The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in English language arts. The lowest is 13% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Auburn Elementary School
Auburn Elementary School sits in the Avondale School District, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade on Waukegan Street in Auburn Hills. It is a regular public school with a modest enrollment for its grade band, and a substantial majority of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is racially diverse, with Black and White students each forming large pluralities and a sizable Hispanic share, plus small Asian and multiracial groups. Information on English learners and special education counts was not available, so those portions of the picture remain unstated.
On Michigan's M-STEP assessments for the most recent school year, the school's results were low across the board and sit in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Oakland County, where the median proficiency index sits well above this school's level. Math proficiency was the weakest area, declining steadily from third grade through fifth grade, where only a small fraction of test-takers reached proficiency. English language arts showed somewhat more strength in fourth grade but dropped off considerably by fifth grade. Science and social studies, both tested only in fifth grade, also saw only a small share of students scoring proficient. A parent weighing this school may want to look into these results further with the administration, asking what instructional supports and interventions are in place to move scores upward, particularly in the upper elementary grades where the decline is sharpest. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is unclear whether these results represent a slide, a plateau, or a one-year snapshot. Because the school serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than any gap in performance.
Auburn Hills itself is an unusual place. Publicly reported sources describe a city whose daytime identity is overwhelmingly corporate and industrial, anchored by automotive headquarters including Stellantis North America and BorgWarner, along with dozens of international firms and technology parks. Oakland University's main campus sits within the city, and Great Lakes Crossing Outlets functions as a major retail and social destination. The residential fabric is thinner than the commercial one, with apartment complexes near a small downtown district and suburban neighborhoods elsewhere. Outside that downtown Village Center area and the Clinton River Trail, the built environment is car-dependent, oriented around Interstate 75 and wide arterial roads. For a family with young children, this means school life will likely center on the building and its community rather than on a walkable town square, though parks like River Woods offer nearby green space.
The housing market in the school's zip code is relatively accessible for Oakland County. Home values sit below both the state and national benchmarks, and rents are modest compared with much of the surrounding county. The broader county market shows active and new listings rising year over year, with median days on market running about a month, suggesting a market that is loosening slightly but still turning over at a reasonable pace. For families looking to buy or rent near the school, affordability is a relative strength compared with neighboring communities, even as mortgage rates remain elevated nationally.
The Avondale School District also operates Avondale High School and Avondale Middle School within Auburn Hills, so a family starting at Auburn Elementary would have a path through the district's secondary schools without leaving the city. We searched for recent district-level changes that parents might care about and found little of lasting impact, so nothing new to report there. Auburn Elementary's academic results are the central concern in this profile. The school serves a diverse, predominantly lower-income student population in a city whose corporate wealth does not necessarily translate into neighborhood-level advantage for every family. Whether the school's supports are meeting the challenge those test numbers describe is the question a parent would want to bring directly to the principal and teachers.
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