Best Elementary Schools in Zip Code 97383

ZIP code 97383 in Stayton, Oregon is served by a single elementary school — Stayton Elementary School, a K–3 building with 332 students in the North Santiam School District 29J — so families here have one elementary option rather than several to compare. Because it is the only school in the ZIP, every comparison below is school versus district versus state, and the achievement figures (sy 2025-2026) come from a different year than the absenteeism, poverty, spending, and staffing figures (sy 2024-2025).

On state tests, students at Stayton Elementary reached 34.7% proficiency in English language arts and 30.6% in math. Those numbers are identical in both the "All Grades" and "3rd Grade" rows, which is expected: this is a K–3 school, and testing begins in 3rd grade, so 3rd grade is the entire tested population. That makes the district's and state's 3rd-grade results the fair benchmark. ELA trails the state's 43.8% (all grades) and 41.5% (3rd grade); math trails the state's 32.9% (all grades) and 41.3% (3rd grade) — a 10.7-point gap at grade level, the widest in the data. Against the district's 3rd-grade math rate of 36.7%, the school is 6.1 points behind, while its 3rd-grade ELA (34.7%) essentially matches the district's 34.5%. The school's apparent edge over the district's blended all-grades math (30.6% vs. 28.9%) rests on mismatched grade bands rather than a real advantage.

Context matters here: 81.02% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, per-student spending is $19,835, and the student-teacher ratio is a favorable 13.9:1, though the file provides no district or state comparisons for spending, poverty, or staffing. Chronic absenteeism stands at 36.2%, above both the district's 35.3% and the state's 33.5% — the clearest warning sign. The only school-level ranking available is from 2004-2005 (rank 506 of 629, 20th percentile, 1 star), too old to indicate any trend; the current 2-star, 45th-percentile rating belongs to the district, not the school.