Rice Independent School District (Isd)

The Rice Independent School District (Isd) serves approximately 1,105 students across three schools—Rice Elementary (PK-4), Rice Intermediate/Middle School (5-8), and Rice High School (9-12)—in the small town of Rice, Texas, and is ranked 361st out of 951 districts statewide, earning a solid 3-star rating.

Rice High School stands out as the district's top performer, consistently earning a 3-star rating for three consecutive years. It boasts a 97.3% graduation rate and a 0.0% dropout rate, and it outperforms state averages in four of five STAAR End-of-Course exams (Algebra I, Biology, English I, and English II), despite 56% of its students being economically disadvantaged. In contrast, Rice Intermediate/Middle School is a math powerhouse, with 5th graders scoring 67.44% proficient in math (20 points above the state average) and 6th graders at 52.63% (14 points above), even though it has the highest poverty rate in the district at 87%. However, this school struggles with 8th-grade Social Studies, where only 22.22% are proficient, and its overall ranking has been volatile, swinging from the 67th to the 43rd and back to the 58th percentile over three years. Rice Elementary is the district's weakest link, with a declining rank to the 44th percentile (2 stars) for 2025-2026, driven by a sharp "4th grade slump" where only 35.37% are proficient in Reading and 30.86% in Math, far below state averages.

Key metrics reveal significant disparities: Rice High School spends $13,118 per student with a 13.8 student-teacher ratio, while the elementary and middle schools spend about $9,200 with ratios around 16.2. The district's overall 3-star rating masks these internal variations, with the high school excelling, the middle school showing extreme subject-area contrasts, and the elementary school facing foundational challenges. This makes the district a study in contrasts, where success is not uniform but highly dependent on the school and subject.