Hazel Park Junior High School, Hazel Park MI

Original Research by School Decision on Hazel Park Junior High School

Hazel Park Junior High School sits in a compact, primarily residential inner-ring suburb of Detroit, serving grades six through eight in the Hazel Park School District of the City of. The school draws from a community where single-family homes on tree-lined streets define the neighborhoods, and commercial life clusters along Nine Mile Road, which functions as the city's central business district. Civic functions, including city hall, the public library, the police station, and the post office, all sit on the same block at Nine Mile and John R Road, giving the city a tight, walkable civic core. I-75 runs through town, and the schools are distributed within residential neighborhoods rather than on a single separated campus. The city has seen a slight population decline in recent years, and the former Hazel Park Raceway site is being redeveloped into warehouse space for an Amazon distribution center, adding a commercial and industrial element to what has long been a residential community.

The junior high serves a student body that is roughly split between Black and white students, with a smaller share of multiracial students and a few Hispanic and American Indian students. A very substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the working-class character of the community. Enrollment is moderate for a middle school, with each grade level close in size. Data on English learners and special education populations was not available, so those figures are not described here.

On state assessments, the school's results are low across most subjects and grades, and this is the central academic reality a parent should weigh. In math, proficiency rates were in the low single digits to low teens depending on the grade, with the eighth grade result particularly low. English language arts showed somewhat stronger results, especially in eighth grade, where proficiency was notably higher than in the sixth and seventh grades. Science and social studies, tested only in eighth grade, both showed modest proficiency rates. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Oakland County, which is the comparison set used here. Oakland County is a large, diverse county with many districts, and this positioning means the school's tested outcomes are among the lower ones in the county. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, asking about what academic supports, interventions, or curriculum changes are in place to strengthen instruction, particularly in mathematics.

The community context matters for understanding what this school is working with. Housing in the zip code is quite affordable compared with both state and national benchmarks, with home values well below the statewide typical and far below the national figure. Rents are also moderate. The county-level housing market shows active and new listings up year over year, with median listing prices softening somewhat, but Hazel Park's own housing stock remains among the more affordable in Oakland County. The Hazel Park Promise Zone, publicly reported as guaranteeing resident graduates a tuition-free path to an associate's degree, is a community asset that connects the school system to postsecondary opportunity, even though the junior high itself sits several years before that threshold.

No data was available on chronic absenteeism, discipline, course access, staffing, or Title I status, so those dimensions of school climate and support are not described here. The district brief search turned up little on recent parent-relevant changes, so there is nothing to report on that front. For a family considering this school, the strengths are the community's affordability, its compact and civic-minded setting, and the promise zone pathway that sits ahead. The academic results, particularly in math, are the area that most warrants direct conversation with school leadership before enrolling.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 610%

School 10% · District 10%

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Grade 710%

School 10% · District 10% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

Grade 85%

School 5% · District 4% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 35 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 618%

School 18% · District 18%

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 25 pts below county median

Grade 718%

School 18% · District 17% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 30 pts below county median

Grade 839%

School 39% · District 36% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 36 pts below county median

Science

Grade 822%

School 22% · District 19% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 17% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

This schoolHazel Park School District of the City of, 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 6Lower-income13%Higher-income38%24 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income16%Higher-income21%5 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income37%Higher-income46%8 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income6%Higher-income29%24 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income9%Higher-income15%7 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income3%Higher-income9%6 pp gap