Summary:
Lamar County Middle School is the sole middle school in Lamar County, serving grades 6-8 in Barnesville, GA, with 633 students and a 100% free/reduced lunch population. The school has earned 3 stars in the state ranking system for two consecutive years, placing it in the 52nd percentile statewide (ranked 277 out of 578 schools) for 2025-2026, a modest improvement from its 48th percentile ranking in 2023-2024.
Academically, the school shows a mixed picture. Its strongest subject is 8th grade science, where proficiency (29.8%) essentially matches the state average (29.7%) in 2025-2026, and in 2024-2025 it actually exceeded the state by 4.1 percentage points (32.9% vs. 28.8%). The most notable improvement came in 6th grade math, which jumped from 28.8% proficiency in 2024-2025 to 40.6% in 2025-2026, now nearly matching the state average (40.7%). However, math performance is inconsistent across grade levels—7th grade math (33.6%) trails the state by 8.4 points, and 8th grade math (40.8%) fell 5.5 points below the state after being above average the prior year. Social Studies remains the school's biggest challenge, with 8th grade proficiency at 28.8% versus the state's 40.2%, a gap that widened from 9.2 to 11.4 points year-over-year.
In the most recent ELA data (2024-2025), the school showed a narrowing gap by grade: 6th grade lagged the state by 8.6 points, but by 8th grade the gap closed to just 2.1 points. Chronic absenteeism (17.7%) matches the state average exactly, while per-student spending is $11,609 with a 16:1 student-teacher ratio. Given that all students qualify for free/reduced lunch, achieving near-state-average performance in several subjects is noteworthy. The school's priorities should be improving Social Studies instruction and stabilizing math gains across all grade levels, while building on its science strength and the promising 6th grade math trajectory.
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