The top reported proficiency rate is 43% in English language arts. The lowest is 23% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Du Pont Middle School
Du Pont Middle School sits in Belle, a small town along the Kanawha River in Kanawha County, and serves grades six through eight as a regular public school in the Kanawha County Schools district. The school draws from a community where residential life sits alongside a long-standing industrial and chemical presence. The DuPont Belle Works, later Chemours, and the Optima Chemical plant have shaped the town's identity and employment base for decades. Belle also has a close-knit civic life, with a community center gym and weight room, a monthly recycling program, and gatherings like the Thursday Night Music Fest. No public library or transit system was identified in publicly reported sources.
The town has experienced steady population decline over many decades, and no major new housing developments surfaced in available research. Home values in the school's zip code are well below both the state and national benchmarks, and recent year-over-year movement was slightly negative. For families considering buying, housing here is relatively affordable compared with much of the country, though the market reflects the area's broader economic contraction rather than growth pressure.
Academically, the most recent state assessment results show a mixed picture. English language arts is the stronger area. Across all three grade levels, roughly four in ten students reached proficiency or above, with the seventh grade posting the highest rate among the three. Math results were lower, with proficiency rates in the mid-twenties to low-thirties range across grades, the eighth grade edging ahead of the younger grades. Science, tested only in eighth grade in this school, showed the lowest proficiency rate among the three subjects reported. Participation rates were high across nearly every grade and subject, which means the results reflect the student body broadly rather than a sliver of test-takers. Grades three through five show no results, and the reason is straightforward: this school does not serve those grades, so those assessments are not administered here. A parent may want to look into the math and science results further with the school to understand what supports are in place and how the curriculum is structured across the middle grades.
The student body is modest in size for a middle school, with enrollment spread across three grades. It is predominantly white, with small numbers of Black students, students of two or more races, Hispanic students, and a single Asian student. The school does not report free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, nor does it share IEP or English-learner figures, so there is no picture here of the economic or special-population composition. Title I status was also not reported.
Several categories a parent might expect are simply absent from the available data. No discipline records, course access details, staffing numbers, or attendance figures were provided. No program offerings, such as advanced coursework, career exploration, or extracurriculars, appear in the data set. The parent district, Kanawha County Schools, had no recently reported changes meeting a lasting-impact threshold, so there is little to relay on district-level shifts that would affect this school in the near term.
What the evidence does say is that Du Pont Middle School is a small, conventional middle school in an affordable, industrially rooted river town with strong ELA outcomes relative to its math and science results. Families looking here would find a quiet community with low housing costs and a school where reading instruction is producing relatively steady results, while math and science are areas where questions about curriculum and support would be worth asking directly.
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