Pillans Middle School, Mobile AL

Original Research by School Decision on Pillans Middle School

Pillans Middle School serves grades six through eight in the Mobile County Public School System. The student body is large for a middle school. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. It sits in Mobile, a mid-size port city that functions as a regional economic hub for the Gulf Coast, with major industries in port operations, aerospace manufacturing, shipbuilding, and healthcare. Mobile has a dense historic core downtown with concentrated walkability and entertainment along Dauphin Street, but most of the city, including the western neighborhoods where Pillans is located, is car-dependent with suburban-style development.

The vast majority of students at Pillans qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing it among schools serving a high-need population. The student body is predominantly Black, with smaller shares of Hispanic, white, and multiracial students. English learner and special education counts were not available in the data. That is a gap a parent may want to follow up on with the school directly.

Academically, the state testing results for the most recent school year show that student proficiency rates are low across all three tested subjects. In English language arts, roughly one in five students scored proficient. In math, the proficiency rate was much lower, and in science, less than one in ten students were proficient. Multiple years of data were not available, so there is no trend to examine. Across tested subjects and grades, Pillans places in the bottom quartile among the eight districts tracked in Mobile County, based on a composite proficiency index that combines all tested subjects and grades. Because this is a single-year snapshot, and because the school serves grades that are tested annually, a parent should ask what instructional supports the school provides and whether recent efforts are in place to improve outcomes.

No graduation rate is reported because Pillans is a middle school. No discipline, staffing, or attendance data was available in the records reviewed. No course access data was available either, so it is not clear which electives or advanced coursework the school offers. The Mobile County district has no publicly reported recent changes or strategic priorities of note in the data.

The housing market in the immediate area around the school is substantially more affordable than the Alabama state average and the national average. The typical home value is a fraction of statewide figures, and median rent is also well below the national norm. For a family considering this area, the cost of housing offers significant financial breathing room relative to much of the rest of the state and country. The national unemployment rate was moderate as of the most recent reading, and the national median household income was above eighty thousand dollars; local economic conditions in Mobile, driven by the port, aerospace, and shipbuilding industries, have seen recent job creation.

For a family weighing Pillans Middle School, the core facts are clear. This is a large, high-poverty middle school where the vast majority of students come from low-income households. Academic proficiency rates are low, and the school ranks at the bottom of its county peer group. The school is part of a large county-wide district serving a sprawling, car-dependent city. The surrounding housing market is inexpensive. A parent considering this school would want to understand what academic interventions, enrichment programs, and extracurricular opportunities are available, and what the school's own improvement strategy looks like. Those details were not available in the records reviewed.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 66%

School 6% · District 25% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 72%

School 2% · District 19% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Grade 81%

School 1% · District 18% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▼ 14 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 621%

School 21% · District 49% · ▼ 28 pts below district

▼ 34 pts below state median · ▼ 20 pts below county median

Grade 723%

School 23% · District 53% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

Grade 822%

School 22% · District 52% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Science

Grade 89%

School 9% · District 40% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

This schoolMobile 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 7Lower-income24%Higher-income0%24 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 7Lower-income2%Higher-income0%2 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income2%Higher-income0%1 pp gap