Summary:
Zapata County Independent School District (Isd) contains one high school, Zapata High School, serving grades 9 through 12 with 1,065 students in a rural Texas area where 88.54% of students are economically disadvantaged.
Zapata High School shows a striking disconnect between its high graduation rate of 94.9% and its extremely low academic proficiency. While the school graduates nearly all students, STAAR End-of-Course exam scores are dramatically below state averages across every subject. For the 2025-2026 school year, only 0.89% of students were proficient in English I Reading compared to the state average of 55.43%, and Algebra I proficiency was just 6.98% versus 54.03% statewide. The school ranks in the bottom 2% of all Texas high schools, placing 1,982 out of 2,009 schools in the 1st percentile, with a district star rating of 2 out of 5 stars.
The most concerning finding is that students appear to be advanced and graduated despite not meeting state academic standards, making the graduation rate an unreliable measure of college or career readiness. Test scores show no meaningful improvement over recent years, with some subjects even declining. U.S. History is the school's strongest subject at 18.75% proficiency, though still critically low. The spending per student of $10,247 and student-teacher ratio of 14.8:1 provide context, but the data indicates a district in academic crisis where meaningful intervention is needed to address both instructional quality and the significant socioeconomic challenges facing the student body.
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