The top reported proficiency rate is 15% in English language arts. The lowest is 11% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Freeman School
Freeman School sits on Ogema Avenue in Flint, a regular public elementary serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade as part of the Flint School District of the City of. The school draws from a community that has lived through decades of economic contraction. Flint was once a General Motors manufacturing powerhouse, home to the Buick and Chevrolet divisions, and its population has fallen sharply since the automaker's peak employment decades. The built environment today mixes older residential blocks, vacant lots where demolished structures once stood, a downtown core along Saginaw Street with the Capitol Theatre and Sloan Museum, and commercial strips along the major roads. The Flint River runs through the city, and civic anchors include the public library, Willson Park, and the Mass Transportation Authority transit system. Publicly reported recovery efforts since the lead water crisis have included a new water source, replacement of lead service lines with copper, and distribution of filters. Large-scale new housing construction was not evidenced in the retrieved sources.
The housing market around Freeman reflects Flint's economic reality. Typical home values in the school's zip code sit well below the state and national benchmarks, making ownership relatively accessible on a price basis. Rents are also low. The county market shows a modest supply of active listings with a median listing price that has been rising year over year, and homes spend roughly a month and a half on the market. Demand appears steady without being frenzied.
Freeman serves a small student body. The enrollment is modest for a building spanning pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, with roughly even distribution across the elementary years. Nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which points to concentrated economic need in the surrounding neighborhood. The student population is predominantly Black, with smaller shares of white students, students of two or more races, Hispanic students, and a very small number of American Indian or Alaska Native students. Data on English learners and special education populations was not available.
Academic results from the most recent M-STEP testing are low across the board. In math, no grade had a reported proficiency rate above a very low range, and the state reported zero proficient students in several grade bands. English language arts showed slightly more movement in the upper elementary grades, with a small share of fifth and sixth graders reaching proficiency. Science and social studies results for fifth grade were similarly low. These are sobering numbers, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand what instructional supports and interventions are in place. Against the comparison set of Genesee County districts, Freeman's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile.
Because Freeman serves only through sixth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than a missing outcome. Data on chronic absenteeism and discipline was not available. Program offerings, staffing details, course access, and attendance information were also not provided, so those gaps cannot be filled. We looked for recent district-level changes through the Flint School District brief and found little of lasting impact, so that section was left out rather than guessed at.
What Freeman offers is a neighborhood elementary in a city working to stabilize after years of contraction and crisis. Families considering this school should weigh the economic context, the low proficiency results, and the concentrated poverty of the student body, and ask school leadership directly about academic supports, enrichment, and the transition path to middle and high school within the Flint district.
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