Schools in Chamberlain, SD

Chamberlain, South Dakota, has three schools serving kindergarten through grade 12: Chamberlain Elementary - 03 (K–5), Chamberlain Junior High - 02 (6–8), and Chamberlain High School - 01 (9–12). Together they enroll 858 students. The clearest academic concern is junior-high math: 29% of students were proficient in 2025–26, compared with 44% statewide.

The strongest results vary by subject rather than belonging to one school. Elementary math was above the state average at 47% versus 44%, while junior-high math was 29%, 15 points below the state. Elementary results also swung sharply by grade: fourth-grade math reached 57%, 8 points above the state, but fifth-grade math was 29%, 14 points below. Junior-high ELA was the stronger of the two schools’ results in that subject, at 46% versus 43% at the elementary school, though it remained 3 points below the state; eighth-grade ELA was nearly even with the state. At the high school, ELA proficiency was 51%, 3 points above the state, while math was 29% and science 36%, below their state results by 5 and 9 points.

Junior-high math weakened most clearly over time: proficiency fell from 38% in 2024–25 to 29% in 2025–26, and its gap with the state widened by 9 points. Across the elementary and junior-high schools, the average math gap also widened by 4 points; the ELA gap widened by 1 point. SchoolDigger’s latest ranking percentiles were 32 for the elementary school, 25 for the junior high, and 32 for the high school; each was below its 2023–24 percentile, though the high school rose from 13 to 32 between 2024–25 and 2025–26. In 2024–25, student-teacher ratios ranged from 10.1 at the elementary school to 11.6 at the junior high. All three schools reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares for 2024–25: 60% at the elementary school, 51% at the junior high, and 44% at the high school. These figures offer context, not an explanation for school results; comparisons also reflect different grade spans and, at the high school, a different assessment.