The top reported proficiency rate is 48% in Science. The lowest is 21% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Dawes Middle School
Dawes Middle School serves sixth through eighth graders in Lincoln, Nebraska, as part of the Lincoln Public Schools district. It is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. The school sits in a city that acts as the state’s economic and governmental hub, with major employers including the State of Nebraska, the university, the school district itself, and a mix of healthcare and manufacturing industries. Lincoln has been growing steadily, and the district recently completed a major bond-funded expansion that added two new high schools and an elementary school, reshaped attendance boundaries, and relieved overcrowding. Those changes have not directly altered Dawes’s building, but they reflect a district that is investing in capacity and responding to enrollment pressures.
The student body at Dawes is modest in size for a middle school. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, meaning the school serves a population with significant economic need. Racially and ethnically, the school is majority white, with a notable Hispanic presence, a sizable Black enrollment, and a meaningful share of students identifying as two or more races. Asian and Native American students make up smaller portions. The school does not appear to report counts for students with disabilities or English learners in the available data, so a parent wanting to understand how those populations are served should ask the school directly.
On state assessments, the picture is mixed, with some areas of concern. In math and English language arts, the school’s overall proficiency rate across tested grades and subjects places it in the bottom quartile among Lancaster County districts. For sixth graders, about a third of students met math proficiency, and roughly two in five met ELA proficiency. Eighth graders showed similar math results, with a slightly lower ELA proficiency rate. Eighth-grade science proficiency was higher, around half of students meeting the bar. An unusual note in the data: seventh-grade math and ELA proficiency rates are reported at zero percent for the 2024-25 school year. That could reflect a data reporting anomaly or a testing participation issue rather than a complete absence of proficiency; a parent should look into this further with the school to understand what happened in that grade level in those subjects. Multi-year trends available for the school show that proficiency rates in math, ELA, and science have all moved downward over recent years, though the available trend data is limited and does not support a clean comparison across years because of possible assessment changes.
The school itself is a regular middle school without special designations. No information is available on discipline rates, chronic absenteeism, course access, or staffing ratios, so these are gaps for a family to investigate on their own. The district’s recent pedagogical shift toward a science-of-reading approach in elementary literacy may eventually affect students who feed into Dawes, but that change is at the early grades.
Lincoln’s housing market is in a moderate range relative to national benchmarks, with home values and rents that reflect the area’s steady growth. The city’s downtown and Haymarket District provide an urban core, while the university campus and state capitol anchor civic life. For a family considering Dawes, the school offers a small middle-school environment within a large, growing district. The academic attainment on state tests is below the county average, and the trend lines have been heading in a concerning direction. The school serves a high-need student population, and families should weigh whether the support structures and programming at Dawes align with their child’s needs, especially given the gaps in publicly available data about special education, English learner services, and school climate.
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