Ellsworth Community School, Ellsworth MI

Original Research by School Decision on Ellsworth Community School

Ellsworth Community School is a single-building public school serving prekindergarten through twelfth grade in the village of Ellsworth, a very small rural community in Antrim County on northwest Michigan's lower peninsula. The school and the village share the same name, and the district is tiny, enrolling only a couple hundred students across all grades. Class sizes are small throughout, with some grades having only a dozen or so students. The student body is predominantly white, with small Hispanic, multiracial, and Black populations. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. Data on special education enrollment, English learner status, staffing levels, course access, discipline, and attendance was not available, so those aspects of school life cannot be characterized here.

The village itself sits at the north end of Ellsworth Lake on the upper chain of lakes. Publicly reported sources describe it as a quiet bedroom community whose primary industry is gravel and other aggregates, with agriculture and forestry also contributing to the local economy. Manufacturing is the largest employment sector by headcount, followed by educational services and construction. The village is compact, roughly a mile in each direction, which gives it a walkable residential core clustered around the lake. There is no public transit. Civic life centers on a lakefront park with a campground, and the village hosts a small annual Pig Roast festival with a parade and horse pulls. The county seat, Bellaire, is a short drive away, and Traverse City is farther south. Growth has been very slow, with no major new housing developments identified. The village is currently working on an updated Master Plan in draft form.

State testing results from the most recent year show a mixed academic picture, though the very small tested cohorts mean results can swing sharply from grade to grade. In English language arts, several grades performed well, with upper elementary and eighth grade showing strong proficiency rates, while fifth and seventh grade results were weaker. Math results followed a similar uneven pattern, with one intermediate grade standing out as strong and another as quite low. Science was tested in two grades, with the intermediate grade showing low proficiency and the eighth grade result landing in the middle range. Social studies followed the same pattern. The seventh grade results across both math and English language arts were the weakest in the building, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school.

Despite the variability, when the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades is compared relative to districts in Antrim County, Ellsworth lands in the top quartile. The county comparison set includes a small number of districts, and Ellsworth's combined proficiency index sits above the county median and near the top of the range. This is a meaningful signal given how small the tested groups are. At the same time, the small cohort sizes mean any single year's results carry more noise than they would in a larger school, and year-to-year trends were not available for comparison.

No graduation rate was reported for this school, and no program offerings data was provided. The absence of program information means a parent would need to contact the school directly to learn about Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, career and technical education, or other pathway options, since none can be described from the available data. We searched for recent district-level changes that parents might care about but found nothing of lasting impact reported in available sources.

The housing market in Ellsworth's zip code sits above the state benchmark but below the national one, with moderate year-over-year appreciation. The price-to-income ratio is above the national average, reflecting a market where buying a home is somewhat more of a stretch relative to local earnings than it is nationally, though still within a range many rural Michigan communities share. Rental data was not available. For a family weighing this school, the core tradeoff is clear: a very small, rural, single-building pathway where children stay in one place from prekindergarten through senior year, with the closeness and continuity that implies, set against the limited breadth of programming and the wide swings in year-to-year academic results that small schools inevitably carry.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

State test results and graduation outcomes.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

>=80%Cohort of 22 students · Class of 2021

The federal source publishes a banded range instead of an exact rate when the graduating cohort is small enough that an exact number could risk identifying individual students.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

1,027 schools plotted. 80 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Math

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 39%

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 464%

School 64% · District 64%

▲ 25 pts above state median

Grade 542%

School 42% · District 42%

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 650%

School 50% · District 50%

▲ 22 pts above state median

Grade 717%

School 17% · District 17%

▼ 11 pts below state median

Grade 853%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 25 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 369%

School 69% · District 69%

▲ 31 pts above state median

Grade 455%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 14 pts above state median

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 33%

▼ 9 pts below state median

Grade 667%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 33 pts above state median

Grade 730%

School 30% · District 30%

▼ 4 pts below state median

Grade 879%

School 79% · District 79%

▲ 16 pts above state median

Science

Grade 525%

School 25% · District 25%

▼ 15 pts below state median

Grade 853%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 15 pts above state median

Social studies

Grade 842%

School 42% · District 42%

▼ 1 pts below state median

This schoolEllsworth Community School, 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.