This story was written by Lia Salvatierra, our new Education Reporter. Find more of Lia’s reporting here. Do you have an NKY education story? Email lsalvatierra@linknky.com.
New data reveals Northern Kentucky’s middle schools improved on average more than any school level last year, while the region’s elementary schools lost ground and high school scores stagnated overall.
Report cards released Thursday provide a look back at the performance of each school level during the 2025-26 school year, using Kentucky’s accountability system.
Elementary and middle schools are scored on four key indicators, and high schools are scored on six key indicators. Those scores are combined into an overall performance score, then simplified into a 1-5 scale and finally, a color rating. Red indicates the lowest performance rating, followed by orange, yellow, green and blue, indicating the highest performance rating.
Performance ratings don’t capture the many other school data points the Kentucky Department of Education released last week, including rates of economically disadvantaged students measured by the volume of students that qualify for free and reduced lunch. Though Northern Kentucky schools’ performance was closely correlated to rates of economic disadvantage, a LINK nky analysis also highlights schools that broke from that pattern last year.
Gains at NKY middle schools
Northern Kentucky’s 21 middle schools saw an average boost in performance on all four performance metrics last year.
On the color scale, 11 schools retained their color ratings, seven schools bumped up one color rating and three schools bumped down.
Big gainers drove some of the region’s overall improvement, like Ballyshannon Middle School which made the single biggest leap in the region last year, improving by 26.4 points.
A handful of other schools saw especially big gains last year when considering their higher rates of economically disadvantaged students, including Bellevue Middle School, Ludlow Middle School and Tichenor Middle School in Erlanger.
Find a chart of the middle schools with the single biggest performance jumps below.
Most NKY high school scores stagnate
Most of Northern Kentucky’s 17 high schools either retained or lowered their color rating last year, with some big leaps to the top and bottom of the ladder.
Randall K. Cooper High School in Boone County was the only school in the region to jump up to the highest blue rating from a yellow rating, bringing it into second place behind Highlands High School.
Holmes High School in Covington was the only of the region’s 90 schools to drop from a yellow rating to a red rating, bringing it into last place as the only red-rated high school.
Rates of economic disadvantage also stood out among the region’s first- and last-place high schools.
The region’s top-rated school, Highlands High School, had the second lowest rate of economically disadvantaged students at only 10.5%.
The region’s lowest-rated school, Holmes High School, had the second-highest rate of economic disadvantage at 79%.
But there were some notable outliers to that pattern, according to LINK nky‘s analysis.
Some schools like Ludlow High School and Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger performed especially well compared to high rates of economic disadvantage, while some schools with much lower rates of economic disadvantage performed worse.
In an emailed statement, Covington Independent Schools Superintendent Cortnei Flucas said the district will assess what contributed to Holmes’ rating.
“At Holmes High School, we’ve seen encouraging progress over the past several years. With this year’s results, we must work to understand what contributed to the earlier progress, why it was not sustained, and what we need to do differently moving forward,” Flucas wrote.
Ranked scores below are rounded to the nearest whole number.
NKY elementary schools lost ground
On average, Northern Kentucky’s 52 elementary schools’ performance scores declined slightly last year.
Of all the region’s schools, 25 elementary schools retained their color ratings, 19 bumped down at least one color rating and eight bumped up by one color rating.
Two elementary schools dropped two color ratings. One of those saw the greatest single decline in performance points of any school in the region. Both districts declined requests for comment on specific school ratings.
- Stephens Elementary School in Boone County dropped 23.5 performance points, lowering it from a green rating (4) to an orange rating (2).
- Walton-Verona Intermediate dropped 16.5 performance points, lowering it from a blue rating (5) to a yellow rating (3).
Still some elementary schools celebrated big boosts in performance, including Grandview Elementary School in Bellevue which improved by 14.14 points, Southgate Public School which improved by nearly 10 points and Ninth District Elementary School in Covington, which improved by 14 points and had the fifth highest rate of economically disadvantaged students in the region.
