The top reported proficiency rate is 40% in English language arts. The lowest is 20% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Pierce School
Pierce School sits on Flint's west side, a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade building in the Flint School District of the City of. It is a small school by any measure, with only a handful of students per grade, which shapes everything about how one reads its results. The building serves a student body that is predominantly Black, with smaller Hispanic, multiracial, white, and Asian populations. Nearly every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which places Pierce firmly in the category of schools serving families in concentrated economic need. The school is not a charter and carries no magnet designation; it is a regular public elementary within a district that has weathered decades of disinvestment.
On Michigan's M-STEP assessments, Pierce's results are weak across the board, though the context matters. Tested counts in each grade are small enough that a single student moves the proficiency picture substantially. In math, proficiency ranges fell into the lowest reporting band for grades three, four, and five, with no students clearing the proficient threshold in several grades. English language arts followed a similar pattern in grades three and four, but fifth grade told a somewhat different story: roughly four in ten fifth-graders reached proficiency in ELA, a noticeably stronger result than the lower grades. Science and social studies in fifth grade landed in low ranges as well. Sixth-grade results were suppressed entirely, with no students reported as tested in that grade. Participation rates were missing from the data. A parent looking at these numbers should treat them as a flag to investigate further with the school, since the small tested populations make year-to-year swings large and the underlying picture hard to read from a single year of results.
Against the comparison set of districts in Genesee County, Pierce's overall proficiency index lands above the midpoint, which may surprise readers given the low grade-level numbers. This reflects the fact that the index averages across tested subjects and grades where data was reportable, and the county cohort includes districts with a wide spread of outcomes, some considerably lower. The comparison is limited; chronic absenteeism data was not available for Pierce, and no graduation rate applies because the school does not serve high school grades.
Flint itself is a post-industrial city that has lost roughly half its population over several decades following massive General Motors workforce reductions. The built environment reflects this: older residential neighborhoods, vacant lots from demolition activity, a downtown core along Saginaw Street with cultural venues like the Capitol Theatre, and the University of Michigan-Flint campus adjacent to downtown. Walkability is limited outside the downtown core, and the city is largely auto-dependent. Housing in Pierce's zip code is inexpensive by any standard, with typical home values far below state and national benchmarks and rents to match. The county market shows modest year-over-year increases in listing prices and active inventory, with homes moving in a matter of weeks. For families, this means housing affordability is rarely the barrier; the broader challenge is the economic and institutional context in which the school operates.
The district brief turned up little publicly reported about recent strategic changes, so there is nothing to relay on that front. IEP and English-learner rates were missing from the data, and no staffing, course access, discipline, or attendance information was provided. Program offerings were not listed. These gaps mean a parent would need to contact the school directly for details on support services, specialized programming, and school climate.
What the available data describes is a small neighborhood elementary serving a high-need population in a city still working through long-term recovery. The strongest signal in the academic data is the fifth-grade ELA result, which suggests some students are reaching grade-level expectations. The weakest signals are in math across the tested grades. Whether Pierce is the right fit depends less on the test numbers alone, given their volatility at this scale, and more on what a family finds when they walk through the doors and ask how the school supports children from where they are.
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