Dayton Elementary School

Dayton, WA · Grades ?–5

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

1½ stars

WA statewide rating — the rank below is this school's statewide position

Bottom 30% decoded

#1204 of 1502

Washington schools

#54 · rural Washington

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Middle 40% achievement

#832 of 1502

Washington schools

#26 · rural Washington

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

This school performs roughly as expected for its context.

Data confidence:Medium164 students tested 7 years100% participation

Confidence is computed from sample size, year coverage, and participation rate. Higher confidence means the rank shift is stable across years and not driven by a single small cohort.

  • Tested students: total students with valid scores across all reported years.
  • Years of data: number of school years included. More years smooths year-to-year noise.
  • Participation: share of enrolled students who took the assessment. Low participation can bias scores.

What's driving this rank

Decoded Rank: #1204 of 1502

in Washington schools

Raw test scores rank this school #832, but families here have higher-than-average income and educational attainment, so the expected score is also high. After accounting for context, this school performs about as predicted — the Decoded Rank is #1204.

Each component below is scored on a 0–100 within-metro scale. A qualitative band summarizes where the school lands.

  • Below averagePerforms above what its context predictsCounts for 39% of the rank

    After accounting for income and demographics, does this school beat what the data would predict?

  • LowStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 33% of the rank

    Are kids at this school learning faster than typical for the metro?

  • About averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 17% of the rank

    Are students clustered at similar levels, or split between top and bottom?

  • StrongMost students were testedCounts for 11% of the rank

    Was the rank computed against a representative share of the school's students?

Show the numbersFor the methodology-curious

Each component is converted to a 0–100 within-metro percentile (100 = top of the metro). "Contribution" is the percentile-points the component adds to (or subtracts from) the metro median before the schools are re-ranked into the composite.

Per-component contributions to this school's Decoded Rank composite. Weight is the share each component carries; percentile is the school's within-metro score on that component.
ComponentWeightPercentileContribution
Performs above what its context predicts 39%34-6.4
Students gain ground year over year 33%16-11.3
Equity within the school 17%44-0.9
Most students were tested 11%100+5.6

How the Decoded Rank composite is computed

Why trust this?
  • Public data sources
  • Context-adjusted model
  • Confidence shown
  • Methodology published

This score uses state assessment data, NCES enrollment data, and Census ACS 5-year neighborhood data. The Decoded Rank adjusts for school context — student demographics, ELL/SPED service rates, and the socioeconomic profile of the surrounding tract — and shows how the school performs relative to expectation, not in absolute terms.

SchoolDecoder is one signal, not a verdict. Decoded Rank is a context-adjusted residual, not a causal claim about teaching quality. See full methodology →

Strongest Subjects (Decoded)

Decoded rank first; achievement rank in parentheses. Sorted by decoded rank, best first. Science is shown for reference only and is not part of any rank, tier, or composite.

  1. Science

    2023 proficiency44.4%meeting standard

    Tested gradeGrade 5

    18 tested

    202267.7%202344.4%

    Shown for reference only — science is not part of any rank.

All Rankings

How this school ranks across the metro, state, and among demographic peers.

ScopeAchievementDecodedShift
WA (1502 schools)#832#1204
Within Rural Washington (63 schools)#26#54

Resource context

School inputs, not ranking points

These fields describe the school and surrounding neighborhood. They help readers interpret the page, but this is not a dollar-by-dollar or ratio-by-ratio scorecard and the fields here are not components of the Decoded Rank.

Enrollment
193
Free/reduced-price lunch
52.3%
Student-teacher ratio
14.8:1
Locale
Town, distant
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$71,810ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
9.3%ACS tract proxy
SES index
41.7
Assessment data year
2023
CCD year
2022
ACS vintage
2020-2024

Performance Spread

How students are distributed across the four state-assessment proficiency levels — L1: below standard, L2: approaching, L3: meets (proficient), L4: exceeds. This describes the shape of results at the school, not their height.

Students at this school are broadly spread across proficiency levels.

  • Level 1 — Below standard32%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard27%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)21%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard20%

Performance Spread measures how evenly students are distributed across the L1..L4 proficiency ladder, treating the levels as an ordered scale (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4) and weighting each by its student share. A school where most students cluster at one level has a TIGHT spread; a school split between the bottom and top has a WIDE or BIMODAL spread. Bimodal fires only when BOTH tails are non-trivial AND the middle is relatively hollow (pct_L1 ≥ 15, pct_L4 ≥ 25, pct_L2 + pct_L3 ≤ 60). It describes shape — NOT how high the school's scores are. Methodology

Nearby Schools

Sorted by distance. Both rank columns shown so you can compare quickly.

