Wishkah Valley Elementary/High School

Aberdeen, WA · Grades K–12

Aberdeen, WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

1½ stars

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

Bottom 30% decoded

#1217 of 1502

plausibly #851–1431

Washington schools

#20 · Aberdeen metro

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Bottom 30% achievement

#1081 of 1502

Washington schools

#10 · Aberdeen metro

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

This school performs roughly as expected for its context.

Data confidence:Medium100 students tested 8 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: #1217 of 1502

in Washington schools

Raw test scores rank this school #1081, 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 #1217.

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?

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

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

  • LowEquity 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%36-5.6
Students gain ground year over year 33%28-7.5
Equity within the school 17%18-5.3
Most students were tested 11%100+5.6

Note: this school's Alpha-only Decoded Rank is #13 (vs the composite #1217). The composite includes cohort progression and other signals that diverge from the context-adjusted Alpha. See methodology.

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

    2024 proficiency57.5%meeting standard

    Tested gradeGrades 5, 8

    22 tested

    202338.4%202457.5%

    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)#1081#1217
Aberdeen, WA (24 schools)#10#20
Among similar schools (6 peers)#1#1

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
181
Free/reduced-price lunch
71.3%
Student-teacher ratio
11.3:1
Locale
Rural, distant
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$67,880ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
19.6%ACS tract proxy
SES index
17.3
Assessment data year
2024
CCD year
2023
ACS vintage
2020-2024

High School Outcomes

Latest available data

Graduation 2024

Subject performance

Annual share of the tested high-school grade meeting or exceeding the state standard. Science is descriptive and is not included in the ELA + math HS Decoded Rank.

  1. ELA

    2023 proficiency69.2%meeting standard

    Tested gradeGrade 10

    13 tested

    202369.2%

  2. Science

    2024 proficiency53.8%meeting standard

    Tested gradeGrade 11

    14 tested

    202238.5%202453.8%

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 Wishkah Valley School District: #1 of 1. 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 standard40%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard25%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)21%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard14%

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.

SchoolRatingAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Robert Gray Elementary#24#7High
Grays Harbor Juvenile DetentionRankings coming soon
Twin Harbors A Branch of New Market Skills CenterRankings coming soon
J M Weatherwax High School#7#6HSHS outcomeHS pool
McDermoth Elementary#7#10High

Similar Schools

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

SchoolRatingAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Orchard Center Elementary#76#99Medium
Kelso Virtual Academy—#26Est. #25Low
Valley School#99#42Medium
DiscoveryRank withheld
Selkirk Elementary 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
2024#10#20
2023#5#4

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.

2023: percentile 862024: percentile 50

Trending down

Based on 2 years (2023–2024).

Slope: -36.4 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 3rd grade here in 2022 lost 38 proficiency points by 5th grade — declining while the typical metro school improved.

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

Learning rate: -19.9 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -44.0 to 4.2)

Low confidence

Cohort 20152016201720182019202220232024 Slope
ELA · started 7th in 2015
G7
256
G8
194
-62.5
ELA · started 6th in 2015
G6
274
G7
205
G8
209
-32.3
ELA · started 5th in 2015
G5
215
G6
177
G7
200
G8
191
-5.0
ELA · started 4th in 2015
G4
293
G5
269
G6
239
G7
208
G8
215
-21.7
ELA · started 3rd in 2016
G3
289
G4
344
G10
285
-3.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2017
G3
192
G4
250
+58.3
ELA · started 3rd in 2018
G3
208
G4
225
G8
200
-3.0
ELA · started 3rd in 2019
G3
230
—
ELA · started 6th in 2023
G6
182
G7
184
+1.9
ELA · started 4th in 2022
G4
258
G5
183
G6
231
-13.8
ELA · started 3rd in 2022
G3
233
G4
253
G5
195
-18.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2023
G3
245
G4
267
+21.2
Math · started 7th in 2015
G7
256
G8
206
-50.0
Math · started 6th in 2015
G6
284
G7
248
G8
195
-44.4
Math · started 5th in 2015
G5
231
G7
207
-11.8
Math · started 4th in 2015
G4
320
G5
277
G6
206
-57.2
Math · started 4th in 2017
G4
278
—
Math · started 3rd in 2017
G3
183
—
Math · started 3rd in 2018
G3
192
G4
283
+91.7
Math · started 4th in 2022
G4
250
—
Math · started 3rd in 2022
G3
258
G4
280
G5
186
-36.0
Math · started 4th in 2024
G4
233
—

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
17.3
FRL %
71.3%
ELL %
1.7% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
13.8% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$67,880
Tract poverty rate
19.6%
Tract % bachelor's+
11.2%

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
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 →