Summary:
Zip code 48419, serving the Carsonville, Michigan area, is home to 2 high schools that both belong to the Carsonville-Port Sanilac School District, which holds a 3-star rating and ranks in the 56th percentile of Michigan districts.
For parents, the clear standout is Carsonville-Port Sanilac High School, which serves grades 6-12 with 187 students. This school boasts a perfect 100% graduation rate and a 0% dropout rate, far exceeding district and state averages. It has earned 4-star ratings in recent years and dramatically outperforms state proficiency averages in upper-grade assessments—particularly in 11th grade Social Studies (65.2% proficient, 22 points above state) and Science (52.2%, 17 points above state). However, 7th grade scores show a notable weakness, with ELA and Math proficiency dropping 17-18 points below state averages, and year-over-year volatility suggests small class sizes can cause large swings. In contrast, Carsonville-Port Sanilac Learning Center, an alternative program with 53 students, faces significant challenges: a 50% graduation rate, a 20% dropout rate, and an 81.9% chronic absenteeism rate. It also serves a higher-poverty population (79.25% free/reduced lunch) yet receives less than half the per-student funding ($8,012 vs. $16,261) and reports an extraordinarily high 112.7:1 student-teacher ratio.
The most striking takeaway is the stark resource and outcome divide between these two schools on the same campus. While the main high school demonstrates that a small, high-poverty school can achieve excellent results—especially in upper grades—the Learning Center's struggles are compounded by severe underfunding and a lack of recent accountability data (no ranking since 2014-2015). The district's overall 3-star rating masks this disparity, and the main high school's 100% graduation rate despite 32.8% chronic absenteeism suggests strong credit recovery programs. Parents should note that the main high school offers a proven track record of academic success in later grades, while the Learning Center appears to serve a more vulnerable population with minimal resources, raising important equity questions about how the district allocates its funding.
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