Riverside Intermediate School, Manchester MI

Original Research by School Decision on Riverside Intermediate School

Riverside Intermediate School sits in the small Washtenaw County town of Manchester, serving grades three through six as one of three schools in the Manchester Community Schools district. It is a regular public school on East Main Street, squarely within the town's compact footprint, which means most families live a short distance from the building rather than commuting from remote campuses. Manchester itself is a historic place on the River Raisin, with a traditional downtown along Main Street and a community life built around long-running traditions like the annual Chicken Broil, a five-day summer fair, and Thursday concerts in the park. The town recently transitioned from a village to a city, and its population has been relatively stable over time. There is no public transit system, so getting to school and around town depends on personal vehicles, though the town's small geographic size keeps distances short.

The school is small, with roughly even grade-level cohorts across its four grades. Its student body is predominantly white, with only a handful of students from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. A moderate share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations could not be characterized here. Because Riverside serves only intermediate elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that gap simply reflects the grade band rather than anything about the school's performance.

On Michigan's M-STEP assessments, Riverside's results paint a mixed but generally solid picture. In English language arts, proficiency rates hold fairly steady across grades three, five, and six, landing around the mid-fifties in each, with a dip in grade four. Math follows a rougher pattern, with grades three and five in the low fifties, grade four in the low forties, and grade six dropping more noticeably. Science proficiency in grade five was the school's strongest result, with well over half of tested students reaching proficiency. Social studies, also tested only in grade five, was the weakest area, with only about a quarter of students proficient. Participation rates were not reported for any tested group.

When positioned against other districts in Washtenaw County, Riverside's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits above the midpoint, which is a reasonably strong standing given that the county includes some of the more affluent and higher-performing districts in the region. That said, the sixth-grade math result and the fifth-grade social studies result stand out as areas where a parent may want to look into this further with the school, particularly to understand whether those reflect a single cohort's challenges or a broader instructional pattern. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results are improving, declining, or holding steady over time.

The housing market in Manchester's zip code sits above both the state and national benchmarks for typical home values, and the estimated monthly mortgage cost reflects current borrowing rates that remain elevated. The price-to-income ratio suggests that buying a home here is moderately stretched relative to national norms, though not dramatically so. Rent data was not available for this area. For families considering a move, Manchester offers a small-town setting with genuine community cohesion and relative proximity to Ann Arbor and Jackson, but housing costs are a factor to weigh.

Program offerings, staffing details, discipline data, and course access information were not available in the provided data, so those aspects of the school experience could not be assessed. The district brief turned up little in the way of recent parent-relevant changes, so there is nothing to flag on that front. What the available picture does show is a small, community-rooted intermediate school with above-middle proficiency results for its county context, a generally steady ELA and science performance, and some softer spots in upper-grade math and social studies that warrant a closer conversation with school staff.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 353%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 12 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 443%

School 43% · District 43%

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 630%

School 30% · District 30%

▲ 2 pts above state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 353%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 8 pts above county median

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 41%

even with state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Grade 553%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 652%

School 52% · District 52%

▲ 19 pts above state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Science

Grade 558%

School 58% · District 58%

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 27%

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

This schoolManchester Community Schools, 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 3Lower-income33%Higher-income60%27 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income30%Higher-income44%14 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income39%Higher-income59%21 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income40%Higher-income56%16 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income50%Higher-income54%4 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income31%Higher-income59%29 pp gap