Kate Duncan Smith Dar Middle, Grant AL

Original Research by School Decision on Kate Duncan Smith Dar Middle

KateDuncan Smith DAR Middle serves grades five through eight in the small mountain town of Grant, Alabama, atop Gunter Mountain in Marshall County. The school is part of the historic Kate Duncan Smith DAR School campus, a K-12 institution listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the only school in the country owned and operated by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The middle school itself is a regular public school within the Marshall County system. Grant is a compact, car-dependent community with a small downtown along Main Street, a few local businesses, and nearby access to Lake Guntersville and Cathedral Caverns State Park. The town is growing slowly, with housing values moderate for the region, and many residents commute to larger employment centers in Huntsville, Guntersville, or Scottsboro.

Academically, the school shows a notable split between English language arts and mathematics. On the most recent state assessments, proficiency in ELA reached a strong level in the seventh grade, with a clear majority of students meeting the bar, while sixth and eighth graders posted more modest rates. Math proficiency, by contrast, was an area of concern across all three tested grades, declining as students moved from sixth to eighth. Science, tested only in eighth grade, also showed a modest share of students at proficiency. Overall, when combining performance across all subjects and grades, the school sits below the midpoint relative to other districts in Marshall County. Because the school serves only middle grades, there is no graduation rate to report. State testing data represents a single year, so trend information is not yet available.

The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of Hispanic, two-or-more-races, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Black students enrolled. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not provided, nor were any details on discipline, chronic absenteeism, or staffing. A parent interested in those areas may want to follow up directly with the school.

The school’s location in a rural, slow-growing town means the peer environment is shaped by a tight-knit community with limited demographic diversity. The middle school is one piece of a larger K-12 campus, which may give families a sense of continuity through the grades. Housing in the area is modestly priced relative to national benchmarks, and the commute to Huntsville is a realistic option for parents working in that larger metro area. The district brief turned up no recent major changes or strategic initiatives publicly reported, so the school’s current offerings and approach appear stable for the near term.

Kate Duncan Smith DAR Middle is a school where ELA performance stands out as a relative strength, particularly at the seventh-grade level, while math and science results suggest room for growth. The school fits families who value a small-town, historically rooted setting and who are comfortable with a single-year academic picture that shows distinct variation by subject. Parents concerned about math achievement or who need information on special education and English learner services would do well to ask the school directly for those details.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 636%

School 36% · District 24% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median

Grade 727%

School 27% · District 14% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 821%

School 21% · District 12% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 655%

School 55% · District 43% · ▲ 12 pts above district

even with state median

Grade 777%

School 77% · District 53% · ▲ 24 pts above district

▲ 23 pts above state median

Grade 855%

School 55% · District 48% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median

Science

Grade 834%

School 34% · District 34%

▼ 1 pts below state median

This schoolMarshall County, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 5Lower-income54%Higher-income69%15 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income43%Higher-income67%25 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income76%Higher-income77%2 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income50%Higher-income62%12 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income37%Higher-income39%2 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income24%Higher-income47%22 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income14%Higher-income31%18 pp gap