Summary:
Tuscumbia City is served by a single middle school, Deshler Middle School, which enrolls 336 students in grades 6 through 8 in this north Alabama district.
As the only middle school in the district, Deshler’s performance defines the entire district’s middle school profile. The school holds a stable, mid-tier position in Alabama, ranking in the 56th to 63rd percentile over the past three years. Its clear academic strength is 8th grade, where students significantly outperform state averages. In the most recent school year, 65.22% of 8th graders were proficient in Science (state: 54.12%), 69.57% were proficient in English (state: 58.53%), and 33.7% were proficient in Math (state: 26.36%). This 8th-grade cohort also showed dramatic year-over-year improvement, with Math proficiency jumping from 18.25% to 33.7% and Science from 46.83% to 65.22%.
However, the school faces a persistent challenge in 7th-grade Math, where only 17.43% of students were proficient, well below the state average of 24.46%. This has been the lowest-scoring subject and grade combination for two consecutive years. English scores in 6th and 7th grades are competitive with state averages, but Math in those grades also lags. The school’s chronic absenteeism rate of 17.0% is notably higher than the state’s 12.0%, yet the school still ranks in the top half of the state, suggesting that present students perform well. With a student-teacher ratio of 15.7:1 and 51.19% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, Deshler offers a solid, average-to-slightly-above-average education, with targeted math intervention and absenteeism reduction being the most promising levers for improvement.
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