Bangor Lincoln School, Bay City MI

Original Research by School Decision on Bangor Lincoln School

Bangor Lincoln School is a regular public elementary school in the Bangor Township Schools district, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade on Bay City's north side along Euclid Avenue. It is a neighborhood-scale building, with enrollment distributed fairly evenly across the early grades, and a student body that is predominantly white with a Hispanic presence and a smaller group of students identifying as two or more races. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which shapes the school's resource picture even though specific Title I status was not reported in the available data.

On Michigan's M-STEP assessments for the most recent school year, the school's results paint a mixed but generally solid picture, with ELA as the clear bright spot. In English language arts, proficiency rates hold in the upper forties across third and fourth grades and climb above half of fifth graders reaching proficient or above. Science and social studies, both tested only in fifth grade, land in the mid-forties as well. Math is softer. Third-grade math proficiency sits near the upper forties but drops notably in fourth and fifth grades, where fewer than a third of tested students reach proficiency. The school's overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Bay County, above the county median and above the next-highest district in the comparison set. That positioning is a genuine strength given the school's socioeconomic profile, though the dip in upper-elementary math is an area a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly how instruction transitions between grade levels.

Because Bangor Lincoln serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and the school does not produce the chronic absenteeism or course-access data that a secondary school would. Special-population figures for individualized education programs and English learners were not available in the provided data, so those gaps are noted rather than filled.

The school sits in Bay City, the county seat of Bay County, positioned along the Saginaw River just upriver from Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron. Bay City grew up as a lumber boomtown and later shifted to coal mining, commercial fishing, and beet-sugar refining before settling into its current mix of manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism. The downtown riverfront, with Wenonah Park on the east bank and Veterans Memorial Park on the west, serves as the civic and cultural heart of the city, hosting summer festivals like River Roar, the Polish Festival, and the Bay City Fireworks Festival. The built fabric ranges from Victorian-era lumber-boom mansions along Center Avenue to working industrial sites and quiet residential stretches. The city's population has been in a steady, modest decline, and publicly reported controversies around the privatization and tolling of two city-owned bridges have drawn resident frustration. Healthcare, the public sector, and manufacturing anchor the local economy, with McLaren Bay Region, Bay County government, S. C. Johnson, and General Motors Powertrain among the area's major employers.

Housing in the school's zip code is quite affordable by any benchmark. Typical home values sit well below the Michigan state median and far below the national figure, with a price-to-income ratio that looks favorable for families trying to buy. Rents are modest as well. That affordability, combined with the school's above-median academic positioning among its Bay County peers, makes Bangor Lincoln a practical option for families drawn to Bay City's riverfront character and lower cost of living who want a neighborhood elementary school with respectable literacy outcomes and a community-oriented setting.

We looked for recent district-level changes that might affect families and found little of lasting impact, so that was left out rather than guessed at.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 345%

School 45% · District 42% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 425%

School 25% · District 33% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 14 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 29% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median · even with county median

English language arts

Grade 348%

School 48% · District 42% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 447%

School 47% · District 42% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 556%

School 56% · District 48% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

Science

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 45% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 33% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

This schoolBangor Township Schools, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income31%Higher-income77%47 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income38%Higher-income58%20 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income47%Higher-income70%23 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income36%Higher-income59%23 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income18%Higher-income35%17 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income9%Higher-income52%43 pp gap