Summary:
Trenton Public Schools is home to just one middle school, Boyd W Arthurs Middle School, which serves grades 6 through 8 and enrolls 578 students in the Trenton, MI area.
Boyd W Arthurs Middle School is a solid, above-average school that has ranked in the top 26% of Michigan middle schools for three straight years. Its biggest strength is 8th-grade English Language Arts, where 74.9% of students are proficient on the PSAT—a full 10 points above the state average. Science scores are also strong, with 44.6% proficiency versus 39.2% statewide. The school benefits from a low poverty rate (just 30.1% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch) and a chronic absenteeism rate of 15%, which is nearly half the state’s 27.9%. Per-student spending is generous at $15,978, and the student-teacher ratio sits at 16.4.
However, performance is uneven across grades and subjects. While 7th-grade math (38.5%) beats the state average, 8th-grade PSAT math (30.9%) falls below it—a concern since PSAT math predicts college readiness. Early middle school ELA is also a weak spot: 6th-grade proficiency dropped sharply from 43.1% to 31.3% in one year, and 7th-grade fell from 44% to 32.8%, both now below state averages. This suggests the school’s curriculum may align better with the PSAT format than with M-Step tests, or that students make significant reading gains between 7th and 8th grade. Given the school’s ample resources and low absenteeism, the mixed results in math and early ELA point to areas where instructional strategies could be refined. Since this is the district’s only middle school, state averages serve as the sole benchmark, and the district’s 4-star rating is likely buoyed by the exceptional 8th-grade reading scores.
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