The top reported proficiency rate is 36% in English language arts. The lowest is 14% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Bellows Falls Middle School
Bellows Falls Middle School sits in a compact historic village along the Connecticut River, serving grades five through eight as part of the Rockingham School District. The village of Bellows Falls grew up around its falls and canal as a mill town, and today it retains a dense downtown of Victorian mercantile buildings, an Opera House, and riverfront walking trails. Manufacturing is still present in the form of paper, wood products, and wire cord, while heritage tourism and downtown retail help anchor the local economy. The village sits on Amtrak's Vermonter line and is crossed by Interstate 91 and U.S. Route 5, giving it reasonable regional connectivity for a small community.
The school itself is a modest-sized middle school, with an enrollment that fits its grade band. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic realities of the area. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of students identifying as Hispanic, multiracial, Asian, Black, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations cannot be characterized here.
On state assessments through the Vermont Comprehensive Assessment Program, the most recent results paint a mixed picture. In English language arts, roughly a third of fifth and sixth graders reached proficiency. Those are the strongest results the school shows. Math is a softer area, with fifth-grade proficiency particularly low and sixth-grade results still below the ELA figures. Seventh- and eighth-grade results in both math and ELA were suppressed, so no overall proficiency picture can be drawn for the upper grades from this data alone. Science was assessed in fifth and eighth grades, and proficiency rates there were also low. A parent trying to understand academic outcomes may want to ask the school directly about what the suppressed grades show and what interventions are in place, particularly in math.
Because Bellows Falls Middle School does not serve high school grades, it has no graduation rate, and that gap reflects the grade band rather than any missing performance. The neighbor comparison set, drawn relative to districts in Windham County, could not produce a proficiency index, graduation comparison, or chronic absenteeism benchmark for this school. The first was not applicable because the cohort was too small; the other two had no entity values to compare. No multi-year trend data was available either, so it is not possible from this payload to say whether performance is improving or declining over time.
No data was provided on staffing ratios, course offerings, discipline, attendance, or Title I status, so those dimensions of school life cannot be described here. Program offerings were also absent. A family evaluating this school would benefit from asking the district directly about teacher experience, available electives or enrichment, and any supplemental academic support, since none of that appears in the available records.
The housing market around the school is relatively affordable compared with both Vermont and national benchmarks. Home values in the Bellows Falls zip code sit well below the state level, and the price-to-income ratio suggests that buying a home here is within reach for more households than in much of the state. Rental data was not available. For families considering relocating, this means housing costs are likely to be less of a barrier than in many Vermont communities, though local wages should be weighed against mortgage costs at current interest rates.
What emerges is a small middle school in a historically working-class village with affordable housing and a walkable downtown, facing real academic challenges in math and science while showing more moderate results in English language arts. The missing program, staffing, and upper-grade assessment data means a family would need to go directly to the school for a fuller sense of what the daily academic experience looks like.
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