Missouri’s Best Small High Schools – 2025

Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

-John Mellencamp, “Small Town”

I grew up in a small town. (Feel free to sing along) My graduating class was around 60 students and we were 30 miles away from the nearest McDonalds. People who grew up in similar small towns across Missouri know all about a story like this. Missouri’s small town high schools are just different — and so is the passion that people in these small towns have about their schools.

Why This List:

That’s why I decided to crunch the numbers differently when it comes to educational performance of Missouri schools. I wanted to find the top performing small-town schools that are often left out of the rankings we see in the media. The playing field is often not level, so why are schools ranked the same.

Many Lists are Unfair:

I know that other people feel the same way because I often get complaints about unfair competition when I do stories on TV. Just take a look at the list of “Best High Schools for Sports” that was recently released. 16 of the top 25 are private high schools and most of the others are in major cities.

The Methodology

So here is how I came up with this list of Missouri’s Best Small Schools:

• Downloaded performance data of all 618 high schools from US News and World Report
• Deleted all schools over 1068 students
• Removed private schools to level the playing field
• Removed schools in metro areas of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield
• Ranked schools in Classes 1-5 from the MSHSAA classifications (basketball).
  • Class 1: 1-79 students
  • Class 2: 80-154 students
  • Class 3: 155-303 students
  • Class 4: 304-615 students
  • Class 5: 616-1067 students

Class 1

Class 2

Class 3

Class 4

Class 5

Missouri’s Best Small Schools