The top reported proficiency rate is 28% in English language arts. The lowest is 22% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on North Co. Middle
North County Middle serves seventh and eighth grade students in Desloge, a small, historically working-class town about 60 miles south of St. Louis that grew up around lead mining and has since transitioned to a residential community with retail, healthcare, and manufacturing as its largest employment sectors. The school is part of the North St. Francois County R-I district, which also covers several other local communities. Desloge itself is a car-dependent place with a declining population, and the district appears to be the main organizational hub for area schooling rather than there being a single centralized town campus.
The student body of the middle school is predominantly white, with small shares of Hispanic students and students of other racial backgrounds. A substantial portion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Enrollment is split fairly evenly between the seventh and eighth grades. Because the school serves only the two middle grades, there is no high school graduation rate to report; that data applies to a different campus within the district.
On the Missouri Assessment Program, the school’s proficiency rates in math, English language arts, and science sit at levels that position the school in the bottom quarter among the districts in St. Francois County. In seventh grade math, about a quarter of students scored proficient or above, and that share dropped to under a fifth in eighth grade math. In English, just over a quarter of seventh graders and just under a third of eighth graders hit the proficiency mark. Eighth graders taking the science assessment posted a similar rate. These are weak numbers by any measure, and a parent evaluating this school should factor in that the academic starting point is low relative to other county middle schools. The district has publicly reported that its high school has earned a Distinction in Performance award from the state board and a gold ranking from U.S. News & World Report, but those accolades apply to the high school, not to this middle school, so a parent may want to ask how the middle school prepares students for that level of later performance.
The district itself has made investments that could matter to a family. It recently expanded its Pre-K program, a sign of attention to early learning. It offers dual enrollment courses at the high school level through Mineral Area College and Missouri Baptist University, giving students a chance to earn college credit. The UniTec Career Center, located within the district, serves students from North County and seven other nearby districts, offering career and technical education pathways. Those offerings are for high school students, but they form part of the overall pipeline a middle school family is buying into.
Housing in Desloge is modestly priced compared to the state and national benchmarks, and the median home value in the area has been relatively flat. The unemployment rate has hovered at a moderate level, and median household income is below the national figure. For a family, this means the cost of entry to the school zone is lower than in many parts of the state, but the local economy is stagnant and the community is shrinking slowly.
Absent from the available data are details on chronic absenteeism, discipline rates, staffing ratios, and course access, all of which would round out a picture of daily school life. Also missing are the school’s special education and English learner counts, so a parent with a child who receives those services would want to contact the school directly to understand the support available. The school’s Title I status is not reported in the data. State testing data is present for both grades and all three tested subjects, so there is a clear academic baseline to work from, but many other operational metrics remain unknown.
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