The top reported proficiency rate is 57% in Science. The lowest is 29% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Moran Township School District
Moran Township School District is a very small elementary-and-middle district in Mackinac County, Michigan, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade from a single school, Gros Cap School. The enrollment is small enough that each grade has only a handful of students, which shapes nearly everything about the academic picture here. Classrooms are intimate, and the peer group in any given year is tight knit. Families choosing this district are choosing a rural, small-scale setting where their child will be known by name, and where the tradeoff is a limited peer pool and thin extracurricular offerings compared to larger districts.
The student body is distinctive for its racial composition. American Indian or Alaska Native students and White students each make up close to half the enrollment, with a small number of students identifying as two or more races. This is a more integrated and Indigenous-representative enrollment than most Michigan districts, and families for whom a Native cultural presence in school matters may find that meaningful. We looked for free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education counts, and English learner figures, and none were available, so those dimensions of student need cannot be characterized here.
On state testing, the picture is fragmented because so few grade levels produced reportable results. For the current school year, only third and fifth grade had students taking the M-STEP in numbers the state was willing to report. Grades four, six, seven, and eight all show zero tested students in the data, which means proficiency for those grades is suppressed and cannot be read as either strong or weak. Among the grades that did report, third grade showed about a third of students reaching proficiency in both math and English language arts. Fifth grade performed somewhat better, with roughly four in ten proficient in math and ELA, and a clear majority reaching proficiency in science. Social studies in fifth grade was the softest spot, with fewer than three in ten proficient. A parent may want to ask the school directly about testing participation in the upper elementary and middle grades, since the data here does not explain why those grades show no tested students.
Against its county peers, Moran Township sits above the midpoint among Mackinac County's districts on a cross-subject proficiency index, which is a reasonably encouraging position for a district this small. Its chronic absenteeism rate falls below the county median, suggesting that getting kids to school regularly is less of a struggle here than in several neighboring districts. Per-pupil spending lands in the upper half of the county, so resource levels are not the constraint they might be in other small rural systems. Because the district does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and no AP or career-pathway data applies to this grade band.
Housing in the district's area, which spans ZIP codes around Saint Ignace and Naubinway, is well below the Michigan state benchmark and far below national figures. For families, that means homeownership is more attainable here than in much of the state, with a price-to-income ratio that sits comfortably below what many regions demand. Home values have been climbing at a brisk year-over-year pace recently, so the market is not standing still, but the entry point remains modest. Rental data was not available.
We searched for recent district-level changes that would matter to parents and found little of lasting impact in publicly reported sources, so there are no program overhauls, closures, or governance shifts to flag. The district's strategic priorities were not available in the data provided. What a family is looking at here is a small, rural, culturally integrated elementary district with modest but improving test results in the grades that reported, reasonable public investment per child, and housing that stays within reach. The gaps in the data are real, and a prospective parent would do well to call Gros Cap School directly for the pieces that are missing.
See more original research from School Decision →