The top reported proficiency rate is 57% in English language arts. The lowest is 33% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Richards Middle School
Richards Middle School sits in Fraser, a residential suburb northeast of Detroit, and serves seventh and eighth graders as part of Fraser Public Schools. It is a regular public school on Garfield Road, operating in a community that grew rapidly in the postwar decades and has since settled into an established, family-oriented pattern with a slightly aging population and limited new construction.
The school's academic results from the most recent state testing cycle paint a mixed but recognizably solid picture. In English language arts, seventh graders reached proficiency at a rate near the mid-forties on the M-STEP, while eighth graders performed considerably stronger on the PSAT, with a large majority clearing the proficiency bar. That eighth-grade ELA result stands out as a genuine strength. Math tells a harder story. Seventh-grade math proficiency landed in the low forties, but eighth-grade math on the PSAT dropped sharply, with fewer than a quarter of tested students reaching proficiency. Science and social studies, both assessed in eighth grade via M-STEP, came in the mid-forties, consistent with the seventh-grade math and ELA bands. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Macomb County, which is a strong standing for a two-year middle school. The sharp eighth-grade math drop is the one result a parent may want to look into further with the school, as the gap between ELA and math at that grade is wide.
No multi-year trend data was available, so it is hard to say whether these results represent stability, improvement, or a temporary dip. Participation rates were also missing from the state data. Because the school serves only seventh and eighth grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence reflects the grade band rather than any gap in performance.
Enrollment is moderate for a two-grade middle school, with the two grades roughly balanced in size. About half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives Richards a genuinely mixed-income peer environment rather than a uniformly affluent or high-need one. The student body is majority white, with a meaningful Black enrollment and smaller shares of multiracial, Hispanic, and Asian students. Information on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not reported, so those populations cannot be characterized here.
Fraser itself is a car-dependent suburb. The city is nearly square, bounded by major roads, with Groesbeck Highway running through the southeast and carrying much of the commercial and manufacturing activity. There is a historic crossroads at Utica Road and the former Grand Trunk Railway depot, but the overall built environment is single-family homes and commercial strips rather than a dense, walkable core. Schools sit on separated campuses, and civic functions are distributed rather than concentrated in a traditional downtown. The city is within the SMART bus service area, which provides some regional transit access.
The housing market around Richards is relatively accessible compared with state and national benchmarks. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below the state benchmark and considerably below the national one, and the price-to-income ratio is moderate. The county-level market has seen active listings grow year over year while new listings have softened slightly, and median days on market have edged up, suggesting a market that is loosening a bit but still moves at a reasonable pace. Rental costs appear modest relative to income. All of this points to a community where housing costs are manageable for working families, with the trade-off of a suburban, car-oriented lifestyle.
Data on disciplinary practices, course access, staffing, attendance, and chronic absenteeism was not available, so those dimensions of school climate could not be assessed. Title I status was also not reported. What the available evidence does show is a mid-sized, demographically mixed middle school with strong reading results, a solid overall standing among Macomb County districts, and a clear area of concern in eighth-grade math that warrants a closer conversation with the school.
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