Best Public Elementary Schools in Spokane
Spokane-area public elementary education is anchored by three large districts — Spokane Public Schools, Mead School District, and Central Valley School District — with smaller West Valley, East Valley, Cheney, and Deer Park districts on the perimeter. Unlike King County's top suburbs, where the highest-scoring elementaries clear 90 percent proficiency in both subjects, the Spokane top ten concentrates in the 60-to-80 percent range. Mead and Central Valley together account for half the list, despite Spokane Public Schools being substantially larger by enrollment.
Wilson Elementary, in Spokane's South Hill / Comstock neighborhood and part of Spokane Public Schools, leads the list with 75 percent proficient in math and 71 percent in ELA. Wilson sits in one of Spokane's older affluent residential pockets, near the Manito Park area. Skyline Elementary in north Spokane (Mead SD) is second and Moran Prairie Elementary, another South Hill school in Spokane Public Schools, is third, both at 70 percent averaged across the two subjects. Skyline and Midway, also in Mead, have received state Board of Education recognition for academic achievement in ELA, math, and attendance. Hutton Elementary on Spokane's lower South Hill and Mullan Road Elementary on the south edge of the city round out the Spokane Public Schools presence in the top ten.
Mead School District places three elementaries in the top ten (Skyline, Midway, Meadow Ridge). Mead serves north Spokane and the Colbert / Mead community along Highway 395, an area whose continued residential growth since 2000 has driven the district's expansion. Central Valley School District, anchored in Spokane Valley and Liberty Lake, also places three: Sunrise, Liberty Lake Elementary, and Ponderosa, all serving the eastern suburban communities along I-90 toward the Idaho border. Liberty Lake's continued population growth has made its single elementary a recurring presence on Spokane-area top-school lists.
The Spokane elementary leaders cluster on the city's South Hill and in north-county Mead / Colbert suburbs, while elementaries in the Hillyard, West Central, and Northeast Spokane neighborhoods — areas with substantially higher poverty rates — do not appear in the top ten. The geographic pattern in Spokane mirrors the income-and-test-score correlation seen statewide, and is more pronounced here than in metropolitan areas with stronger school-foundation infrastructure to offset demographic differences.
Ranked schools
- 001WILSON ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE73%
- 002SKYLINE ELEMENTARYMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE70%
- 003MORAN PRAIRIE ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE70%
- 004SUNRISE ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE69%
- 005MIDWAY ELEMENTARYMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE68%
- 006MEADOW RIDGE ELEMENTARYMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE68%
- 007HUTTON ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE66%
- 008LIBERTY LAKE ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE66%
- 009MULLAN ROAD ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE65%
- 010PONDEROSA ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE65%
- 011GREENACRES ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE62%
- 012ADAMS ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE61%
- 013BALBOA ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE61%
- 014MCDONALD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE61%
- 015COLBERT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE60%
- 016PRAIRIE VIEW ELEMENTARYMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE60%
- 017CHESTER ELEMENTARY SCHOOLCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE59%
- 018HAMBLEN ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE58%
- 019JEFFERSON ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE58%
- 020RIVERBEND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE58%
- 021FARWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMEAD SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE58%
- 022WOODRIDGE ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE57%
- 023SOUTH PINES ELEMENTARYCENTRAL VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE57%
- 024WESTVIEW ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE55%
- 025INDIAN TRAIL ELEMENTARYSPOKANE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SPOKANE53%
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