By Stephen Smoot
For almost 20 years, Schooldigger has delivered evaluations and assessments of almost every school and school district in the nation. Annually, around the September start date for most schools, the organization releases its rankings for kindergarten through 12th grade.
According to Schooldigger, a number of other ranking organizations use their data as a critical input. They state on their site that “our data is used by real estate websites, school choice sites, and other education-related sites.”
It then shares that “we power Money Magazine’s Best Places to Live. We supply test score data for the The Education Recovery Scorecard, a joint project of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.”
Harrison County as a whole scores high relative to the other 54 counties in the state. It carries a rank of 19, which places it as better than two-thirds of the counties in the state. That 65.5 percent rating was the same last year and numbers have been consistently at or about this level since the recession of COVID.
Interestingly, Harrison County Schools struggled more before 2020. It only scored better than 54.5 percent in 2019 and 40 percent the year prior.
Part of the momentum driving the score lay in the performance of Bridgeport High School, which rose from second to first among all West Virginia high schools.. To go with its near 100 percent graduation rate, Schooldigger states that “Bridgeport High School significantly outperforms the district and state averages in academic assessments, with 76% of 11th-graders proficient or better in English Language Arts, compared to 62.6% for the district and 55.1% for the state.”
It also shared that “in mathematics, 48.6% of 11th-graders were proficient or better, compared to 25.7% for the district and 20.3% for the state.”
South Harrison High School also helped to buoy the county’s results. Its ranking leapt from 109 of 112 to 29 over the past year, pushed by rising achievement among female and special education students, according to Schooldigger.
Lincoln High School also made a dramatic jump in the rankings, rising from 75 to 49, putting it among the top 45 percent of high schools in West Virginia. Graphs on the Schooldigger site reveal that Lincoln High School struggled from 2019 to 2024. It ranked better than 37.4 percent of high schools in the state in 2018, 20.5 percent in 2020, and 33 percent last year. Test scores, however, have risen from an average standard score of 30.7 in 23-24 to 57.26 last year. Also, over 97 percent of Lincoln students graduated last year.
Another part of Lincoln High School’s improvement may lay in the continually advancing ranking of Lincoln Middle School. Schooldigger lauded LMS’s “consistent improvement in its academic performance.” The school hit a nadir in 2018 when it scored above less than 20 percent of middle schools in West Virginia. Within two years, that number had jumped to just under 55 percent and has continued to gradually rise ever since.
Today Lincoln Middle School ranks 46th in the state, above almost three-fourths of middle schools. Ranking growth reflects improvement in test score numbers. In 2018, LMS had a 28.85 average, but by last year, that had climbed to 62.1.
Schooldigger explained in detail how the scores broke down, stating that “the school’s proficiency rates in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) assessments are generally higher than the Harrison County Schools and West Virginia state averages, particularly in 6th grade where the proficiency rates are significantly above the district and state levels.”
It went on to add that, “in 2024-2025, 54.2 percent of 6th-grade students at Lincoln Middle School were proficient or better in mathematics, compared to 34.5 percent in the Harrison County Schools and 32.8 percent statewide.
