Best Public Schools in Zip Code 97453

ZIP code 97453 contains only two public schools, both in Mapleton School District 32: Mapleton Elementary School (grades K–5, 63 students) and Mapleton Junior/Senior High School (grades 6–12, 76 students). There is no separate middle school or alternative school in the area, and total enrollment across the district is just 139 students, so a handful of students can shift a proficiency rate by many percentage points.

The two schools look very different academically. Mapleton Elementary outperforms the state in English language arts (55.6% proficient versus 43.8%) and math (35.3% versus 32.9%), but its science proficiency is only 14.3% against the state's 30.6%, and its chronic absenteeism of 48.3% is well above the district's 40.8% and the state's 33.5%. Mapleton Junior/Senior High shows the reverse in places: its graduation rate is 91.7% versus the state's 83.0%, and 11th-grade science is 63.6% versus 33.8%, yet all-grades ELA is 18.8% versus 43.8% and all-grades math is under 5% versus 32.9%. Its most recent provided rank history is from 2018–2019, when it stood at the 5th percentile.

Both schools spend heavily per student — $43,767 at the elementary and $42,392 at the junior/senior high — and the high school has a low student-teacher ratio of 9.5 compared with 15.7 at the elementary. High spending has not produced a top district ranking, which sits at the 35th percentile (91st of 141). Mapleton Elementary's rank trend is improving, from the 14th percentile in 2017–2018 to the 39th percentile in 2025–2026. Many grade-level test results are suppressed (shown as —) in grades 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 11 and should be read as unknown, not zero; free/reduced-lunch figures above 100% should not be read as a literal share of enrolled students.