Middle Schools in Owensboro Independent

Owensboro Independent has two middle schools serving grades 6–8: Owensboro Middle School and Owensboro Innovation Middle School. Their 2025–2026 results show a sharp contrast: Innovation’s average across the nine comparable subject-grade results was 59%, versus 33% at Owensboro Middle and 44% statewide. The most important finding is that Innovation scored higher in all nine comparisons, leading by an average of 26 percentage points.

Owensboro Innovation Middle School stands out academically and in SchoolDigger’s rankings: it ranks 37th of 326 Kentucky middle schools, at the 89th percentile with four stars, compared with Owensboro Middle School at 263rd, the 19th percentile and one star. Innovation’s lead ranges from 4 points in eighth-grade writing to 37 points in social studies; its social studies score was 66%, against 29% at Owensboro Middle. Writing is a shared exception: both schools were below the state’s 48%, with 46% at Innovation and 42% at Owensboro Middle.

The schools’ recent patterns also differ. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, Innovation’s average across the matched results rose by 11 points, while Owensboro Middle’s was nearly unchanged. SchoolDigger’s percentile history reflects the contrast: Innovation rose from 59 to 63 to 89 over three years, while Owensboro Middle went from 18 to 14 to 19. In 2024–2025, Innovation enrolled 311 students and had a 16.3 student–teacher ratio; Owensboro Middle enrolled 790 and had a 12.7 ratio. Free/reduced lunch eligible figures that year were 60% at Innovation and 72% at Owensboro Middle. Chronic absenteeism in 2025–2026 was also lower at Innovation, at 15%, than at Owensboro Middle, at 26%, and statewide, at 24%. These are useful points of comparison, not explanations for the schools’ results.