The top reported proficiency rate is 40% in English language arts. The lowest is 10% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Morris Middle School
Morris Middle School serves sixth through eighth grade in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Huntsville City school district. The school is located on Bob Wallace Avenue in the city’s midtown area. This is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet school. Data on its Title I status was not available in the materials we reviewed.
The student body is diverse and predominantly Hispanic and Black, with smaller shares of white students and students of two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on the share of students with individualized education plans and the share classified as English learners was not available in the source material, so a parent should ask the school directly about those populations.
State testing results from the Alabama ACAP assessment show a district in which many students are not yet reaching the proficient bar in core subjects, and the pattern is quite clear across all three middle grades. In sixth-grade math, just over a fifth of students scored proficient. In seventh-grade math, that share falls sharply, and in eighth-grade math it is very low. In English language arts, the picture is stronger but still low: between roughly a third and two-fifths of students met the proficiency standard across the three grade levels. In eighth-grade science, about a sixth of students tested as proficient. These results place this school’s overall proficiency index in the bottom quartile relative to other school systems in Madison County, based on a comparison set of three districts. A parent looking at this school’s academic profile will want to investigate further with the school’s leadership about what interventions, curriculum supports, and strategies are in place to improve student outcomes, as the proficiency levels across all tested subjects and grades are notably low.
Morris Middle School’s enrollment is modest for a middle school. Only one year of state testing data was available in the provided materials, so there is no single-year trend to describe. Chronic absenteeism and graduation rate data do not apply at the middle school level. Data on course access, staffing ratios, and discipline incidents were not included in the source file; these are questions a family may want to raise with the school directly.
The Huntsville City district made a lasting change in the 2023–2024 school year by shifting to a balanced calendar, starting the school year in late July or early August and redistributing breaks throughout the year. This shift is an ongoing factor for all district families and affects summer planning and childcare schedules. A parent considering Morris Middle should confirm how the school communicates its specific calendar and break schedule.
Huntsville itself is a mid-size city with a deeply established aerospace and defense economy, anchored by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park, one of the largest research parks in the country. Manufacturing employers including Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, Polaris, and GE Aviation also have a large presence. The city has been among the faster-growing in the United States over recent years, with population growth driven by annexation and economic development. The downtown core includes Big Spring Park, the Von Braun Center, the Huntsville Museum of Art, and the Orion Amphitheater, though the broader city is car-dependent outside the downtown core. The University of Alabama in Huntsville is located within Cummings Research Park rather than downtown. This is a city with a strong employment base in technology, defense, and manufacturing, and the school sits within a fast-growing metropolitan area.
For a family evaluating Morris Middle School, the central facts are these. The school serves a diverse and economically varied student population in a growing city with a strong local economy. The academic performance results, however, are low across all subjects and grade levels tested, placing the school in the lowest tier when compared with other districts in Madison County. This is a school where a parent will want to ask specific questions about academic support, intervention programs, and how the school is working to close the gap between current proficiency levels and state expectations.
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