The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in Social studies. The lowest is 32% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Beaverton Juniorsenior High School
Beaverton Junior/Senior High School sits in a small Gladwin County community that built its identity around plastics. The town bills itself as the Plastic Thermoforming Capital of the World, a heritage rooted in the mid-twentieth century when the plastics and thermoforming industry took hold in the area. Brown Machine, a thermoforming equipment manufacturer, has been a long-standing local employer near the M-18 corridor. The downtown core runs along Brown Street, with residential streets radiating outward and a dam on the Tobacco and Cedar rivers creating a scenic pond. Ross Lake Park, just across the M-18 bridge from downtown, serves as the primary civic gathering space, hosting a weekly farmers market and a World War I memorial monument. The city describes itself as walkable with a strong sense of community, and publicly reported sources indicate a modest-income population with a stable headcount over recent decades. The city website references ongoing municipal projects, though specifics were not available in the search results.
The school is a regular public school serving grades seven through twelve, part of Beaverton Schools. Its enrollment is modest for its grade band, with a fairly even distribution across the six grades. The student body is predominantly white, with a small Hispanic presence and very few students from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the modest-income character of the surrounding community. The school is not a charter or magnet school, and its Title I status was not reported in the available data.
State testing results from the most recent year are available for the middle-grade portion of the school. In English language arts, proficiency was mixed across grades, with one grade reaching a clear majority of students testing proficient while another grade sat well below that mark. Mathematics results were generally lower, with the best grade reaching roughly a third of students proficient and the weakest grade dipping below that. Eighth-grade science and social studies results both landed near the middle, with close to half of tested students reaching proficiency. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Gladwin County, though that comparison set is small, covering only two districts in the county.
Several data gaps are worth naming. No high school level state assessment results appear in the payload, so families looking for SAT or MME performance will need to seek that directly from the school or the state. The four-year graduation rate was not available in the data provided. Chronic absenteeism data was also missing. Information on special education enrollment, English learner counts, discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance was not reported. Program offerings such as AP, career and technical education, or dual-enrollment pathways were not included in the data, so a parent interested in those options should contact the school directly. We searched for recent district-level changes such as referendums, curriculum overhauls, or property-tax shifts and found little of lasting impact, so nothing was added on that front rather than guessing.
The housing market around Beaverton is affordable compared with state and national benchmarks. Home values sit well below the Michigan state average and considerably below the national figure, with the price-to-income ratio pointing to relative affordability for local wage earners. The area has seen notable year-over-year home value appreciation recently, which may signal tightening supply or renewed interest in the area, but the absolute cost remains low by most standards. Rental data was not available in the payload. Mortgage rates in the current environment hover in the mid-six percent range, which affects monthly carrying costs for families considering a purchase.
For a family weighing this school, the picture that emerges is a small, stable community with an industrial heritage and an affordable housing market. The academic results available show a school performing reasonably well within its county context on the middle-grade measures that are reported, with English language arts as a relative bright spot and mathematics as an area where fewer students are reaching proficiency. The absence of high school testing data, graduation rates, and program details means a good portion of the picture for upper grades will need to come from direct conversation with the school.
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