Summary:
Zip code 37664 is home to just one high school, Dobyns-Bennett High School, a large 9–12 campus in Kingsport, Tennessee, serving 2,315 students under the Kingsport City Schools district. Because this is the only high school in the area, Dobyns-Bennett effectively defines the local educational landscape, and its performance largely represents the district’s high-school outcomes in testing data.
Dobyns-Bennett is a solidly high-performing school, earning a 4-star rating for three straight years and ranking in the top 16% of Tennessee high schools. Its strongest subject is Algebra II, with 62.4% of students proficient—25 points above the state average. English II, Biology I, U.S. History, and Geometry also beat the state by 8–11 points. The school’s graduation rate is excellent at 94.4%, and its dropout rate of 2.4% is less than half the state average of 6.7%. However, there are some warning signs. Chronic absenteeism is a major concern: 30.1% of students are chronically absent, far above the district’s 24.3% and the state’s 18.3%. Additionally, the school’s state ranking slipped from 40th to 63rd in one year, driven by notable declines in U.S. History (−7.9 points) and English I (−7.5 points), even as math scores improved. Algebra I remains the weakest area relative to the district, with 34.1% proficiency versus 46.2% districtwide.
Looking deeper into the grade-level data, the school’s high-performing students tend to take advanced courses earlier, which explains why 10th-grade Algebra II proficiency is an extraordinary 91.7%, while 12th-grade Geometry proficiency is just 7.0%. These patterns reflect course sequencing and student selection rather than a drop in teaching quality. For parents, Dobyns-Bennett offers a strong academic foundation, excellent graduation outcomes, and a low dropout rate, but the high chronic absenteeism and recent test-score slides in some subjects are worth watching. Overall, it remains a very good school, and with $14,707 in per-student spending, it has substantial resources to address these challenges.
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