KAUKAUNA — Four Kaukauna Area School District schools have earned recognition in recent U.S. News school rankings, the district announced Friday.
“This recognition is something our students, staff, and families should be incredibly proud of,” said Superintendent Mike Slowinski in a news release. “It reflects the daily work happening in our classrooms and the high levels of learning taking place across our schools.”
In the 2026 U.S. News Best Elementary Schools and Best Middle Schools rankings, three District schools were recognized:
New Directions Learning Community and Park Community Charter School were recognized in the Best Elementary School and Best Charter School categories.
River View Middle School was recognized in the Best Middle School category.
U.S. News elementary and middle school rankings are based on student proficiency in mathematics and reading/language arts as measured by state assessments. According to U.S. News, half of the ranking formula reflects the results themselves and half reflects performance in the context of socioeconomic demographics, recognizing schools where students are achieving at high levels.
Kaukauna High School was also recognized in the 2025 to 2026 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, which reviewed more than 24,000 public high schools nationwide and ranked nearly 18,000. U.S. News reports the rankings are calculated by combining weighted scores across six indicators of school quality, producing an overall score that reflects a school’s performance on a national percentile basis. These indicators include college readiness and college-level coursework, state assessment results in math, reading, and science, graduation rates, and measures of student performance above expectations. The methodology was developed in coordination with RTI International, and U.S. News reports it uses third-party data sources rather than collecting information directly from schools.
