Summary:
Willits Unified has one middle school, Baechtel Grove Middle, serving grades 6–8 and enrolling 331 students. Its results show a consistent challenge across middle-school grades: in 2025–2026, mathematics proficiency was 5% in grade 6, 7% in grade 7, and 7% in grade 8, compared with 37%, 38%, and 36% statewide. The most important finding is that math results were about 29–32 points below the state in every grade.
There is no top or bottom school to compare locally because Baechtel Grove is the only school listed. In the all-grades figures, the school was below Willits Unified by 2 points in ELA, 8 in math, and 4 in science; it was below the state by 26, 32, and 26 points, respectively. Among these results, science was the school’s closest subject to the state, though still substantially behind. Grade-specific results offer a different comparison: the school was slightly above district results in math in each grade. SchoolDigger gives the school one star and ranks the district 853rd out of 968, in the 12th percentile.
Results are mixed over time: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, ELA proficiency rose 4 points to 23%, while math fell 1 point to 6% and science fell 1 point to 10%. The ELA gap with the state narrowed by 4 points, while the math and science gaps widened by 2 and 5 points. SchoolDigger’s school ranking also moved from 2,676th of 2,783 (4th percentile) in 2023–2024 to 2,549th of 2,703 (6th percentile) in 2025–2026. Other context: the student-teacher ratio was 19.3 in 2024–2025; 41% of students were chronically absent in 2025–2026, compared with 36% districtwide and 18% statewide; and 60% were free/reduced lunch eligible in 2024–2025.
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