Summary:
Colby, Wisconsin is served by three public schools — one elementary (K–5), one middle (6–8), and one high school (9–12) — all part of the Colby School District, with a combined enrollment of 864 students and no alternative school in the data set.
Comparing the three, Colby Elementary is the strongest on attendance and staffing: chronic absenteeism is just 4.8% (district 8.9%, state 17.3%), its student-teacher ratio of 11.9 is the lowest in the district, and its rank percentile — 21st–26th — is the highest of the three, though still in the bottom quartile. Colby Middle stands out for resources and need: it spends $18,727 per student, roughly $2,500 more than the other two schools, and has the highest free/reduced lunch rate at 59.8%, yet its 2025–26 overall proficiency average is 32.76% against 55.51% statewide. Colby High shows a striking contrast: a 100% graduation rate and 0.0% dropout rate, both better than state, alongside ACT math proficiency of 8.33% versus 42.93% statewide — a 34.60-point gap and the largest in the data set. Its chronic absenteeism, 15.1%, is below state but more than triple the elementary school's rate.
Across the district, no Colby school exceeded the state in any reported test subject or grade in either year, and each school is currently rated 1 star. The district ranks 413th of 432 in Wisconsin — 4th percentile, 0 stars — and all three schools sit in the bottom quartile. The clearest bright spots are attendance at the elementary and middle levels, graduation and dropout results at the high school, and 7th-grade ELA at the middle school, which rose from 27.63% to 44.44%. The most urgent weakness remains high school math.
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