West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School District

The West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School District in Orange, Texas, serves approximately 2,000 students across three schools—West Orange-Stark Elementary (grades PK-5), West Orange-Stark Middle (grades 6-8), and West Orange-Stark High School (grades 9-12)—with a very high percentage of students (87-90%) qualifying for free or reduced lunch, indicating significant economic need across the district.

Among the three schools, West Orange-Stark Middle stands out for a remarkable achievement: 100% of its 8th graders who took the Algebra I End-of-Course exam in the 2025-2026 school year were proficient, dramatically exceeding both the district and state averages. This is a bright spot in an otherwise challenging math landscape, as the middle school’s 6th grade math proficiency (14%) and the elementary school’s 3rd grade math proficiency (22%) are critically low. West Orange-Stark High School shows a slow but steady improvement in its state ranking, moving from the 13th to the 17th percentile over recent years, while West Orange-Stark Elementary, the largest school with 1,133 students, provides the foundational skills that impact the entire district’s trajectory.

Key metrics reveal a district-wide crisis in mathematics, with no elementary or middle school grade achieving even 41% proficiency in math. The high school spends the most per student ($13,025) and has the lowest student-teacher ratio (11.2:1), yet its academic performance remains comparable to the other schools, suggesting that poverty is the dominant factor driving low scores. The high school’s graduation rate is 84.9%, below the state average, and its dropout rate is 2.6%. A glimmer of hope exists in 8th grade reading at the middle school, which at 42.76% proficiency is the highest-scoring core subject in the district, possibly indicating effective literacy interventions.