Shawnee Middle School

Shawnee Middle School serves 624 students in grades 6 through 8 at 1000 E Cook Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as part of Fort Wayne Community Schools. It ranks 381st of 486 Indiana middle schools — the 22nd percentile, with a 1-star rating — and about two-thirds of its students (66.5%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Notably, the school's state percentile has stayed within a narrow 17-to-29 band across ten straight reporting years, with nine of those years at 1 star.

Math is the clearest concern. In 2025-26, 16.2% of Shawnee students were proficient in math — barely half the district's 29.4% rate, and a gap more than twice as large as the school's ELA gap (25.0% vs. 30.0%). Math proficiency also slides steeply as students move up: 20.5% in 6th grade, 15.8% in 7th, and just 11.7% in 8th — roughly one-third of the state's 8th-grade rate. Attendance is the other standout issue: 27.2% of students were chronically absent in 2024-25, compared with 20.2% across the district and 16.7% statewide, and Shawnee's absenteeism has been climbing while the district's has improved every year.

Nearby comparisons are revealing. Northwood Middle School, less than a mile away, looks almost identical demographically and posts nearly the same test scores — Shawnee is slightly ahead in all three subjects — yet Shawnee's absenteeism is 5.3 points higher. Memorial Park Middle School, about five miles away in the same district, more than doubles Shawnee's ELA proficiency (50.3%) with 10.0% absenteeism. Maple Creek Middle School in Northwest Allen County Schools spends roughly $3,860 less per student and still reaches 54.6% in ELA, though its poverty rate (16.1%) is far lower than Shawnee's. Shawnee is not under-resourced: its $11,926 per student and 13.8 student-teacher ratio are better than most local schools. The real challenges are math instruction and getting students to school.