The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in Science. The lowest is 12% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Mulick Park Elementary School
Mulick Park Elementary School sits on Rosewood Avenue in Grand Rapids, a mid-sized urban neighborhood within Michigan's second-largest city. It is a regular public school in the Grand Rapids Public Schools district, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, with an enrollment of roughly 280 children across those grades. The student body is predominantly Black, with a sizable Hispanic presence and smaller white and multiracial groups. A very large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which reflects the economic conditions in the surrounding neighborhood rather than any single family's circumstances.
On state testing, the most recent M-STEP results show proficiency levels that are low across the board and sit in the bottom quartile relative to districts across Kent County. In third grade, both math and English language arts proficiency are in the low teens. Fourth grade dips further, with fewer than one in ten tested students reaching proficiency in either subject. Fifth grade shows some separation between subjects: math remains low, while English language arts rises to roughly a third of tested students scoring proficient. Science results for fifth graders land at about a quarter proficient, and social studies is lower. These are the numbers the state reported, and a parent looking at them will want to ask the school directly what instructional supports and interventions are in place, especially in the early grades where the foundation for later learning gets built.
The school does not have a graduation rate, chronic absenteeism figure, or other high-school-level outcomes, which is expected for an elementary building. Data on individualized education programs and English learner status was not reported, so those pictures are incomplete here. No information was available on staffing ratios, course access, discipline, or attendance patterns. These gaps mean the academic data and demographics carry most of the weight of what can be said from the available record.
Grand Rapids itself is the economic engine of West Michigan, with a downtown core along the Grand River that anchors museums, breweries, a presidential library, and a major arena. The city's identity grew out of furniture manufacturing, and today its largest employer is Corewell Health, which anchors a Medical Mile corridor of hospitals, research institutes, and university health-science programs. Meijer and Steelcase also anchor the regional economy. The neighborhoods surrounding Mulick Park are residential, and like much of the city outside the downtown core, they lean car-dependent. The housing market in the school's zip code carries typical home values somewhat above the state benchmark and below the national one, with rents that are moderate for the metro. Homes in the broader county move fairly quickly, with median time on market measured in weeks rather than months, and listing prices have been climbing modestly. For a family weighing whether to buy or rent near the school, the area sits at a price point that is accessible relative to national figures but above much of the rest of Michigan.
The district, Grand Rapids Public Schools, adopted a strategic plan covering 2022 through 2027, built on community input and framed as a continuation of a prior transformation effort that the district says improved graduation rates, reduced chronic absenteeism, and raised test scores. The plan sets six priority outcomes across multiple initiatives, aiming at stability and growth across the district's schools. What that looks like day to day at Mulick Park specifically is not detailed in the available data.
What a parent gets here is a neighborhood elementary school serving a high-poverty, majority-Black student population in an urban Grand Rapids neighborhood, with current state test results that are low and a district administration that has publicly committed to improvement. The school's strengths from this data set are limited to what it represents as a community institution: small enough to feel like a neighborhood school, part of a district with a stated strategic focus on lifting outcomes. The academic results are the soft spot, and they are the thing a parent should probe most carefully, asking the school what is changing in instruction and support and how that connects to the district's broader plan.
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