Summary:
St. Marys High School is the sole high school serving grades 9-12 in the rural Pleasants County Schools district in West Virginia, with a small enrollment of 309 students and a favorable 13.2:1 student-teacher ratio.
For parents, the most striking feature of this school is its dramatic recent improvement. In the 2025-2026 school year, St. Marys High School earned a 4-star rating and ranked 15th out of 105 schools statewide, a massive leap from the previous year's 2-star rating and 70th place finish. The school shines brightest in English Language Arts, where 63.9% of 11th graders are proficient—nearly 13 percentage points above the state average. Science proficiency is also strong at 31.9%, outpacing the state by over 8 points. Perhaps most impressive is the perfect 100% graduation rate, well above the state's 92.8% average. Math remains a relative weakness, with only 22.2% proficiency, though this still slightly exceeds the state average of 20.6%.
However, parents should note some important caveats. The gap between ELA (63.9%) and math (22.2%) proficiency is enormous—a 41.7-point difference that suggests literacy instruction is highly effective while math may need attention. The perfect graduation rate combined with low math proficiency could indicate a focus on credit recovery rather than advanced academic mastery. Additionally, the school's ranking volatility (from 70th to 15th in one year) may partly reflect the small student body, where one strong or weak class can skew results significantly. The dataset also lacks free/reduced lunch data, making it hard to contextualize performance against socioeconomic factors. Since this is the district's only high school, the district's 3-star rating rises and falls entirely on this one institution's year-to-year consistency.
Thank you for your feedback!