Career Academy Middle School

This area is served by a single school: Career Academy Middle School, a public middle school for grades 6–8 in South Bend, Indiana, with about 414 students. It is also its own single-school district, listed as Career Academy Middle School, so the school and district figures are identical. About 60% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the school spends $9,707 per student with an unusually small 8.2-to-1 student-teacher ratio. It ranks 408th of 486 Indiana middle schools (16th percentile) and has earned one star in each of the last three years.

Core-subject proficiency is low. In 2025–26, 19.3% of students were proficient in English/language arts, 14.4% in math, and 12.1% in science, trailing state rates by roughly 17 to 32 points at each grade level. The one standout is Biology End-of-Course: 92.31% proficient in 2025–26 and 88.89% in 2024–25, against a state rate of 45.6% — roughly double the state and the only measure where the school beats it.

Within the school, performance improves as students move up: 6th graders score at about a quarter of the state rate in ELA and math, while 8th graders reach roughly half, so relative performance nearly doubles between entry and exit — though these are different students, not a tracked group. Math is the one core subject that improved year over year (+3.31 points), even as ELA slipped and science dropped sharply; note that science is tested only in 6th grade, so that change reflects a single cohort. Chronic absenteeism of 18.0% is just 1.3 points above the state's 16.7%, so attendance does not appear to be the main driver of the proficiency gap, and the school's small classes and near-$10,000-per-student spending have not yet translated into results.