The top reported proficiency rate is 27% in English language arts. The lowest is 4% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Bailey Early Childhood Center
Bailey Early Childhood Center sits in Hillsdale, a small county-seat city in south-central Michigan that blends residential streets, a traditional downtown along Broad Street, and the campus of Hillsdale College. The city grew up as a railroad town in the late 1800s, and Lake Baw Beese and the St. Joseph River remain central natural features with parks and a beach. Hillsdale serves as the county seat, with government offices and a courthouse among its major employers alongside the college and the local hospital. The housing market here is quite affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks, with typical home values well below what buyers would face in most of Michigan. For a family looking at this area, that affordability is a real draw, paired with a compact, walkable downtown core that becomes more auto-dependent as you move into surrounding residential neighborhoods.
Bailey itself is part of Hillsdale Community Schools and is designated as a special education school serving pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. The enrollment is very small, with all students in kindergarten. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with a small number of Hispanic students and students of two or more races. Information on individualized education program counts and English learner status was not available in the data provided, so those population details remain unclear.
Because the school serves only early childhood and kindergarten grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and the absence of that metric reflects the grade band rather than any performance gap. Similarly, the comparison set labeled "relative to districts in Hillsdale County" does not include a graduation rate for Bailey, for the same reason. Chronic absenteeism data was also missing.
The state assessment picture requires careful context. The data includes M-STEP results from the 2014-15 school year for fourth-grade math, English language arts, and science. Those results showed low proficiency across all three subjects, with science particularly weak. However, the school currently serves only pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, grades that are not part of state testing. The fourth-grade results likely reflect a different school configuration at that time, and the data itself carries flags indicating assessment name changes and cut-score changes that make trend comparisons unreliable. A parent looking at current academic performance would find that recent state testing data is not available, which makes sense given the grade band Bailey now serves. The older results do not tell you what this school looks like today.
No multi-year trend data was available, and the comparison fact-set places Bailey's proficiency index in the bottom quartile among Hillsdale County districts, though that figure is drawn from the same dated fourth-grade results and should be read with that limitation in mind. No information on staffing, course access, discipline, or attendance was provided.
The district brief for Hillsdale Community Schools turned up little in the way of recent parent-relevant changes, so there is nothing concrete to relay on that front. Publicly reported information about the district's strategic priorities or recent initiatives was not found in the available sources.
For a family considering Bailey, the picture that emerges is of a very small early-childhood center in an affordable, stable micropolitan community with a college-town character. The school's special education designation and pre-K-to-kindergarten range mean it occupies a narrow niche in the district's offerings. What is missing from the data matters here: without current assessment results, staffing details, or program information, a parent would want to talk directly with the school to understand its approach, its support services, and how students transition into the upper elementary grades elsewhere in the Hillsdale Community Schools system.
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