Sardis Middle School, Sardis City AL

Original Research by School Decision on Sardis Middle School

Sardis Middle School serves sixth through eighth grade in the Etowah County district, housed in a regular public school in Sardis City, Alabama. The school draws from a community that remains primarily agricultural, with residents also employed in educational services, health care, manufacturing, and retail trade. Sardis City sits atop Sand Mountain in a rural setting with limited street life and no traditional downtown commercial district; its civic anchors are Sardis City Park and the municipal offices. The town has experienced steady, slow growth over recent census periods, and housing values in the area sit below the state average and well below the national figure, making it a relatively affordable market for families.

The student body has a strong majority of white students, with a sizable Hispanic population and very small shares of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on special education and English learner enrollment was not available in the source materials.

On state assessments from the 2024-25 school year, the school shows a clear split between English language arts and math. In ELA, roughly six in ten students in each grade met proficiency, a rate that holds steady across sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. In math, the numbers are lower: about three in ten in sixth grade, falling to roughly two in ten in seventh and eighth grade. Science results, tested only in eighth grade, show about three in ten students proficient. Compared to other districts in Etowah County, Sardis Middle School’s overall proficiency index lands above the midpoint, placing it in the middle tier among the county’s handful of districts. The school’s math performance is the softest area, and a parent may want to ask how the school supports students who are below grade level in that subject.

Because Sardis Middle School serves only middle grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and no data on chronic absenteeism was available.

The school is part of the Etowah County district, which has seen a couple of notable recent developments. In early 2022, voters narrowly rejected a property tax increase that would have been the district’s first in decades, leaving the district without new revenue for teacher pay and capital improvements. Separately, in 2023, the district expanded career technical education programs at its county career center, adding pathways in welding, healthcare science, and information technology with the help of a state grant. While those programs are based at the career center serving high school students, they signal a district-level commitment to workforce-aligned pathways that may eventually shape the middle school’s feeder pattern into high school.

Sardis Middle School presents as a neighborhood school in a slow-growing rural community with an affordable housing market, ELA proficiency that is solid for its county context, and math achievement that families would want to examine more closely. The district’s tight revenue situation and its recent investments in career technical education are both worth noting for how they may shape the school’s resources and the high school options students move into.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 630%

School 30% · District 33% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 722%

School 22% · District 20% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 20%

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 658%

School 58% · District 67% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▲ 3 pts above state median · even with county median

Grade 758%

School 58% · District 58%

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 861%

School 61% · District 67% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Science

Grade 831%

School 31% · District 43% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

This schoolEtowah 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 6Lower-income45%Higher-income75%30 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income43%Higher-income78%35 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income49%Higher-income75%27 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 7Lower-income11%Higher-income37%26 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income15%Higher-income25%10 pp gap