Summary:
ZIP code 98516 contains one high school, Envision Career Academy, serving grades 9–12 in the Lacey area. The school has 139 students, a student-teacher ratio of 16.9 to 1, and is part of North Thurston Public Schools. Because it is the only high school in the ZIP code, there are no nearby in-ZIP schools to compare directly. The school’s relatively small size means that results can change noticeably from year to year based on the performance of a limited number of students.
The most encouraging trend is the school’s improvement in statewide ranking. Envision Career Academy rose from the 7th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 16th percentile in 2024–2025 and the 56th percentile in 2025–2026, earning three stars in the latest cycle. Current English Language Arts performance is a relative strength: 54.84% of students were proficient, compared with 52.40% in the district and 52.81% statewide. Science also improved substantially, rising from 33.33% to 50.00% in one year. The 11th-grade science result, at 50.00%, was above both the district’s 46.15% and the state’s 48.78%. The reported 2023–2024 graduation rate was 86.0%, though a current school-level graduation rate was not provided.
Performance is uneven across subjects and grades. Although overall ELA results were above district and state averages, 10th-grade ELA proficiency was 54.84%, trailing the district by 14.05 percentage points and the state by 9.57 points. Math is harder to assess because the latest school results were suppressed for privacy; the previous year’s reported math proficiency was 9.09%, but the small enrollment makes that figure especially volatile. Families should view the recent ranking, ELA gains, and science improvement as positive signs while also recognizing the need for stronger 10th-grade ELA and clearer evidence of sustained math progress.
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