Summary:
Zip code 77859 is home to a single high school, Hearne Jh/High School, which serves grades 7 through 12 with a total enrollment of 341 students and is part of the Hearne Independent School District (Isd).
Hearne Jh/High School presents a striking paradox: it has a very low student-teacher ratio of 7.6:1 and high per-student spending of $19,583, yet it ranks in the bottom 11% of Texas high schools with a 1-star rating. The school faces significant challenges, with 90.03% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Test scores are consistently well below state averages across all subjects, with gaps often exceeding 25 percentage points. For example, only 17.46% of students scored proficient in Algebra I compared to the state average of 54.03%, and just 22.5% were proficient in English I Reading versus 55.43% statewide. A notable anomaly is that 0% of 7th graders scored proficient in math in the 2025-2026 school year, which warrants immediate investigation.
Despite these low academic outcomes, the school maintains a graduation rate of 90.6% and a dropout rate of just 1.5%, suggesting a focus on moving students through the system rather than ensuring mastery of core content. However, there is a glimmer of hope: year-over-year test scores improved in nearly every subject from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026, such as Biology rising from 32.76% to 43.86% proficiency. This positive trend, combined with the school's small class sizes and high spending, may indicate that recent interventions are beginning to take effect, though the school still has a long way to go to close the achievement gap with state averages.
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