The top reported proficiency rate is 9% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Midmichigan Leadership Academy
MidMichigan Leadership Academy is a charter school on Lansing's west side, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. It sits in a city that functions as Michigan's state capital and a regional center for government, insurance, healthcare, and higher education, with Michigan State University just across the boundary in neighboring East Lansing. The surrounding neighborhood is largely auto-oriented, typical of Lansing's residential stretches, though the downtown core and its river trail system are a short distance away. Housing in the school's zip code runs well below both state and national benchmarks, which gives families looking to rent or buy near the school a relatively affordable entry point compared with much of the Lansing metro.
The school's enrollment is small for its grade band, with roughly three hundred students spread across the pre-K through eighth-grade span. Nearly every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is predominantly Black, with a sizable portion identified as two or more races and smaller Hispanic, white, and American Indian populations. The school does not report English-learner or special-education counts, so a parent relying on those indicators for planning will find a gap. The same is true for staffing, discipline, course access, and attendance data, none of which were available in the records reviewed here.
On state assessments, the most recent results paint a difficult picture. Across math and English language arts, proficiency rates sit in the low single digits or in reported ranges that fall near the floor, with most grades showing no students reaching the proficient threshold on M-STEP. Science and social studies results follow the same pattern. Eighth-grade results, which come from the PSAT rather than M-STEP, are similarly low. When the school's overall proficiency is placed against other districts in Ingham County, it lands in the bottom quartile. A parent comparing options should treat this as a core concern and may want to look into how the school explains these results and what intervention plans are in place.
Because the school stops at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and no chronic absenteeism figure was available. The absence of a graduation rate reflects the grade band, not a missing or weak result.
The district brief turned up no publicly reported changes in programming, governance, or facilities for Mid-Michigan Leadership Academy. Without that layer of context, a family would be right to ask the school directly about recent initiatives, leadership stability, and any academic supports tied to the assessment results.
Lansing itself gives the school a backdrop of civic and institutional life that some families may value. State government offices, Lansing Community College, the Impression 5 Science Center, and the river trail are all part of the city's fabric. The broader metro area anchors include Michigan State University and major employers in insurance and healthcare. For a family weighing this school, the question is whether its leadership model and small setting can deliver the academic growth the current test results do not yet show, and whether the surrounding community's resources can help fill what the school's own data leaves open.
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