Baldwin Senior High School

Baldwin Senior High School is a small, rural high school in Baldwin, MI, serving just 110 students in grades 9-12 within the Baldwin Community Schools district, where nearly all students (97%) come from economically disadvantaged households.

The most pressing concern for parents is student retention. For the 2024-2025 school year, the graduation rate was just 44.4%, compared to 96.8% at nearby Mason County Eastern Junior HighHigh School and 77.0% at Reed City High School. The dropout rate was an alarming 55.5%, versus 3.1% and 13.0% at those same schools. Academic proficiency is also significantly lower—for example, only 14.8% of 11th graders were proficient in Science, compared to 48.3% at Mason County Eastern and 40.4% at Reed City. Chronic absenteeism (41.4%) further compounds these challenges.

Interestingly, the school spends far more per student than its neighbors—$38,399 annually, more than double the spending at Reed City ($14,752) and Mason County Eastern ($17,742)—yet this investment has not translated into better outcomes. In fact, the school has seen a sharp decline from a 73.9% graduation rate in 2020-2021. However, there are signs of past capacity: in 2023-2024, 40% of 11th graders were proficient in Science, above the state average. With a very low student-teacher ratio of 6.2-to-1, the school has the potential for individualized attention, but the high poverty rate and recent crisis in student engagement suggest that academic support alone may not be enough to reverse the current trend.