Summary:
Colon Community School District is home to a single high school, Colon High School, which serves grades 6 through 12 and enrolls 271 students in a rural Michigan setting.
Colon High School earns a 2-star rating and ranks 526th out of 800 Michigan high schools, a drop from its previous 440th-place finish. The district itself holds a 1-star rating, placing it in the lower third of the state. The school’s biggest strength is student retention: its graduation rate is 91.1%, well above the state’s 84.0%, and its dropout rate is just 2.9% compared to the state’s 7.1%. However, academic proficiency tells a different story. Math scores are particularly concerning, with only 7.32% of 10th graders and 6.67% of 9th graders proficient on the PSAT, versus state averages around 31%. ELA scores are also mostly below state levels, though 8th graders stand out with 66.7% proficiency in PSAT ELA, slightly above the state’s 64.8%, and 40.6% proficiency in science, also above the state average.
Chronic absenteeism is a major red flag, affecting 36.3% of students—about 30% higher than the state’s 27.9%—and likely contributing to lower test performance. The school also serves a significant economically disadvantaged population, with 45.39% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Per-student spending is $15,054, and the student-to-teacher ratio is a favorable 15.2:1. Test scores fluctuate notably year to year, partly due to the small cohort size, making long-term trends hard to gauge. For parents, the key takeaway is that Colon High School excels at keeping students on track to graduate, but struggles with academic benchmarks, especially in math. The 8th-grade success in ELA and science suggests pockets of effective instruction that could be replicated across other grades to improve overall outcomes.
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