JohannesburgLewiston High School

Johannesburg-Lewiston High School is a small, rural public high school in Johannesburg, MI, serving 205 students in grades 9-12 within the Johannesburg-Lewiston Area Schools district.

This school stands out for its remarkable success with students from low-income backgrounds. Even though more than half of its students (55%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, the school ranks in the 71st percentile statewide for the academic performance of this group—a point of real pride. The school also boasts a strong graduation rate of 90%, well above the state average, and has kept dropout rates near zero for years. To make this happen, the district invests heavily in its students, spending about $18,200 per pupil and maintaining a favorable student-teacher ratio of 14.3. That's a much smaller class environment than what you'd find at the nearby Gaylord High School Voc Bldg, which has a ratio of 21.2 and spends about $13,500 per student. This "high-touch" approach seems to pay off in graduation rates and support for disadvantaged learners.

However, there are clear challenges. The most significant is math proficiency, which lags well behind both the state average and Gaylord High School. Only 21.7% of 11th graders were proficient in math on the SAT, compared to 33.7% at Gaylord. Reading scores are more competitive at the 11th-grade level, but 10th-grade PSAT scores show a dramatic gap. The school's overall state ranking has also been volatile, swinging from the 90th percentile in 2016 to the 37th percentile in 2022, before rebounding to the 63rd percentile recently. Finally, chronic absenteeism is a growing concern, jumping to 30.5%—higher than the state average and Gaylord's rate. While the school's small size can make year-to-year data swing widely, addressing the math gap and rising absenteeism will be key to building on its strengths.