The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in English language arts. The lowest is 18% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Perryville Middle
Perryville Middle is a regular public school serving grades six through eight and sits within the Cecil County Public Schools system. The school is located on Aiken Avenue in the town of Perryville, Maryland, a small incorporated town at the point where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay. Perryville combines a historic rail-town core with extensive highway-oriented commercial development anchored by an I-95 interchange and U.S. Route 40. The town hosts several major destination businesses that shape its economic identity: a casino, a large Great Wolf Lodge resort that opened in 2023, an IKEA distribution center, an outlet retail center, and the Perry Point VA Medical Center campus. The Perryville MARC station serves as the northern terminus of the Penn Line commuter rail to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., making the town a practical option for some commuters.
The school itself is one of several public schools within the town limits, alongside Perryville Elementary and Perryville High, and serves a mid-sized enrollment for a middle school. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller shares of Black, Hispanic, and multiracial students, and about half of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, which is a meaningful share. Cecil County Public Schools as a district has recently been through a budget cycle that drew public attention. In spring 2024, district leadership warned of potential program and position cuts if the county did not fully fund its budget request; the request was ultimately granted at a record funding level for fiscal year 2026, so the immediate crisis was averted. A major construction project to combine Bohemia Manor High and Middle schools into one shared campus is underway in a separate feeder area of the county, but this does not directly affect the Perryville campus.
On state assessments administered through the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program, English language arts is the relative bright spot at Perryville Middle. Across each tested grade, roughly half of students met the proficiency benchmark. In social studies, a similar share of eighth graders reached proficiency. Science results for eighth graders were softer than ELA and social studies. Math is the area of greatest concern. Proficiency rates declined sharply by grade level: sixth grade was the strongest, seventh grade was lower, and eighth grade was very low. This pattern, with math trailing other subjects by a wide margin, is one a family would want to understand directly from the school, particularly to learn what supports are in place for students who have not yet reached grade-level benchmarks in mathematics. Because the data covers only a single school year, there is no trend information available to show whether performance is moving up or down over time.
No data was reported on student discipline, chronic absenteeism, staffing ratios, or course access offerings such as advanced or career and technical education pathways. The school serves only middle grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and information on special education and English learner populations was not present in the available data. A small number of county districts exist in the comparison set, but the cohort was too small to support a comparative proficiency index, so readers cannot determine how Perryville Middle stacks up against other Cecil County middle schools from this data alone.
For a parent or resident weighing this school, the picture is one of a regular public middle school in a small highway-and-rail town with a notable tourism and distribution economy. Academically, the school delivers decent results in English and social studies but faces a clear challenge in mathematics, where the proportion of students meeting proficiency is low across all three grades. The housing market in the 21903 zip code shows home values that are modestly below the statewide Maryland benchmark, and Perryville’s role as a commuter-rail terminus makes it a plausible choice for families who work in Baltimore or Washington but want a small-town setting. Families who prioritize strong math outcomes or want to see evidence of academic growth over time will want to probe deeper with the school directly.
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