Iber Holmes Gove Middle School, Raymond NH

Original Research by School Decision on Iber Holmes Gove Middle School

Iber Holmes Gove Middle School sits in Raymond, a mixed-use Rockingham County town where five state highways converge and the Lamprey River winds through a traditional New England village center. The school serves grades four through eight as a regular public school in the Raymond School District. Raymond publicly promotes itself as pro-business, leveraging highway access to Interstates 95, 93, and 89, and the town's civic life clusters around Lyman Memorial Park Common, the Dudley-Tucker Library, and the Rockingham Rail Trail on the former Boston and Maine line. Outlying areas are largely car-dependent residential roads, with Pawtuckaway State Park and Onway Lake providing recreational anchor points. The housing market here sits above the national benchmark for typical home values but below the broader New Hampshire state benchmark, placing Raymond in a relative middle zone for the region. Rockingham County's market shows strong supply and demand indicators, with homes moving at a brisk pace.

The school's enrollment is moderate for a middle-grade band, and its student body is predominantly white, with a small Hispanic presence and trace representation from other racial groups. Just over a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is a comparatively modest share. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so those portions of the peer environment remain undescribed here.

On New Hampshire's state assessment, the academic picture is mixed and varies considerably by grade and subject. English language arts is the brighter thread. Proficiency in ELA runs from a slim majority in fifth grade to a strong showing in seventh, with fourth, sixth, and eighth landing in between. Seventh grade stands as the school's clearest ELA strength. Math follows a different arc. Fourth grade math proficiency is the school's single strongest result, with a clear majority of tested students reaching proficiency. From there, math results dip in fifth grade, partially recover in sixth, then fall again in seventh and reach their lowest point in eighth. Science, tested only in fifth and eighth grades, shows proficiency at the lower end of the school's range across both. Participation rates are consistently high in every grade and subject, which means these results reflect nearly the full student body rather than a self-selected subset.

A parent reading these results will likely notice the contrast between the school's relatively steady ELA performance and the math decline across the upper grades, particularly eighth grade. The same pattern appears in science. Whether this reflects curricular transitions, the complexity of content as students advance, or cohort differences is something the school could speak to directly. We looked for multi-year trend data to see whether these patterns are persistent or new, but none was available, so the read rests on a single year. The district did open a preschool program housed at Raymond High School several years back, expanding early childhood access, but no other recent district-level changes such as curriculum shifts or facility investments surfaced in the available material.

Several categories the data did not cover deserve naming. No information was available on course access or program offerings, staffing details, attendance patterns, discipline data, or Title I status. Civil rights data was absent as well. A neighbor comparison positioning this school against nearby peers was not provided. And because the school serves only through eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, which is expected for this grade band.

What the assembled picture suggests is a mid-size, predominantly white middle school in a town that blends rural character with highway-corridor convenience, where ELA holds its own and math shows both a strong entry point and a downward trajectory through the upper grades. Families weighing this school would do well to ask the administration about the math and science trend across grades six through eight and about what supports or interventions are in place for students approaching high school transition.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 470%

School 70% · District 70%

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

Grade 532%

School 32% · District 32%

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 23 pts below county median

Grade 655%

School 55% · District 55%

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

Grade 739%

School 39% · District 38% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 828%

School 28% · District 28%

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

English language arts

Grade 458%

School 58% · District 58%

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

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 51%

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

Grade 662%

School 62% · District 62%

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

Grade 769%

School 69% · District 68% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 846%

School 46% · District 45% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Science

Grade 525%

School 25% · District 25%

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 831%

School 31% · District 30% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

This schoolRaymond 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 4Lower-income55%Higher-income59%4 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income38%Higher-income56%18 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income50%Higher-income66%16 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income63%Higher-income71%8 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income32%Higher-income53%21 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income52%Higher-income78%26 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income17%Higher-income38%21 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income33%Higher-income61%28 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income32%Higher-income42%10 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income20%Higher-income33%13 pp gap