Schools across Park County make up some of the highest performing in the state, according to recent WY-TOPP scores released recently by the Wyoming Department of Education.

The results, pertaining to last spring’s assessment of the 2025-2026 school year, show the largest score increases for Park County School District 6 in Cody. Park 1 in Powell, continues to remain high above state average with its scores while Park County 16 in Meeteetse battles to take back ground lost following three years of tough assessment cycles.

The WY-TOPP, or Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress, is a statewide assessment used across the state’s 48 school districts and three charter school districts meant to gauge how well specific student groups are learning and performing to the state’s fairly rigorous educational standards. The WDE has been using the WY-TOPP since 2017 to evaluate students in English/language arts (ELA), math and science.

At the state level, this year’s scores are the first time that every assessment category has risen to at or above pre-pandemic levels, with statewide student proficiency increasing universally. The percentage of students who tested as either proficient or advanced came out to 57.3% in ELA, 54.9% in math and 52.5% in science, increases of 1.6%, 4.1% and 1.3% from last year, respectively.

Park 1: Keeping sights set high

While Cody might have taken some of the limelight, Park 1 students remain high achievers. Most of Powell’s schools are either meeting or exceeding accountability expectations, with the exception of Powell Middle School, and the district continues to remain in the top five of larger tested districts in the state in the ELA and math assessments.

In the ELA assessment, the third through 10th graders who took the ELA assessment scored 65.9% proficiency, down 2.3% from the last semester. Math scores fared marginally better than last year, rising 1.7% to 65.2% proficient. The largest hit to affect the district was the science evaluation, which saw proficiency drop to 58.3%, a 7.1% decrease. Despite some of the setbacks, Park County School District 1 Superintendent Jay Curtis remains optimistic.

“Obviously the tests are important and it’s what everyone judges us by, but we don’t place an enormous amount of importance on it,” Curtis said. “We place a lot of importance on doing the right things every day and then WY-TOPP scores are a natural byproduct of that process and we try not to get bogged down by differences of a percent or two because it’s really marginal.”

Curtis said that despite being one of the highest achieving middle schools in the state, having previously been designated a National Blue Ribbon School in 2021, the accountability measure only lists them as partially meeting standards because it’s more difficult to go from proficient to advanced than it is from basic to proficient.

Curtis also spoke about the limitations and year-to-year inconsistencies of the science assessment scoring, as the test only affects three grades and doesn’t follow or compare how that same group of students does over time.

“It’s a different set of kids that are being tested every year, so it’s not really comparable. It would be more comparable if you looked at what the eighth graders did four years ago when they did the fourth grade section. Even then, it’s tough because in four years’ time, there’s a lot of kids that would change in those classes,” Curtis said.

While the science assessment may be more difficult to extrapolate individual class performances, there are still metrics that can be monitored. During a recent school board meeting, Powell High School Principal Tim Wormald cited a change in ELA assessment performance from the ninth graders of the 2024-25 school year to the 10th graders of the 2025-26 year. That group of students rose from 65% proficiency in 2025 as freshman to 70% as sophomores this year. Compared from year-to-year, 10th grade ELA also saw an 11.7% increase compared to the last year.

Other areas of note include a 4.1% increase to 62.4% proficiency in ninth grade math from last year to this year, a 10.3% increase in sixth grade math scores to 71% and sharp increases in third grade math scores. There was a 15.2% increase at Southside to 69.4%, a 16.3% increase at Westside to 71.8% and a 19.6% increase at Parkside to 77.1%.

Curtis said that with all of the data provided by the test result and accountability measures, the schools of the district are able to design their own improvement plans on what they’re seeing. He highlighted Southside Elementary’s efforts to drive reading and literacy proficiency for students as their primary goal.

“I have always viewed WY-TOPP as what kids choose to show us one day of the year because, at the end of the day, our staff and students work incredibly hard,” Curtis said. “I could not be more proud of everyone in Powell and how hard they work every single day, not just on test day.”

Park 6: Leaps and bounds

Schools in Cody saw a notable increase in scores in this year’s spring assessment, surpassing Park 1 for the first time in recent years on all tested criteria. This year also marks the first time that all schools in Park 6 either met or exceeded expectations according to the WDE’s annual accountability report, with three schools each in both categories.

