Montesano Jr-Sr High

Montesano, WA · Grades 7–12

Aberdeen, WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Bottom 30% decoded

#20 of 24

plausibly #15–22

Aberdeen, WA schools

Below Expected

#849 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Top 15% achievement

#3 of 24

Aberdeen, WA schools

#670 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Students score highly, but the school performs closer to expected once neighborhood context is considered.

Data confidence:High492 students tested 7 years99% 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: #20 of 24

in Aberdeen, WA schools

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 35% of the rank

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

  • About averageStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 30% of the rank

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

  • About averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 15% of the rank

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

  • About averageDirection over recent yearsCounts for 10% of the rank

    Is this school's Decoded Rank trending up or down across the years we have data for?

  • StrongMost students were testedCounts for 10% 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 35%25-8.8
Students gain ground year over year 30%42-2.5
Equity within the school 15%54+0.6
Direction over recent years 10%50+0.0
Most students were tested 10%99+4.9

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 →

All Rankings

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

ScopeAchievementDecodedShift
Aberdeen, WA (24 schools)#3#20
WA (1503 schools)#670#849
Among similar schools (6 peers)#1#2

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
702
Free/reduced-price lunch
39.0%
Student-teacher ratio
20.6:1
Locale
Town, distant
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$69,286ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
0.0%ACS tract proxy
SES index
53.7
Assessment data year
2024
CCD year
2023
ACS vintage
2020-2024

High School Outcomes

Latest available data

Graduation 2024

HS Decoded Rank #3 of 10 among high schools in this metro

Context-adjusted

Achievement vs. demographic expectation

Top 30%

★ Above Expected

Achievement

Raw test performance

Top 15%

This is context-adjusted achievement (Alpha) — how grade 10–11 scores compare to expectations from the school's demographics. It is not the growth-based composite shown for elementary and middle schools, because a single-tested-grade high school has no consecutive-grade cohort to measure growth from.

Proficiency over time↓ declining
  1. 202356%
  2. 202450%

Share of the tested grade (grade 10–11) meeting or exceeding standard in ELA + math, year over year. This is the school's achievement trend for the tested grade — not student growth and not the K-8 cohort-progression signal.

Graduation
92%
2024 cohort · 89% extended · 101 students in cohort

Data limitations

  • Graduation uses state cohort data. Coursework, offerings, and SAT/ACT counts use the latest available federal CRDC extracts, which can lag current graduation data.
  • SAT/ACT data is count-only in this extract; without an enrollment denominator, we do not treat it as a participation rate.
  • HS Decoded Rank is alpha-only: it summarizes how the school's grade 10/11 test scores compare to expectations from its demographic context, ranked against other HSs in the same metro / state / rural cohort. Graduation, AP, and SAT/ACT data above are descriptive context — they are not yet blended into the composite rank. The achievement-vs-decoded quadrant below plots context-adjusted ACHIEVEMENT (alpha) against raw achievement; it is NOT the growth-based composite shown for elementary and middle schools, because a single-tested-grade high school has no consecutive-grade cohort ladder from which to build a growth signal.

Within Montesano School District: #2 of 2. View district

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 typically spread across proficiency levels.

  • Level 1 — Below standard26%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard24%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)32%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard17%

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.

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Simpson Avenue Elementary#1#4High
Beacon Avenue Elementary School Rankings coming soon.
Central Park Elementary Rankings coming soon.
Satsop Elementary#2#1Low
Elma Elementary School Rankings coming soon.

Similar Schools

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

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
John Sedgwick Middle School#20#33High
Lakeridge Middle School#278#186High
Washington Connections Academy - Mary M. Knight#52#53Medium
George Bush Middle School#28#7High
Evergreen Middle School#45#71High

Historical Ranks

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

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2024#3#20
2023#3#10

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

Trajectory

2023: percentile 232024: percentile 25

Holding steady

Based on 2 years (2023–2024).

Slope: +2.3 pct/yr (no CI — too few years)

Low confidence

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 7th grade here in 2023 lost 17 proficiency points by 8th grade — declining while the typical metro school improved.

Based on 10 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: -2.7 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -12.5 to 7.1)

Medium confidence

Cohort 2015201620172018201920232024 Slope
ELA · started 8th in 2015
G8
250
ELA · started 7th in 2015
G7
256
G8
266
+9.5
ELA · started 7th in 2016
G7
265
G8
266
+1.4
ELA · started 7th in 2017
G7
246
G8
245
-1.2
ELA · started 7th in 2018
G7
249
G8
254
+5.4
ELA · started 7th in 2019
G7
255
ELA · started 10th in 2023
G10
307
ELA · started 10th in 2024
G10
290
ELA · started 8th in 2023
G8
236
ELA · started 7th in 2023
G7
262
G8
244
-17.2
ELA · started 7th in 2024
G7
256
Math · started 8th in 2015
G8
255
Math · started 7th in 2015
G7
243
G8
239
-3.1
Math · started 7th in 2016
G7
254
G8
276
+21.5
Math · started 7th in 2017
G7
245
G8
222
-23.5
Math · started 7th in 2018
G7
238
G8
243
+5.6
Math · started 7th in 2019
G7
240
Math · started 10th in 2023
G10
200
Math · started 10th in 2024
G10
202
Math · started 8th in 2023
G8
189
Math · started 7th in 2023
G7
237
G8
211
-25.6
Math · started 7th in 2024
G7
217
Science · started 11th in 2023
G11
237
Science · started 11th in 2024
G11
263

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.

Shrunk Alpha (95% CI)
-0.21 (95% CI: -0.24 to -0.19)

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
53.7
FRL %
39.0%
ELL %
2.1% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
12.5% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$69,286
Tract poverty rate
0.0%
Tract % bachelor's+
26.1%

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
2023–24 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2023
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
July 26, 2026
Methodology version
0.9.0
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 →