No nearby schools have been ranked yet.

Similar Schools

Schools with comparable demographics, income, and size. Both rank columns shown for direct comparison.

SchoolRatingAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Southside Elementary#2#5High
Pomeroy Elementary SchoolRanking unavailable
Ritzville Grade School#1#1Medium
Lyman Elementary School#8#1Medium
Pomeroy Jr Sr High SchoolRanking unavailable

Historical Ranks

Year-by-year decoded and achievement ranks. Pandemic-affected years are excluded — we don't interpolate scores across the gap.

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2023Excluded

Note: assessment transitions (where a state changes its test) are footnoted on the methodology page; trends are not computed across breakpoints.

Trajectory

Not used in the Decoded Rank — shown for context only.

Not enough years yet

Trajectory will appear once we have two or more years of rankings for this school.

How this works: we fit a linear trend across the available years of Decoded percentile, then bucket the slope into a direction. Wide confidence intervals (uncertain trends) collapse to Holding steady. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Cohort Progression

Kids who started 3rd grade here in 2022 lost 21 proficiency points by 4th grade.

Cohort-to-cohort variance is high — interpret the headline cautiously.

Learning rate: -14.2 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -26.0 to -2.3)

Low confidence

Cohort 2015201620172018201920222023 Slope
ELA · started 5th in 2015
G5
256
—
ELA · started 4th in 2015
G4
242
—
ELA · started 3rd in 2015
G3
294
G4
332
G5
317
+11.4
ELA · started 3rd in 2016
G3
309
G4
268
G5
271
-18.6
ELA · started 3rd in 2017
G3
306
G4
274
G5
263
-21.7
ELA · started 3rd in 2018
G3
294
G4
285
-8.8
ELA · started 3rd in 2019
G3
297
—
ELA · started 5th in 2022
G5
232
—
ELA · started 4th in 2022
G4
183
G5
200
+16.7
ELA · started 3rd in 2022
G3
224
G4
203
-20.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2023
G3
253
—
Math · started 5th in 2015
G5
189
—
Math · started 4th in 2015
G4
226
—
Math · started 3rd in 2015
G3
297
G4
282
G5
269
-14.1
Math · started 4th in 2017
G4
238
G5
240
+2.2
Math · started 3rd in 2017
G3
294
G4
239
G5
219
-37.5
Math · started 3rd in 2018
G3
315
G4
282
-32.4
Math · started 3rd in 2019
G3
294
—
Math · started 5th in 2022
G5
229
—
Math · started 4th in 2022
G4
183
G5
206
+22.5
Math · started 3rd in 2022
G3
252
G4
216
-35.6
Math · started 3rd in 2023
G3
262
—

How this works: we follow each grade-cohort across years through the school (3rd graders in 2023 are 4th graders in 2024, etc.) and fit a linear slope on a 100–400 proficiency-points scale built from the state assessment's four levels (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4, weighted by student share). This is the same construction Stanford SEDA uses (edopportunity.org/methods); it's not student-level tracking — we measure the school's cohort, not individuals. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Evidence & technical detailClick to expand

School Alpha

School Alpha is the residual between actual and expected performance once school context is held constant. It is a context-adjusted estimate, not a causal claim about teaching quality. Its reliability shows up on the page as the confidence label and the rank interval, not as a standalone statistic.

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
41.7
FRL %
52.3%
ELL %
0.5% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
22.8% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$71,810
Tract poverty rate
9.3%
Tract % bachelor's+
24.9%

What "Decoded Rank" means

Decoded Rank converts School Alpha — the context-adjusted residual — into a parent-facing rank within the metro pool. A higher Decoded Rank than Achievement Rank means the school's raw scores understate its performance once neighborhood and school context are held constant. The reverse means raw scores overstate it. The rank is one signal, not a verdict.

Data & sources

Assessment data
2022–23 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2022
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
September 4, 2026
Methodology version
0.14.0
Source files (3)

SchoolDecoder publishes context-adjusted residuals, not causal estimates. Decoded Rank is one signal — not a verdict on teaching quality. Read about limitations →