Across the eight grades tested in the ELA and math assessments, district proficiency rose to 68.9%, a jump of 7.3% from last year. This trend holds for the math assessment, which climbed to 68.2%, up 8%. The largest jump came from the science assessment, which only tests fourth, eighth and 10th graders, in the form of an 8.7% increase from last year’s number and rising to 68.2% proficient.

“I’m excited and just proud of where Park 6 is. For us as educators and instructional leaders, it tells us that we’re providing a high level of instruction to prepare our students for the future,” said Park County School District 6 Superintendent Vernon Orndorff.

“I’m proud of all of our principals, teachers and students for taking this test seriously, focusing on the learning environment and taking ownership of their learning.”

In individual grade groups, Park 6 saw an increase in several areas, with sixth grade math scores seeing an 18.7% increase since last year, ninth and 10th grade math both seeing a 12.5% increase, and 10th grade ELA exploding with a 20.5% increase.

While these scores are impressive, Orndorff was quick to speak on how the work is still not complete and how the board has set the goal to see proficiency rise over the 70% threshold for each subject.

“There’s a couple of opportunity gaps that we need to fill and we need to always ask ourselves what’s next,” Orndorff said. “Once we get those identified, that’s where our folks are able to come in and support those students to get them to that grade level we’re looking for.”

Park 16: working hard

After a period of decline in Meeteetse’s scores beginning during the 2023-24 school year, Park 16 has worked hard to stabilize and reverse the trend, meeting some success.

While the ELA assessment dropped by 1.6% to 51.2%, evaluations in math and science saw nominal increases of 0.4% to 41.9% and 2.4% to 50.0%, respectively. Despite the progress, the district remains slightly below the statewide average. Park County School District 16 Superintendent Shane Ogden explained some of the difficulty the district has experienced and how Meeteetse’s small size and declining class sizes exacerbates the problem.

“Hypothetically, if you have a class of four or five students and one student who is not proficient, you’re going to decrease quite a bit in that regard,” Ogden said. “We always try to use caution with what we put out there and we spend most of our time looking at individual students to develop the support and structure we need to have in place to help those kids be more proficient.”

Ogden also shared Curtis’ conviction that WY-TOPP is just one measure of student progress and does not represent a complete measure of success or potential. He highlighted how 80% of students tested saw meaningful growth against the test two years prior. Due to a revision of cut scores in the math and science categories, students who saw a 90-point growth in those tests were not bumped up to proficient status.

The WDE also has a clause protecting students in small classes, as results are not reported for groups of five or fewer students, making it more difficult to give specific numbers without identifying individuals. Despite this, the administration at Park 16 has taken steps to address concerns for elementary education, an area that Ogden said was being monitored. The changes include increasing elementary reading instruction from 60 minutes to 110 and increasing math instruction by 50%.

“We’re to make sure that we’re providing the resources we need to and keep focusing in on direct instruction by our highly qualified teachers,” Ogden said. “We recognize where we are and I think the fact that we saw a little bit of overall growth is really promising to us.”

What all of this means

The way the WDE assesses proficiency is by separating students into two, broad categories: proficient and advanced students (best visualized as students who receive A’s and B’s on a standard grading scale) and basic and below (C students and below). While this metric is useful in setting a tight evaluation at an institutional level, the designations aren’t necessarily as intuitive for the general public.

“There’s false narratives out there because being at 70% proficient doesn’t mean that the other 30% can’t read, can’t do math or understand science, it’s that they may have some learning challenges and we’re going to meet them and close the gaps,” Orndorff said.

Adding to this point was Curtis, who explained how the testing metrics have been intentionally designed to achieve a bell-shaped curve and bisect it down the middle to critically assess where everyone is.

“There’s a massive lack of understanding as to what these scores are and aren’t,” Curtis said. “When you look at how Wyoming is performing as a state, you can see that we’ve never performed better than we are right now against the nation.”

The way that a district scores in a WY-TOPP cycle can also directly impact how much the WDE intervenes. The data that is collected shapes instructional planning and curriculum, affects public benchmarking and factors into accountability standards. For more information as to what the WY-TOPP measures, the raw data of every previous cycle and how the assessment impacts school districts across the state, visit the WDE’s website at edu.wyoming.gov/.