Summary:
Union City Community Schools is home to a single middle school, Union City Middle School, which serves grades 5 through 8 and enrolls 245 students in this rural Michigan district.
Union City Middle School has consistently earned a 3-star rating over the past three years, outperforming its district’s overall 2-star rating. The school’s biggest strength appears in the upper grades: 8th graders significantly exceed state averages on the PSAT in both English Language Arts (76.6% vs. 64.8%) and math (44.7% vs. 33.2%), and they also top the state in 8th-grade science (46.8% vs. 39.2%). Chronic absenteeism is a clear win at 17.1%, far better than the state’s 27.9% and the district’s 23.6%, even though 57.55% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. The school also benefits from a favorable 14.4:1 student-teacher ratio and per-student spending of $16,493.
However, the picture is more concerning for incoming 5th graders. In 2025-2026, 5th-grade math proficiency was just 11%—21.2 points below the state—and 5th-grade ELA dropped sharply to 30.1%, an 18.3-point decline from the prior year. Social studies in 5th grade also lags at 15.1% versus the state’s 27.5%. This creates a striking pattern: students arrive well behind state averages but show remarkable growth by 8th grade, suggesting effective instructional gains during the middle school years. One notable anomaly is 7th-grade math, which swung from 18.9% proficiency in 2025-2026 to 46.8% the previous year—a 27.9-point swing that may reflect small cohort sizes. For parents, this school offers strong upper-grade outcomes and low absenteeism, but the weak 5th-grade foundational scores—especially in math—warrant attention and may signal challenges that the school’s middle-grade instruction is successfully addressing over time.
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