Best Public Schools in Ridgeway, VA

Ridgeway, Virginia is served by two public schools in the Henry County Public Schools district: Magna Vista High serving grades 9–12 with 1,147 students, and Drewry Mason Elementary serving grades PK–5 with 382 students, together educating 1,529 students in a community where nearly all families face economic hardship.

The standout school in Ridgeway is Drewry Mason Elementary. Despite nearly 99% of its students qualifying for free/reduced lunch, the school outperforms both the district and state averages in nearly every subject, including 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade math and reading, 5th grade science, and 4th grade Virginia Studies. Drewry Mason has climbed from the 55th to the 69th percentile in Virginia over the past three years and now holds a 3-star rating. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 12.3% is well below both the district (18.8%) and state (14.8%) averages. By contrast, Magna Vista High sits in the bottom 15% of Virginia high schools with a 1-star rating. While it has improved from the 9th to the 15th percentile over three years, academics remain a concern. The school shows real strength in Algebra I and Geometry, where proficiency exceeds state averages, but struggles significantly in Biology (58% vs. 86% statewide) and World History II (9% vs. 35.5% statewide). Chronic absenteeism of 23.7% is nearly double the state rate.

Two key takeaways stand out for parents. First, high poverty does not automatically mean low performance: Drewry Mason proves that a high-poverty school can achieve at high levels and could serve as a model for the rest of the district. Second, the wide gap between these two schools — a 69th percentile elementary school feeding into a 15th percentile high school — suggests the district's overall 31st-percentile ranking masks important school-level differences. Magna Vista's graduation rate of 90.5% is below the state average, though its dropout rate of 4.1% is notably better than the district's 9.2%. Additionally, Drewry Mason spends about $1,665 more per student than Magna Vista, which may be worth examining given the high school's greater challenges.