The top reported proficiency rate is 24% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Mildred C Wells Preparatory Academy
Mildred C Wells Preparatory Academy is a charter school serving kindergarten through eighth grade on Ninth Street in Benton Harbor, a small city in Berrien County sitting across the St. Joseph River from St. Joseph. The school is small for its grade band, with a single class per grade. Its enrollment is almost entirely Black, with a tiny handful of Hispanic and white students. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not report IEP or English-learner figures, so those populations are unknown from the available data.
Benton Harbor's character shapes the context around this school. The city grew as a shipping and manufacturing hub, with Whirlpool Corporation still anchoring the local economy from its nearby corporate campus. Downtown has seen decades of business closures and revitalization efforts dating to the late 1990s, and the city recently completed replacement of all lead service water lines following a public health crisis. The population has been declining. Housing here is inexpensive relative to both Michigan and the nation, with a typical home value well below the state benchmark. Rent data was not available. The city offers Lake Michigan beachfront at Jean Klock Park and sits near Sarett Nature Center, and it is accessible from several highways.
On Michigan's M-STEP and PSAT assessments, the school's results are uniformly low across math, English language arts, science, and social studies. In math, third grade showed the only result above the lowest reported band, with roughly a quarter of tested students reaching proficiency. Grades four through eight fell into the lowest proficiency range in math. English language arts was similar, though seventh and eighth grades showed somewhat stronger results, with eighth grade reaching about a third proficient. Science and social studies results for the tested grades landed in the lowest range. The school's overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint among the seventeen Berrien County districts with comparable data. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, asking how instruction is structured and what interventions or supports are in place for students performing below grade level.
Because this is a K through 8 school, there is no graduation rate to report. Chronic absenteeism data was not available. Program offerings, course access, staffing levels, and discipline data were not provided, so there is little to say about enrichment, extracurriculars, or teacher experience from the available information. The district brief turned up no parent-relevant changes or recent initiatives.
What the picture tells a family is that this is a small, community-rooted charter school in an economically pressed city, serving a nearly all-Black, low-income student body. The academic results are weak across subjects and grades, with the partial exception of eighth-grade ELA. The housing market around it is affordable, but the broader community faces ongoing economic and population challenges. For a family considering this school, the central question is what the school is doing to move proficiency upward and how it supports children who are behind, since the testing data alone does not answer that.
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