Summary:
ZIP code 97131 is home to a single public school — Nehalem Elementary School, an elementary school serving grades PK–5 with 171 students as part of Neah-Kah-Nie School District 56. Because there is only one school in this ZIP, there are no local school-to-school comparisons; the useful benchmark is how this school stacks up against its district and Oregon as a whole.
Nehalem Elementary is a 4-star school, ranked 200th out of 709 schools in 2025–2026, which puts it in the 72nd percentile. Its all-grade proficiency is above the state average in every tested subject: 55.7% in English language arts versus 43.8% statewide, 42.5% in mathematics versus 32.9%, and 43.3% in science versus 30.6%. Fourth grade is the standout — 66.7% of 4th graders were proficient in ELA, 23.2 points above the state, and 51.9% were proficient in math, 13 points above the state. The one clear soft spot is 5th-grade math, where 27.6% were proficient against a state average of 32.4%; notably, the district scored a nearly identical 27.1% at that grade level, suggesting a broader pattern rather than a school-specific issue. One trend to watch: while the school has held 4 stars for three years, its percentile has slipped from 85th in 2023–2024 to 72nd in 2025–2026.
Context matters here. The school's chronic absenteeism rate is 32.9%, slightly better than the state's 33.5% and better than the district's 37.7%. About 80.7% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, so the school is outperforming state averages while serving a high-poverty population. Per-student spending is $26,184 and the student-teacher ratio is 14.7, though the data offers no state figures for either, so they cannot be judged as high or low. The district itself is rated 5 stars and ranks 10th of 141 districts, higher than the school's own standing.
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