Owego-apalachin Middle School, Owego NY

Original Research by School Decision on Owego-apalachin Middle School

# Owego-Apalachin Middle School

Owego-Apalachin Middle School serves students in grades six through eight in a mid-sized enrollment cohort, with three-quarters of the school spread across the three grade levels and a smaller fraction in ungraded placements. The school sits on the Sheldon Guile Boulevard campus in Owego, alongside the elementary and high school in this single-district system. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is predominantly white, with very few students of other racial and ethnic backgrounds represented.

The testing picture shows uneven performance across subjects and grades. In sixth-grade math and English language arts, proficiency rates reach the upper half range, with better results in ELA than in math. By seventh and eighth grade, proficiency drops noticeably in both subjects. Eighth-grade science proficiency is particularly low. Eighth-grade math and science testing also shows participation issues, with less than half of eighth-graders tested in those subjects, which a parent may want to understand directly with the school. The school's overall proficiency index falls below the midpoint relative to the six districts in Tioga County. These results suggest students start the middle grades with modest-to-solid grounding in language arts and basic math competency, but skill gaps widen and deepen as they progress, and some eighth-graders are not sitting for state science and math assessments for reasons the available data do not clarify.

No information on graduation rate, attendance, discipline, staffing, course pathways, or special-population services was available for this school. The data also do not include whether the school offers any career, STEM, or specialized academic programming.

Owego is a small historic village on the Susquehanna River and the county seat of Tioga County. Its downtown is compact and walkable, with restored 19th-century storefronts, local shops, restaurants, and recurring cultural events. The village has been in active revitalization since recovering from Hurricane Irene, with recent mixed-use housing and commercial projects reshaping the downtown core. Major employers include Lockheed Martin (which operates a defense systems facility on a former IBM site), county government, and the school district itself. Housing values are moderate relative to New York State and the nation, and median household income places the region solidly in the middle class. The Owego-Apalachin district approved a major capital facilities project in May 2024 that will fund upgrades to school buildings, security, athletic facilities, STEAM learning spaces, and classroom technology over several years beginning in 2025. A long-term shift in how the district funds operations—a PILOT agreement expiring in 2026—has been absorbed into the property tax base with minimal household impact, and the district's historical tax levy growth has been low.

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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
Math	55	100.0%
Science	55	93.0%

Math

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 68% · ▼ 68 pts below district

▼ 51 pts below state median · ▼ 53 pts below county median

Grade 651%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 6 pts above state median

Grade 745%

School 45% · District 44%

▼ 8 pts below state median

Grade 844%

School 44% · District 43% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 55% · ▼ 55 pts below district

▼ 54 pts below state median · ▼ 46 pts below county median

Grade 656%

School 56% · District 56%

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 740%

School 40% · District 39%

▼ 8 pts below state median

Grade 844%

School 44% · District 43%

▼ 5 pts below state median

Science

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 47% · ▼ 47 pts below district

▼ 42 pts below state median · ▼ 45 pts below county median

Grade 836%

School 36% · District 37% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▲ 3 pts above state median

Social studies

Grade 893%

School 93% · district not reported

▲ 14 pts above state median

This schoolOWEGO-APALACHIN CENTRAL 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-income42%Higher-income63%21 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income37%Higher-income42%5 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income26%Higher-income55%29 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income34%Higher-income61%27 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income32%Higher-income55%23 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income33%Higher-income56%22 pp gap