Best Elementary Schools in Zip Code 97844

ZIP code 97844 (Irrigon, Oregon) is served by exactly one elementary school — A C Houghton Elementary School — a K–6 school with 221 students in Morrow School District 1, so everything below describes that single school rather than a comparison among local options.

The most striking thing about A C Houghton is that math is its stronger subject, which is the opposite of the usual pattern in Oregon. At all grades, 32.7% of students met the math standard — 9.2 points above its own district and essentially level with the state (32.9%). English Language Arts is the clear area of need: 26.9% proficient, which is 7.6 points below the district and 16.9 points below the state. So this school is a math bright spot inside a district whose math results sit nearly 10 points below the state, while also pulling the district's ELA average down. In 3rd grade, the school edges past the district in both subjects (33.3% math, 27.5% ELA), but both remain well behind the state. Fourth-grade results in both subjects were suppressed by the state to protect student privacy, so they are unknown, not zero.

Two pieces of context matter for parents. First, 75.57% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and chronic absenteeism is 35.7% — slightly above the district (35.4%) and state (33.5%), and more than a third of students missing 10% or more of school days. Those factors make the state-level math result notable rather than ordinary. Second, the school is comparatively well funded at $24,569 per student with a moderate 14.2 student-to-teacher ratio, so the ELA shortfall does not appear to stem from a lack of resources. The practical takeaway: this is a school whose math instruction is producing above-expected results despite high poverty and absenteeism, and whose literacy instruction is the priority area for improvement.