Best Public Schools in Cowley, WY

Cowley, Wyoming, has three listed schools—an elementary, middle and high school—with 1,011 students combined. The reported results cover elementary through high school, and the schools vary in enrollment from 250 to 439 students. In 2025–2026, every reported school-grade result was below the corresponding state rate, and the average shortfall across the same 19 grade-and-subject results grew from 9.0 to 14.3 percentage points year over year—the clearest concern for families comparing schools in the area.

Rocky Mountain High School stands out as the strongest of the three relative to state benchmarks, though it still fell short: its average gap was 5.6 points in ELA and 15.0 in math. Rocky Mountain Elementary had the weakest ELA profile, averaging 16.5 points below the state across grades 3–5. Rocky Mountain Middle School averaged 17.8 points below the state in math and had the largest single shortfall: grade 8 math was 24.1%, versus 53.9% statewide. Across the schools, average math results were 17.5 points below the state, a larger deficit than in ELA (11.0 points) or science (14.4 points).

Results worsened overall relative to state rates, but some grade-level gains offer useful contrasts: middle-school grade 7 math improved from 31.8% to 40.6%, while elementary grade 3 math reached 52.5%, slightly above the district’s 52.2%. SchoolDigger rankings also fell from 2023–2024 to 2025–2026: the high school moved from the 32nd to 27th percentile, the elementary school from the 21st to 8th, and the middle school from the 30th to 12th. The high school had the highest student-teacher ratio (19.4) but the strongest relative ELA and math results; the elementary school had the lowest ratio (13.2) and weakest average ELA gap. Reported free/reduced-lunch eligibility was 33.5% at the high school, 46.4% at the middle school and 53.7% at the elementary school; these are contextual figures, not explanations of performance.