D a Smith Middle School, Ozark AL

Original Research by School Decision on D a Smith Middle School

D A Smith Middle School serves sixth through eighth grade as a regular public school in Ozark, Alabama, part of the Ozark City district. The school sits in a small city that functions as the county seat of Dale County, where the economy is heavily shaped by nearby Fort Novosel, the U.S. Army Aviation Center. Ozark is car-dependent and has seen a mostly flat population trend in recent years. The student body numbers in the low hundreds, with the largest racial group being Black students, followed by White students, a smaller Hispanic population, and a small share identifying as two or more races. A substantial portion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a high-need community.

The school’s academic picture comes from the Alabama state assessment administered in the most recent school year. In English language arts, the share of students scoring proficient sits around the middle of the scale for a middle school: sixth grade and eighth grade both show roughly half of students meeting the standard, while seventh grade trails a bit behind. Math scores are notably lower across all three grades, with a particularly sharp drop in seventh grade, where only a small fraction of students reached proficiency. Science, tested only in eighth grade, also shows a low proficiency rate. When these results are combined into an overall proficiency index and compared with other districts in Dale County, D A Smith Middle School places in the bottom quarter of that set. The data covers only a single year, so it is not possible to see whether performance is improving or declining from prior years.

The school does not have publicly reported information on several factors that families often weigh: state testing data for special education students or English learners was not available, nor was there information on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, staffing ratios, or course access such as advanced or elective offerings. These are gaps a parent may want to explore directly with the school or district. Since the school serves only middle grades, it has no graduation rate to consider. However, the broader Ozark City district has experienced a notable decline in its high school graduation rate over a five-year period, which is a lasting signal for families who will eventually move from this middle school to Carroll High School.

The school’s setting in Ozark means that most families rely on cars for transportation, and the community offers a low-cost housing market relative to state and national benchmarks. The city’s historic downtown provides some civic anchors, but the overall growth outlook is flat. For a family considering D A Smith Middle School, the strongest takeaway is that academic performance, especially in math and science, is well below the county average, while the ELA results are closer to the middle. The lack of supplementary data on school environment and supports makes it harder to assess the full picture, but the core test results and the district’s trajectory at the high school level are important factors to weigh.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 626%

School 26% · District 25% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 79%

School 9% · District 9%

▼ 8 pts below state median

Grade 818%

School 18% · District 18%

▲ 2 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 655%

School 55% · District 53% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 1 pts below state median

Grade 742%

School 42% · District 42%

▼ 12 pts below state median

Grade 848%

School 48% · District 48%

▼ 4 pts below state median

Science

Grade 826%

School 26% · District 25%

▼ 9 pts below state median

This schoolOzark City, 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-income33%Higher-income64%32 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income37%Higher-income74%36 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income19%Higher-income52%33 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income6%Higher-income15%9 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income11%Higher-income33%22 pp gap