Summary:
Central CUSD 3 has one middle school, Central Junior High School, serving grades 5–8 and enrolling 221 students. The school’s 2025–2026 all-grades ELA proficiency was 56%, about 1 percentage point below the state, while math proficiency was 29%, 11 points below. The clearest concern for families comparing the school’s results with state performance is mathematics.
Fifth grade stands out as the school’s strongest grade: in 2025–2026, its students were above state proficiency in all three reported subjects—ELA by 16 points, math by 5 points, and science by 25 points. Science shows the sharpest contrast across grades: fifth-grade proficiency was 72%, while eighth-grade proficiency was 32%, 20 points below the state. Eighth-grade ELA was also below the state by 17 points. These results show that the fifth-grade strength does not carry across every grade and subject.
All-grades results improved from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: ELA rose 9 points and its gap with the state narrowed by 6 points; math rose 2 points and its gap narrowed by 1 point, though it remains the larger shortfall. Grade-level science trends differed: fifth grade increased 20 points, while eighth grade fell 11 points. SchoolDigger’s statewide percentile ranking declined from the 60th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 27th in 2025–2026, and its rating fell from 3 stars to 1, despite the latest year-to-year all-grades gains. The school’s student-teacher ratio was 12.9 to 1 in 2024–2025, and 43% of students were eligible for free/reduced lunch that year. Chronic absenteeism was 8% in 2025–2026, below the district’s 11% and the state’s 24%. Because the area has only one middle school, there is no other local school to compare with it.
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