, beating both district and state, but it serves only 50 students, had 40.5% chronic absenteeism in 2023–2024, and a 69.2% graduation rate well below the district's 93.4%, so those numbers deserve caution. Scappoose Middle School shows the strongest current ranking trend, climbing from the 54th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 73rd percentile and 4 stars in 2025–2026, with ELA 49.2%, math 37.5%, and science 40.0%, all above state. Scappoose High School is the clearest concern: its rank fell from 5 stars to 0 stars in three years, and 11th-grade proficiency is 17.2% in ELA, 8.1% in math, and 17.1% in science, far below state. Yet its 95.1% graduation rate exceeds both district and state.

Attendance and class size separate the schools too. Grant Watts has the lowest chronic absenteeism at 22.6%, followed by Otto Petersen at 24.0% — both better than the district's 26.2% and state's 33.5% — while Scappoose High (29.3%) and Scappoose Middle (29.8%) sit above district but below state. Traditional schools keep student-teacher ratios between 16.2 and 21.2. Five of six schools beat the state's 43.8% ELA mark; four beat its 32.9% math mark. Spending doesn't track outcomes simply: Scappoose Middle spends the most at $18,533 per student with a strong ranking, Scappoose High is second at $18,365 with the weakest proficiency, and South Columbia Family School and Scappoose Online Academy report only $5,153 — under a third of the top spenders. Small schools carry the biggest caveats: many of their grade-level and operational values are suppressed by the state, and their all-grade rates can swing widely.