Pendleton Heights Middle School

Pendleton Heights Middle School is a 7–8 school serving 730 students in Pendleton, a small town in central Indiana, and it is part of the South Madison Com School Corp. It holds a 4-star state rating and ranks 97th of 486 Indiana middle schools — about the 80th percentile — while the district itself sits 43rd of 374 districts. Roughly 37.4% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a middle-of-the-road figure locally: well above the nearby Hamilton Southeastern Schools, close to Mt Vernon Middle School and Lapel Middle School, and far below Highland Middle School in Anderson.

The standout number here is attendance. Chronic absenteeism fell from 24.8% in 2020–21 to just 1.4% in 2024–25, against 16.7% statewide — lower than every nearby school, including the high-scoring Hamilton Southeastern campuses. Test results are solidly above the state average in all four reported grade-and-subject combinations, with math the clear strength: 7th grade at 45.23% and 8th grade at 45.18%, roughly 9–11 points above Indiana. Math proficiency has climbed from 36.68% in 2022–23. Against same-grade peers, Pendleton Heights Middle School trails only Fall Creek Junior High, a top-2% school, and beats Mt Vernon Middle School, Shenandoah Middle School, and Lapel Middle School on both reading and math. It also spends less — $9,802 per student — than every nearby school except Lapel.

Two things to watch. First, 7th-grade reading is the soft spot: 42.28%, only 0.6 points above the state, versus 53.01% in 8th grade — a 10.7-point gap inside the same building. Reading has also softened slightly over two years while math improved. Second, the student–teacher ratio jumped from 17.8 to 21.1 in a single year, the largest classes among its true 7–8 peers. The 1.4% absenteeism figure is so unusual that it is worth asking the school how attendance is measured. Overall: a strong, efficient school with exceptional attendance and above-state math.