Summary:
Zip code 48416 is home to just one high school, Brown City High School, a small rural school within the Brown City Community Schools district that serves grades 7 through 12 and has an enrollment of 334 students.
For parents, the most important takeaway is that Brown City excels at getting students to graduation, with a 94.3% graduation rate that is more than 10 points above the state average, and a dropout rate of just 5.6%. The school also shows genuine academic strength in middle school math, where 7th and 8th graders score well above state averages. However, there is a clear and concerning pattern: while students in grades 7-9 perform at or above state levels in most subjects, 11th graders fall dramatically behind, particularly in SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing (34.7% proficient vs. 52.1% statewide) and SAT Math (18.4% vs. 26.5%). The most alarming data point is the year-over-year collapse in 11th grade SAT scores from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026, with reading proficiency dropping by nearly 23 points and math by 14.5 points, suggesting either a particularly weak current junior class or possible instructional challenges at the upper high school level.
Despite these academic hurdles, the school has shown it can improve, jumping from the 17th percentile in state rankings (2023-2024) to the 51st percentile (2024-2025) before settling at the 42nd percentile in 2025-2026. With a high student-to-teacher ratio of 22.5:1 and per-student spending of $14,480, the school operates with limited staffing resources while serving a population where 55% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Chronic absenteeism (23%) is better than the state average but higher than the district rate, indicating attendance issues may be concentrated at the high school level. Overall, Brown City is a school that successfully keeps students on track to graduate but struggles to maintain academic proficiency as students advance through the upper grades.
Thank you for your feedback!