The top reported proficiency rate is 49% in Math. The lowest is 11% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Martin County West Junior High
Martin County West Junior High serves seventh and eighth graders in Sherburn, a small, primarily residential rural town in southern Minnesota. The school is part of the Martin County West School District, which formed decades ago when Sherburn consolidated with neighboring Trimont and Welcome. The district is building a new school, a publicly noted development that signals investment in facilities. Sherburn itself has seen a modest population decline, and the everyday texture is quiet Midwestern small town with churches, a revived Main Street theater, and community organizations such as the Lions Club and 4-H.
The junior high’s enrollment is small, and the student body is predominantly white. Just over two in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that places the school in a typical range for a rural district. The school serves only two grade levels, so there is no high school graduation rate to report and no data on chronic absenteeism. A parent considering this school will want to understand that the academic picture is limited to state testing results for grades seven and eight.
On state assessments, math proficiency was above half of seventh graders meeting standards, with eighth-grade math lower by a noticeable margin. Reading proficiency was lower than math in both grades, with the seventh grade above two in five and the eighth grade below that. Science is tested only in eighth grade, and the share of students scoring proficient was well under one in five. However, the state made changes to both the name and the cut scores for the science assessment in the most recent year, so that result should be interpreted with caution and may not be directly comparable to prior years. Across all tested subjects and grades, the school’s combined proficiency index placed it in the top quartile relative to the handful of other districts in Martin County. That is a solid position among local peers, though the cohort is small and the range of performance across those districts is narrow.
Only a single year of testing data was available, so there is no trend to show whether performance is improving or declining. A parent may want to ask the school about its trajectory and about how it supports students who are not yet proficient, especially in reading and science. No information was provided on the share of students with individualized education plans or English learners, and the school’s civil rights data, discipline rates, course access, and staffing ratios were also absent from the available data. Those are important gaps for a parent to investigate directly.
The school’s setting is a small town with limited walkability and no public transit; families will need to drive. Housing values in the area are well below state and national benchmarks, and the typical mortgage payment is lower than in many parts of Minnesota, reflecting the affordable cost of living in this rural corner of the state.
Because Martin County West Junior High does not serve high school grades, a family moving through this school will need to consider the transition. The district presumably feeds into a high school that serves the same consolidated communities, but no program offerings, graduation rates, or course access data for that level are reflected here.
In sum, this is a small rural junior high that performs comparably well on state math assessments relative to nearby districts, with reading and science results that are weaker and worth a closer look. The new school building underway suggests a district investing in its facilities. For a family comfortable with a very small school in a quiet, declining rural town, and one that prioritizes checking on academic support in reading and science, Martin County West Junior High fits that profile.
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