Robert Frost Middle School, Deer Park NY

Original Research by School Decision on Robert Frost Middle School

Robert Frost Middle School is a public middle school in Deer Park, serving a student body of roughly nine hundred across grades six through eight. The school sits in a residential hamlet on Long Island's central spine, in an area defined by quiet suburban neighborhoods interspersed with heavily trafficked commercial corridors. The community itself is blue-collar and car-oriented, anchored by the Deer Park Avenue strip-mall corridor and nearby outlet shopping. The school draws from a diverse student population: about a third of students identify as Hispanic, another quarter as white, a fifth as Black, and roughly a sixth as Asian, with a substantial share qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.

Academic performance at Robert Frost reflects uneven proficiency across the middle grades and subjects. In math, seventh graders show the strongest results, with about six in ten reaching proficiency, while sixth graders sit just above one-third. Eighth grade math proficiency falls to roughly four in ten. English language arts results are softer and more consistently low across the grades, ranging from about four in ten to just under half meeting proficiency standards. Science testing data is available only for eighth grade, where about four in ten students are proficient. The one tested social studies measure on file, from the 2009-10 school year, showed much higher proficiency at that time, but that snapshot is now more than fifteen years old and does not reflect current performance.

When positioned against other districts in Suffolk County on overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades, Robert Frost falls into the bottom quartile. This means a parent should look closely at the school's academic trajectory and ask the district directly about how it is addressing gaps in core subjects, particularly in English language arts. The variation in results across grade levels, with seventh-grade math notably stronger than sixth and eighth, may point to differences in student cohorts or instructional focus by grade, a question the school community is best positioned to explain.

The broader Deer Park Union Free School District has approved recent capital improvements including a new security vestibule at the high school and building upgrades at a sister intermediate school, indicating ongoing attention to facilities and security. The district's budget has grown year over year, with a property tax increase projected for the 2025-26 school year.

The hamlet of Deer Park itself is a stable bedroom community for New York City commuters, with housing values reflecting a mid-range suburban market. The area is anchored by civic institutions including the Deer Park Public Library and a Long Island Rail Road station, though civic and commercial life spreads across the Deer Park Avenue corridor rather than concentrating in a single downtown. A town-led revitalization effort is underway to improve walkability and redefine the commercial area's identity, though as of 2024 implementation was still in progress.

Robert Frost is a straightforward public middle school without specialized programming or magnet status, serving the grades and demographics of its neighborhood. Parents considering the school should understand that its current academic profile shows moderate performance in math and lower performance in English language arts and science relative to its county peers, and that the school is working within a district context of building improvements and growth in overall budget.

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Academic performance

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

New York Regents Exams

2 courses reported · 2024-25

End-of-course exams required for a New York Regents diploma. Each row shows the cohort size and the share of students scoring at the proficient level or higher.

Course	Students tested	% proficient
Science	69	100.0%
Math	60	100.0%

Math

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 58% · ▼ 58 pts below district

▼ 51 pts below state median · ▼ 49 pts below county median

Grade 635%

School 35% · District 34%

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

Grade 763%

School 63% · District 64%

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

Grade 844%

School 44% · District 44%

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 19 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 52% · ▼ 52 pts below district

▼ 54 pts below state median · ▼ 47 pts below county median

Grade 644%

School 44% · District 44%

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 748%

School 48% · District 48%

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

Grade 846%

School 46% · District 46%

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Science

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 36% · ▼ 35 pts below district

▼ 42 pts below state median · ▼ 40 pts below county median

Grade 841%

School 41% · District 41%

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

Social studies

Grade 890%

School 90% · district not reported

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

This schoolDEER PARK UNION FREE 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 6Lower-income37%Higher-income50%13 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income44%Higher-income52%8 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income44%Higher-income48%5 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income30%Higher-income39%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income54%Higher-income73%19 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income44%Higher-income44%0 pp gap