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Challenge Elementary

Edmonds School District · Elementary · grades 1-6 · 5409 228th St SW, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043-3934

Location

5409 228th St SW, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043-3934

Academic snapshot

Meeting standard, latest year
95.3%
SBAC ELA+Math combined, 2024-25
Meeting standard, 3-year
94.6%
#2 of 558 elementary schools region-wide · #1 of 21 in this district
Exceeding standard, latest year
83.4%
SBAC Level 4, the top score band
Exceeding standard, 3-year
82.4%
#2 of 558 elementary schools region-wide · #1 of 21 in this district
3-year trend

Who attends

Students from low-income homes
13.0%
English language learners
2.7%
Highly Capable program
98.1%
Enrollment
414
Kids per typical block
Density band: unknown

Teachers

Teachers (latest)
25
Avg years experience
14.3
MA-degree share
72.0%
3-year experience trend

Avg years and MA-degree share are direct OSPI publications; the 3-year trend is our derivation. From data.wa.gov/yp28-ks6d.

Nearby schools

We haven't mapped this district's official feeder chart yet, so these are the closest schools of the next level by straight-line distance, not your assigned or guaranteed schools. Your address decides the assignment. See the districts with full pathways mapped.

Nearest middle schools by distance
Nearest Highly Capable cohort

Highly Capable / gifted pathway

Curated from district Highly Capable program pages, with observed-at dates and confidence labels.

Research dossier

Challenge Elementary

Edmonds School District · grades 1–6 · 414 students · the district's full-time, self-contained highly capable program, co-located inside Terrace Park Elementary in Mountlake Terrace

The verdict

Challenge is not a school you move near. It is a program you test into. Every seat belongs to the Edmonds district's highly capable cohort, with 98.1% of enrollment carrying the designation. Students come from across the district and are housed within Terrace Park Elementary, whose neighborhood kids share the building, the recess yard, and the principal, but not the classrooms. Predictably, the numbers sit at the ceiling: 95.3% combined English language arts and math proficiency in 2024-25, with peer percentiles pinned between 98.8 and 100. Resist reading that as instructional magic. Comparing a cognitively screened cohort against neighborhood schools matched only on income and language guarantees the top of the chart. What the scores confirm is who is in the room, and that is the actual product: a full-day peer group of identified gifted kids, with math taught at least one grade ahead as policy.

Two forward-looking facts should weigh as much as any test score. Universal screening of all 2nd and 6th graders with the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) began in fall 2025, broadening the front door and possibly reshaping future cohorts. And in 2027-28 the campus flips to a 7:20 a.m. start with 1:50 p.m. dismissal. That's brutal logistics for families already commuting across the district, and reason to price childcare into any enrollment decision now.

Researched 2026-06-09. Citations and claim ledger included in the full dossier.

That is the free excerpt. The full dossier is the rest of the file: how these outcomes hold up in context, how deep the advanced-peer group actually runs, how families get in (and who doesn't), culture signals from handbooks and climate surveys, logistics, neighborhood context, the open questions to ask on your tour, and every citation, so you can check our work. Unlock it for $9, or get a $29 Research Pass with 3 dossiers included.

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Sources

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