Summary
Kiona-Benton City Middle School is a small grades 6–8 school in Benton City, Washington, serving 340 students in the Kiona-Benton City School District in the broader Tri-Cities area. The school’s relatively small enrollment and 16.9-to-1 student-teacher ratio may allow for closer relationships, but its academic results are among the lowest in Washington. In 2025–2026, it ranked 512th out of 514 middle schools statewide, placing it in the 0th percentile.
Achievement is substantially below nearby schools in every tested subject. In 2025–2026, 14.71% of students were proficient in English language arts, 7.24% in math, and 18.92% in science. Math is the clearest weakness, with proficiency between 6.31% and 8.89% across grades 6–8. ELA performance was also low in every grade, and it declined from 22.55% in 2023–2024 to 14.71% in 2025–2026. Science improved somewhat from the prior year but remained far below the state average. The school’s results were lower than all 10 nearby comparison schools, whose averages were 46.79% in ELA, 35.63% in math, and 43.35% in science.
The contrast is especially notable with nearby Leona Libby Middle School, which reported 67.72% ELA, 56.48% math, and 65.04% science proficiency, and Enterprise Middle School, which reported 47.17%, 40.92%, and 54.85%. Kiona-Benton’s spending of $16,433 per student is midrange among nearby schools, and its student-teacher ratio is lower than most comparisons, so the results do not point to a simple funding or staffing-ratio disadvantage. The school’s broad, persistent weakness across grades and subjects suggests that families may want to ask about foundational math support, core-instruction consistency, intervention services, attendance, staffing stability, and how recent student-data changes are being reported.
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