The top reported proficiency rate is 42% in English language arts. The lowest is 33% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Renaissance Virtual School
Renaissance Virtual School sits on Waldon Road in Clarkston, within the Clarkston Community School District of Oakland County. It is a regular public school serving grades kindergarten through twelve, and it is a very small school for that broad a grade range. The enrollment is small enough that many grade-level cohorts have only a handful of students, which shapes nearly everything about how one reads its academic data.
The school's state assessment picture is limited. Across math, English language arts, science, and social studies, most grade-level proficiency rates are suppressed because no students were tested in those grades for the most recent reporting cycle. The only reported results come from seventh grade, where a small group of students sat for the M-STEP in math and ELA. In those two subjects, proficiency fell below the midpoint among Oakland County districts. Because the tested group is so small, a parent should treat these results as a narrow snapshot rather than a reliable portrait of schoolwide performance. Participation rates were also not available, and no multi-year trend data was reported. The school does not appear in the county's graduation-rate comparison, and no graduation rate was provided for this school. Chronic absenteeism data was also missing. This is the kind of gap that often reflects the nature of a small or alternative-setting school rather than a weakness, but a parent may want to ask the school directly about how it tracks and supports attendance and on-time completion.
Demographically, the school is predominantly white, with a small share of Hispanic students and a few students of two or more races. About a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is a relatively modest share. Information on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those needs cannot be characterized here.
The surrounding community is the City of the Village of Clarkston, a tiny historic mill village in northern Oakland County, roughly thirty miles northwest of Detroit. It is the smallest city by land area in Michigan, with a compact street grid centered on Main Street and the Mill Pond along the Clinton River. The village has a historic downtown with small shops and a converted Ford mill building that now houses galleries and office space. Independence Township surrounds the village and uses the Clarkston mailing address but is more suburban and car-dependent. School campuses across the broader district are spread through the township rather than concentrated in the village proper. Housing in the Clarkston zip code area sits above both state and national benchmarks for typical home values, and rents are moderate relative to local mortgage costs. The county housing market has seen a moderate increase in active listings recently, giving buyers somewhat more supply to work with.
At the district level, publicly reported information notes that Clarkston Junior High School, serving grades eight and nine, was rebuilt and reopened recently, representing a major capital improvement for families with students in those grades. Renaissance Virtual School itself did not appear in program-access, course-access, staffing, discipline, or civil-rights data sections, so those dimensions of the school environment could not be assessed.
For a family considering this school, the central question is whether a very small, full-range virtual program fits a particular child. The compact enrollment means peer groups are small across every grade, and the limited assessment data makes it hard to judge academic outcomes from state measures alone. A parent considering Renaissance Virtual would want to ask the school directly about its curriculum structure, how it supports students across such a wide age span, what its graduation and postsecondary outcomes look like, and how individualized attention works in practice.
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