Summary:
ZIP code 98409 contains four high-school-level schools serving grades 6–12: Mount Tahoma High School, Tacoma Online High School, Oakland Secondary School, and Insight School of WA Open Doors Program. Together, they report about 2,027 students, but they represent very different settings: a large traditional high school, a virtual school, a small 6–12 secondary school, and an extremely small alternative program. Three schools are part of the Tacoma School District; Insight belongs to the Quillayute Valley School District.
Mount Tahoma High School has the strongest overall profile among schools with complete data. It serves 1,410 students, reports an 86.3% graduation rate, and has the highest graduation rate in the ZIP code. That rate is above Washington’s 82.6% average, although its test scores are below state and district results, especially in math, where only 15.1% of students were proficient. Tacoma Online High School has an 83.8% graduation rate, also slightly above the state average, but its 14.4% dropout rate is higher than Mount Tahoma’s 10.6%. Current online-school testing results are suppressed, so its academic performance cannot be fully judged.
Oakland Secondary School has a relatively competitive historical ELA proficiency rate of 44.44%, but its 52.0% graduation rate is much lower than those of the other schools with reported results. Its 2023–2024 dropout rate of 40.9% is an important historical concern, though it is not a current figure. Insight School of WA Open Doors Program has only eight reported students and too little outcome data for meaningful comparison. Parents should also consider each school’s format, size, grade span, support model, and data limitations rather than relying on a simple ranking.
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