Summary:
Chester Area School District 39-1 includes six schools serving prekindergarten through grade 12, with 498 students across three elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools. The reported elementary and middle-school all-grades results show a wide spread: Chester Middle School - 03 scores 62% in ELA and 49% in math, while Rustic Acres Colony Elementary - 04 scores 29% and 10%, respectively. The most important takeaway is that academic results vary considerably across the district, rather than being consistently strong or weak.
Chester Middle School - 03 stands out at the top of the reported elementary and middle-school results: its ELA score is 13 percentage points above the state’s 49%, and its math score is 5 points above the state’s 44%. At the other end, Rustic Acres Colony Elementary - 04 is 20 points below the state in ELA and 34 points below in math. Chester Elementary -02 is close to the state in both subjects. High-school results are also concerning: 11th-grade ACT ELA is 22% at Chester High School - 01 and 19% at Chester Area Colony High School - 08, versus 48% statewide. Graduation rates are 76% and 20%, respectively, compared with 88% statewide. Because schools serve different grade spans, the elementary and middle-school all-grades comparisons are informative but not perfectly like-for-like.
Recent all-grades results are mixed: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, Chester Elementary -02 fell 8 points in ELA and 13 in math, while Rustic Acres Colony Elementary - 04 gained 4 points in ELA but fell 7 in math. SchoolDigger ranks Chester Middle School - 03 55th of 151 (three stars), Chester Elementary -02 137th of 203 (two stars), and Chester High School - 01 128th of 130 (zero stars). As context, free/reduced lunch eligible figures were 20% at Chester Elementary and 19% at Chester Middle in 2024–2025; Rustic Acres was 8% and Gracevale Colony Elementary - 07 20% in 2022–2023.
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