Middle Schools in 2008

If you recall your middle school years, I think you know how critical that particular period is to your educational future. Well at least that's what I recall from the days of yore where your "track" was decided in middle school.

Even if that's no longer the case, in middle school you're forming your peer group that, most likely, you will be with through high school.

Long story short, Madison Metro has the best middle schools. As you can see in the table, the top 5 schools are MMSD.

If you look at the statewide data, you'll see that not only are Spring Harbor, O'Keeffe and Hamilton the top 3 in Madison, they are #3, #4 and #5 statewide. These public schools are bested only by the ALPs charter school in Oshkosh and Swallow Elementary in Hartland.

Not to deny Cherokee and Jefferson their due as #19 and #20 statewide of course.

Of course it's not all golden for the MMSD because the bottom 4 area schools are ALSO MMSD schools. In fact, Sherman is quite terrible sitting in the 10th percentile down there; 47th from the bottom statewide. About the only thing you can say is that it's better than some of the, no doubt, awful Milwaukee public schools.

I'm sure the MMSD digs into this all the time but I would really like to understand why theoretically similar demographics should result in wildly different scores. For example, the O'Keeffe and Sherman attendance areas are adjacent. Yet one is #4 statewide and the other #425 statewide.

Most of the schools appear to be fairly consistent year-to-year but it looks like Savanna Oaks in Verona dropped precipitously from #3 in the area to #12 in the area. I wonder why?

And despite the recent problems at Toki, it's doing a pretty good job still.