Summary:
The city of Colton, South Dakota is home to three schools that are part of the Tri-Valley School District 49-6: one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. While the schools generally perform well, with Tri-Valley High School - 01 ranking 47th out of 141 South Dakota high schools, the Tri-Valley Elementary in Colton - 02 has seen a concerning decline in its English Language Arts and Mathematics proficiency rates over the past three years.
The Tri-Valley Intermediate School - 03 and Tri-Valley High School - 01 have maintained relatively strong academic performance, often meeting or exceeding the district and state averages in various subject areas. In contrast, the Tri-Valley Elementary in Colton - 02 has the highest percentage of free and reduced-price lunch recipients at 21.31%, which may be a contributing factor to its declining performance.
The data suggests that the Tri-Valley School District 49-6 may benefit from a closer examination of the factors contributing to the declining performance at the elementary level and the successful strategies employed at the secondary level to replicate those successes across the district. Additionally, the finding that the school with the highest per-student spending, the Tri-Valley Elementary in Colton - 02, also has the lowest academic performance, challenges the assumption that higher spending necessarily translates to better educational outcomes.
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