The top reported proficiency rate is 57% in Science. The lowest is 37% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Cheboygan Intermediate School
Cheboygan Intermediate School sits on West Lincoln Avenue in the small city of Cheboygan, the county seat of Cheboygan County, where Lake Huron meets the Cheboygan River. The town grew out of lumbering and commercial fishing, then shifted toward tourism and manufacturing as those resource industries faded. Today the local economy draws on paper production, metal products, industrial machinery, and auto parts, alongside a Coast Guard presence and a tourism trade built around the Inland Waterway, Lake Huron, and proximity to the Straits of Mackinac. The downtown corridor along Main Street serves as the commercial and civic core. Population growth here is very slow, and the city has a newly drafted master plan guiding development through the end of the decade. For families, housing in the area is relatively affordable compared with state and national benchmarks, with home values sitting well below the Michigan and national medians and a price-to-income ratio that reads as manageable against a broader national picture.
The school serves third through fifth graders as a regular public school within Cheboygan Area Schools. Its enrollment is modest for a three-grade intermediate building, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. The student body is predominantly white, with a smaller group identifying as two or more races and very few students from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. Information on special education and English learner populations was not available, so those are gaps a parent may want to ask the school about directly.
On Michigan's M-STEP assessments, the academic picture is mixed but has real bright spots. Third graders performed well in both math and English language arts, with a clear majority reaching proficiency in each subject. That early strength is encouraging and suggests the school is building a solid foundation as students enter tested grades. Fifth grade tells a more complicated story. English language arts results for fifth graders were the strongest in the building, with a healthy majority proficient, and fifth-grade science results were also solid. But fifth-grade math proficiency dropped off considerably compared with third grade, and social studies results for that grade were the weakest subject area. Fourth grade sat in between across both math and ELA, with just under half of students proficient in each. The school's overall proficiency, when averaged across all tested subjects and grades, places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Cheboygan County, which is a meaningful mark of strength given the county's small set of districts.
A note on the social studies results: the state applied a cut score change for that subject this year, which means trend comparisons are not reliable and the proficiency rate should be read on its own terms rather than against prior years. Participation rate data was missing across all tested grades, so it is hard to gauge whether the results fully represent the student body. No multi-year trend data was available, so there is no clear picture yet of whether performance is improving, holding steady, or slipping.
Beyond test scores, the available data thins out. The school's Title I status was not reported. Discipline data, course access, staffing levels, attendance figures, and chronic absenteeism rates were all absent from the provided information. Civil rights data was empty as well. These gaps mean a parent looking for a full picture of the school environment, support services, and student climate will need to go beyond what is published and ask the school directly. The district brief turned up little about recent curriculum changes, referendums, or facility investments, so there is no clear signal of near-term shifts that would reshape the intermediate school experience.
What the data does show is a school where early-grade literacy is a genuine strength, fifth-grade reading and science are bright spots, and math outcomes decline as students move up through the grades. A family considering this school would do well to ask how the building supports math progression from third through fifth grade, what intervention or enrichment structures exist, and how the school serves its lower-income students, who make up the majority of the enrollment. The community itself offers a quiet small-city setting on the water with affordable housing and a slow but deliberate approach to planning its future.
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