The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in Science. The lowest is 18% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Michigan Mathematics and Science Academy Lorraine
Michigan Mathematics and Science Academy Lorraine is a charter school on Warren's Lorraine Avenue, serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. It sits within the Michigan Mathematics and Science Academy district, a charter authorizing entity rather than a traditional geographic school system. The school is small for its grade band, and its enrollment is overwhelmingly Black, with a small scattering of students from other racial backgrounds. Every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which marks this as a school serving an economically disadvantaged community. Data on individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so those populations' size and support levels are unknown here.
The school's state testing picture from the most recent M-STEP administration is mixed, with results that lean weak in the earlier tested grades and strengthen as students move up. In third-grade math, proficiency was modest, and it dropped further in fourth grade. By fifth grade, math proficiency fell to the lowest reported range, with no students clearing the proficient threshold. English language arts tells a different story. Third-grade ELA proficiency was quite low, but fourth grade showed a jump, and fifth grade produced a result where roughly half of tested students reached proficiency. Fifth-grade science was in the same neighborhood, with nearly half of students proficient, and social studies landed a bit lower but still showed a respectable share of students meeting the bar. The pattern suggests students may be arriving well behind grade-level expectations and then making ground in the upper elementary years, particularly in literacy and science. A parent weighing this school may want to ask how the school supports early-grade math instruction and what drives the ELA gains seen between third and fifth grade.
Against the comparison set of districts in Macomb County, the school's overall proficiency index lands below the midpoint. The county's districts span a wide range of outcomes, and this school sits closer to the lower portion of that spread than to the middle or top. No graduation rate applies here because the school does not serve high school grades, and chronic absenteeism data was not available.
Warren itself is Michigan's third-largest city and Detroit's largest suburb, a sprawling, auto-oriented place with no traditional walkable downtown. The city is organized around wide arterial roads running north-south and mile roads running east-west, with postwar residential subdivisions, strip commercial corridors, and massive industrial campuses filling the gaps. General Motors, the U.S. Army's Detroit Arsenal, and Stellantis dominate the local employment base, making Warren one of metro Detroit's most industrially significant communities. The city grew explosively in the mid-twentieth century and has been gradually losing population since. It is a mature suburb dealing with an aging housing stock and modest population decline rather than fresh development booms.
Housing in the school's zip code is relatively affordable for the metro. Typical home values sit below both the Michigan state benchmark and the national one, and rents are modest. With thirty-year mortgage rates in the mid-sixes, buying remains more expensive than renting on a monthly basis, but the entry price point is lower than most of the region. For a family drawn to this school, housing costs in the immediate area would not be a barrier in the way they might be in more affluent parts of Macomb County.
The school's name signals a focus on mathematics and science, and the fifth-grade science results give that aspiration some grounding. The district brief turned up no recently reported changes to programs, leadership, or operations that would alter what a family sees today. Course access data, staffing figures, attendance patterns, and discipline records were all absent from the available data, so a parent would need to go directly to the school for those details. What the data does show is a small, high-poverty charter elementary school where early-grade academic results are a concern, but where upper-elementary literacy and science outcomes suggest the school may be building momentum as students progress. Whether that trajectory holds through the remaining sixth-grade year and into whatever middle-school placement follows is a question the school is best positioned to answer.
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