The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in Science. The lowest is 16% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Soldiers Memorial Middle School
Soldiers Memorial Middle School serves students in grades five through eight in Tazewell, Tennessee, as a regular public school within the Claiborne County district. The town itself is a small Appalachian county seat, oriented around its historic downtown and the junction of two major highways. Tazewell is growing at a slow pace, and its housing values are below both state and national benchmarks, reflecting a more affordable market than what many families encounter in larger metropolitan areas. The school sits in a rural setting where the county government and local services anchor much of the community life.
The student body is heavily homogeneous in its racial and ethnic composition; the vast majority of students are white, with very small numbers of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and multiracial students enrolled. Information about economic disadvantage, special education services, and English learner support was not available in the data provided, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about these supports and how they are allocated. The school’s enrollment is moderate for a middle school, with similar class sizes across grades five through eight.
Academically, Soldiers Memorial Middle School’s state assessment results, drawn from Tennessee’s TNReady tests, show that a minority of students reached the proficient or above level in any subject. In math, less than a quarter of test takers met that bar. In English language arts, the share was lower still. Science proficiency was slightly higher than math or ELA, though still well below half of students. Social studies had the lowest proficiency of the four subjects tested. Participation rates were high across all assessments, so the results reflect nearly the entire student population. These are soft spots in the data, and a family considering the school would want to look into this further with the school to understand what academic interventions, curriculum supports, and enrichment opportunities are in place to address these outcomes.
Because Soldiers Memorial is a middle school, it does not have a graduation rate or other high-school-level metrics. The school’s own program offerings were not included in the available data, so it is unclear whether students have access to career exploration, advanced coursework, or electives beyond the core subjects. District-level changes may shape what is available. Claiborne County recently consolidated its two high schools into a single campus, and the district adopted a new English language arts curriculum for the 2023–2024 school year. It also expanded career and technical education pathways in healthcare and advanced manufacturing, which could influence the middle school’s preparatory work, though the direct impact on Soldiers Memorial is not detailed in the data.
No higher-level comparison was possible because Claiborne County has only one public school district, so there is no neighboring district within the county to benchmark against. Other contextual measures, such as chronic absenteeism or student-to-teacher ratios, were also absent from the record. For a parent or resident, the picture that emerges is of a middle school in a small, slowly growing county seat, where state test results indicate that most students are not yet meeting proficiency standards and where more information would be needed about the specific programs, supports, and resources the school offers. The district’s recent moves to unify its high school and update its curriculum suggest an awareness of the need for improvement, but how that translates day to day for Soldiers Memorial students is not fully captured by the data at hand.
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