Summary:
ZIP code 46545 in Mishawaka contains two middle schools serving about 1,750 students combined: Schmucker Middle School (grades 6–8, 1,041 students) in Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp, and John J Young Middle School (grades 7–8, 709 students) in School City of Mishawaka. The two sit in the same ZIP code but in districts at opposite ends of Indiana's performance distribution — a top-decile suburban district and a bottom-third city district.
Achievement at the two schools differs sharply. Schmucker ranks #36 of 486 middle schools statewide (93rd percentile, 5 stars) and has climbed steadily from #52 and #56 in prior years. It reports ELA proficiency of 61.62% and math proficiency of 53.5%, both roughly 13 to 20 points above state grade-level rates, with chronic absenteeism of 13.8% — better than the state's 16.7%. John J Young ranks #340 of 486 (30th percentile, 2 stars), with ELA at 30.41% and math at 20.23%, both well below state rates, and chronic absenteeism of 28.1%. At 8th grade — the one grade both schools serve — the gap is 33.8 points in ELA and 38.8 points in math. Notably, John J Young spends about 31% more per student ($13,017 vs. $9,959) and has smaller classes (14.1 vs. 18.7 students per teacher), yet posts far lower proficiency. John J Young does slightly outperform its own district in ELA.
Two points are worth noting for families. First, John J Young's weak spot is specifically math: it beats its district in ELA but trails it by 9 points in math, and its 8th-grade math figure of 16.05% is the lowest in this data set. Second, the trend lines are diverging — Schmucker's ELA rose 7.4 points year over year, while John J Young's math was flat to slightly negative and its statewide rank has stayed in roughly the same range for three years. Keep in mind the schools serve different grade spans, so "all grades" figures are not perfectly comparable, and spending data comes from an earlier year than the test results.
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