Best Public Schools in Walton, WV

Walton, West Virginia, is served by a single public school, Walton Elementary/Middle School, which educates students from Pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade with a total enrollment of 228 students within the Roane County Schools district.

For parents, the most striking finding is the school’s dramatic decline in state ranking. After ranking 210th out of 355 schools in 2024-2025, it plummeted to 342nd out of 355 in the most recent year, placing it in the bottom 4% of the state with a 0-star rating. This overall poor performance masks a very uneven academic profile. The school is exceptionally weak in mathematics, with an overall proficiency rate of just 25.9% compared to the state average of 39.4%. The most alarming data point is a 0% proficiency rate in 6th-grade math, a complete failure for that cohort. However, the school shows remarkable strength in upper-grade English Language Arts (ELA). In 7th grade, 55% of students are proficient, and in 8th grade, 60.2% are proficient—both figures significantly exceed state averages. This creates a "tale of two subjects," where the school excels in literacy for older students but struggles mightily in math across nearly all grades.

Interestingly, while the school is below state averages in most subjects, it is not consistently below its own district. It outperforms the district average in all-grade Science (30.4% vs. 22.4%), 7th-grade Math, and 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade ELA. This suggests that while Roane County Schools as a whole is struggling (ranked 48th out of 54 districts), Walton Elementary/Middle School is not the primary driver of that low ranking. The school’s dramatic fall to the bottom 4% of the state seems somewhat at odds with its relative performance within its district, suggesting the ranking system may heavily weigh specific grade-level failures. For parents, the key takeaway is that this school has clear strengths in upper-grade literacy but requires immediate and targeted intervention in 6th-grade math and early-grade reading to reverse its declining trajectory.