SchoolDigger has released their new ratings – and in Eureka, Lincoln (not a) County High School has moved from the top edge of the bottom third in 2024 to making it into the top third. The difference between 65.4% and 32.8% in a single year is impressive. (In 2022, Lincoln (not a) County High School actually outperformed 68.4% of Montana’s high schools.
The improved performance comes with a 10% drop in enrollment – SchoolDigger reports only 273 students in 2025, down from 305 in 2024. The Student/Teacher ratio went from 14.6 in 2024 to 13.2 in 2025. Correlation is not causation – but the performance did go up as both enrollment and Student/Teacher ratio declined.
Our closest neighboring high school – Whitefish – showed up in tenth place (down two from the previous year) with an average standard score of 88.5. Lincoln (not a) County High School’s score was 64.2.
Interestingly, Lavina High School, with just 23 students, came in at second in state (scoring 97.4) and Froid, with 40 students came in third. I was intrigued to note that Turner High was in 7th spot – mostly because Turner had moved to hiring teachers from the Philippines back when I served on Trego’s board. It seems to have been a successful decision for them. (Turner High has an enrollment of 22)
Moving to Elementary ratings, I was pleased that Trego was rated – when I went onto the school board in 2019, Trego had 4 students (ANB) and was not included in the ratings. Of the top ten elementary schools in the state, 9 had enrollments of ten or less, and number 10 reached only 14 enrollment. All of these high scoring elementary schools included PK programs along with their K-8 – Trego just got it’s pre-school program going this year, so seems to be on the right track.
Olney Bissell Elementary was 127. Yaak School came in number 144 (out of 401 elementary schools). Eureka Elementary was number 263. Fortine came in at 302. Trego made a 330 position. Whitefish elementary was 22.
So far as our elementary schools go, I think that until they all come in higher than Yaak, the students are not being adequately served. In the high school, the point scores below Bozeman (Bozeman scored 97 and stood in first place) and Lincoln (not a) County High School (64.2) shows that the same challenges exist when our kids go to Montana State University as I encountered when I went to MSU in 1967. It was unpleasant to go from outstanding in Eureka to dolt status at MSU – our kids deserve better.
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