Guthrie School

Guthrie School is a small, rural PK-12 alternative school in Guthrie, TX, serving just 93 students as the sole school within the Guthrie Central School District.

The most remarkable feature of Guthrie School is its perfect track record: a 100% graduation rate and 0% dropout rate for five consecutive years (2019-2024). This is exceptionally rare and reflects a highly supportive environment where every student is guided to completion. The school achieves this with an incredibly low student-to-teacher ratio of 5.8:1, far below the national average of about 16:1, allowing for significant individualized attention. The school also invests heavily in its students, spending roughly $26,000 to $30,000 per student annually—about two to three times the national average. Academically, Guthrie School consistently outperforms state averages in Mathematics across nearly all grade levels, with recent examples like 80% proficiency in 7th-grade Math (vs. 29.41% state) and 85.71% in 8th-grade Math (vs. 47.24% state). Upper-level English is also a strength, with 90% proficiency in English II Reading (vs. 56.22% state).

However, the school's small size creates notable volatility in test scores, as a single student's performance can swing a grade-level proficiency rate by 15-20 percentage points. A persistent weakness is 8th-grade Social Studies, where proficiency has been as low as 8.33% (vs. 29.64% state). Science performance is inconsistent but improving, with 5th-grade Science jumping from 18% to 80% proficiency in one year. There are no other schools within 20 miles of Guthrie School, so the most relevant comparison is to state averages, where Guthrie stands out as a high-performing outlier in graduation rates and mathematics, despite its score volatility.