Middle Schools in Durango School District No. 9-R

Durango School District No. 9-R is home to two middle schools—Escalante Middle School and Miller Middle School—serving grades 6 through 8 with about 821 students combined in the Durango, Colorado area.

Both schools earn a 3-star rating and sit in the middle of Colorado's middle school distribution, but they have distinct strengths. Miller Middle School is the current leader in overall state rank (148 out of 469, 68th percentile) and posts the strongest subject score in the dataset with 57.8% of 8th graders proficient in English Language Arts. Miller Middle School also exceeds the state average in 8th grade science (42.3% vs. 35.4%). In English Language Arts, Miller Middle School (47.8%) and Escalante Middle School (46.4%) both outperform the state average of 44.7% but trail the district's 50.9%. Escalante Middle School, meanwhile, is the stronger math school, surpassing Miller Middle School in all-grades math (37.3% vs. 33.6%) and posting an exceptional 52.7% proficiency rate in 8th grade math, well above the district and state averages. Both schools fall short of the district math average of 41.2%, signaling that math is a district-wide challenge.

Socioeconomic factors do not tell the full story here. Escalante Middle School serves a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students (42.7% vs. 35.3%) yet posts competitive math scores and has lower chronic absenteeism (28.7% vs. 30.4%). Miller Middle School, despite less economic disadvantage and a smaller student-teacher ratio (11.9 vs. 13.1), struggles more in math even as its ELA and science shine. Miller Middle School is also on an upward trajectory, improving from the 60th percentile in 2022–23 to the 68th percentile in 2025–26. The most pressing shared concern is chronic absenteeism—about one in three students at both schools misses significant instructional time—even though dropout rates are essentially zero. For parents, both schools are solid, above-average choices, with Miller Middle School leading in literacy and science and Escalante Middle School leading in math.