Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 35824

Zip code 35824 in Huntsville, AL is home to just one middle school, Williams Middle School, which serves grades 6 through 8 and enrolls 659 students as part of the Huntsville City school district.

For parents considering this area, the most important takeaway is that Williams Middle School consistently ranks in the bottom third of Alabama middle schools, hovering around 288th out of roughly 440 schools over the past three years. The school’s biggest challenge is mathematics, where proficiency rates are dramatically below both district and state averages across all grade levels. For example, in the most recent school year, only 9.09% of 7th graders were proficient in math, compared to 26.69% for the district and 24.46% for the state. This is not a one-year fluke—the previous year showed a similar, though slightly less severe, gap. The drop from 6th to 7th grade math is particularly steep, falling from 21.69% to 9.09% proficiency, which is a much sharper decline than what is seen at the district or state level. English Language Arts is a relative strength, with scores much closer to state averages, especially in 6th grade where the school nearly matches the state. Science also showed a bright spot, with 8th grade proficiency jumping from 28.65% to 43.59% year-over-year, though it still trails the district and state.

Other key metrics show that about half of the students (49.92%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the student-teacher ratio is 21.9. Chronic absenteeism is 11.2%, which is higher than the district’s 8.2% but slightly below the state’s 12.0%. Per-student spending is $7,969, based on the most recent data available. While the school has shown a very slight improvement in its state ranking over the last two years, the persistent math gap and a notable decline in 7th grade English (from 50.44% to 45.21% proficiency) suggest that targeted interventions are needed. The school is performing below its own district despite similar demographics, indicating that the challenges are specific to the school’s instructional approach or support systems rather than simply a reflection of the student population.