Aspen Ridge Elementary School, Ishpeming MI

Original Research by School Decision on Aspen Ridge Elementary School

Aspen Ridge Elementary School sits on a rural road just outside Ishpeming, a small Upper Peninsula city in Marquette County rooted in iron ore mining on the Marquette Iron Range. The school serves students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade as part of the NICE Community School District. Ishpeming itself blends a mining heritage with a strong outdoor recreation identity. It is the birthplace of organized skiing in the United States and home to the National Ski Hall of Fame, with the Al Quaal Recreation Area and Lake Bancroft anchoring civic life alongside the Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum and the Carnegie public library. The city has seen long-term population decline since the mid-twentieth century as mining employment contracted, and it has repositioned itself around heritage tourism and recreation. Housing in the school's zip code sits well below state and national benchmarks, with a price-to-income ratio that reads as affordable for a working family, though rent data was not available.

The school's enrollment is moderate for a pre-K-through-eight building, and the student body is predominantly white, with small representation across several other racial and ethnic categories. Roughly two in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on special education enrollment and English learner status was not reported, so those populations cannot be characterized here. The school is not a charter or magnet school.

State assessment results from the most recent year show a clear pattern. In the early grades, proficiency is solid. Third and fourth graders post math and ELA proficiency rates at or above the midline, and fifth grade is the school's strongest cohort, with science, ELA, and social studies all performing well. Science proficiency in fifth grade is particularly strong. Social studies results in both tested grades sit right around the midpoint. These early-grade numbers suggest the school builds a competent foundation in literacy and in content-area knowledge.

The middle grades tell a different story. Math proficiency drops sharply beginning in sixth grade and remains low through eighth, where students take the PSAT rather than the M-STEP. ELA is more variable across the middle grades, with sixth and seventh grade results well below the early-grade performance, though eighth grade ELA on the PSAT rebounds to a strong level. Science proficiency in eighth grade is also low. A parent might want to look into this further with the school, particularly what supports or curricular shifts are in place as students transition from the elementary grades into the middle-grade cohort, where the decline is most visible.

Measured against districts in Marquette County, Aspen Ridge's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits above the midpoint among the county's reporting districts. This positions the school reasonably well within its local context, even with the middle-grade weakness pulling the aggregate down. Graduation rate and chronic absenteeism data do not apply to this school because it does not serve high school grades, so those measures are absent rather than missing for other reasons.

Program offerings, staffing, discipline, attendance, and course access data were not provided, so this account cannot speak to extracurriculars, advanced coursework, or student support services. The district brief for NICE Community School District also turned up little of lasting impact from recent public reporting, so there are no curriculum changes, referendums, or facility shifts to relay.

What the available evidence describes is a school that does its best work in the elementary years, particularly in fifth grade, and faces a steeper climb in the middle grades, most visibly in math. Families drawn to the Ishpeming area for its affordability and outdoor culture would find a community-oriented school with a largely homogeneous peer environment and early-grade strengths worth building on, alongside a middle-grade academic challenge that deserves direct questions before enrolling an older child.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 355%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 449%

School 49% · District 49%

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 545%

School 45% · District 45%

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 628%

School 28% · District 28%

even with state median

Grade 728%

School 28% · District 28%

▼ 1 pts below state median

Grade 826%

School 26% · District 26%

▼ 2 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 355%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 458%

School 58% · District 58%

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

Grade 564%

School 64% · District 64%

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

Grade 637%

School 37% · District 37%

▲ 3 pts above state median

Grade 733%

School 33% · District 33%

▼ 1 pts below state median

Grade 865%

School 65% · District 65%

▲ 2 pts above state median

Science

Grade 567%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 27 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 831%

School 31% · District 31%

▼ 6 pts below state median

Social studies

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 51%

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

Grade 850%

School 50% · District 50%

▲ 7 pts above state median

This schoolNICE Community School District, 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-income44%Higher-income66%22 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income36%Higher-income69%33 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income40%Higher-income76%36 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income23%Higher-income45%22 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income15%Higher-income39%24 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income53%Higher-income73%19 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income39%Higher-income71%32 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income24%Higher-income61%37 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income20%Higher-income58%38 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income27%Higher-income29%2 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income17%Higher-income32%15 pp gap