Summary:
Deerfield School District 109 has two middle schools—Alan B Shepard Middle School and Charles J Caruso Middle School—both serving grades 6–8. In 2025–2026, their average proficiency was 88% in English language arts (ELA) and 75% in math, compared with state rates of 56% and 40%. The key takeaway is that both schools are well above state results, with Caruso leading the current all-grades results in both subjects.
Caruso is the top performer overall: 91% proficient in ELA and 77% in math, about 5 percentage points ahead of Shepard in each subject. Caruso also leads 8th-grade science, with 87% proficiency versus Shepard’s 84%, a 3-point gap. Shepard’s standout exception is 8th-grade math: 81% proficient, about 1 point above Caruso’s 79%. Both schools exceed the state in every reported grade and subject, by 25 to 46 percentage points in the grade-level comparisons.
Results improved in math and science relative to state performance, while the schools’ average advantage in ELA narrowed: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, the average ELA margin fell by 2 points, while the math margin grew by 1 point and the 8th-grade science margin by 5 points. At the school level, Caruso improved in all three subjects; Shepard’s ELA fell by 2 points while its math rose by 2 and science by 14. SchoolDigger gives both schools five stars; its 2025–2026 rankings place Caruso 25th of 1,126 schools and Shepard 54th. Shepard’s student-teacher ratio is 9.6, compared with Caruso’s 8.9. Both reported free/reduced lunch eligible figures for 2021–2022: 1% at Shepard and 2% at Caruso. Those income figures are older than the test results and do not explain the score differences.
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