Summary:
Zip code 48637 is home to a single public high school, Merrill High School, part of the Merrill Community Schools district, serving grades 9 through 12 in a small, rural Michigan community.
For parents, the most important thing to know about Merrill High School is that it is a very small school—just 165 students—which makes its performance metrics swing dramatically from year to year. The school earned a 1-star rating in both 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, but jumped to a 3-star rating (57th percentile, ranked 344th out of 800 Michigan high schools) in 2025-2026. This volatility is likely due to the small cohort size, where one strong or weak class can shift the entire school's averages. In the most recent year, 11th graders actually beat the state average in science proficiency (39.5% vs. 35.2%), but fell below state averages in reading/writing (44.7% vs. 52.1%) and social studies (39.5% vs. 43.2%). Math is a mixed bag: 10th graders slightly beat the state average (34.1% vs. 31.5%), but 9th graders are severely behind at just 17.86% proficiency compared to the state's 33.5%—a nearly 16-point gap that suggests incoming students are underprepared for high school math.
On the positive side, the school's non-academic indicators are encouraging despite a high poverty rate (51.52% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch). The dropout rate of 4.6% is significantly better than the state average of 7.1%, and chronic absenteeism (25.3%) is slightly better than the state's 27.9%. This suggests the school is effective at keeping students engaged and enrolled. Per-student spending is $14,378, with a student-teacher ratio of 17.3:1. The graduation rate of 83.7% is just below the state's 84.0%. While the academic results are inconsistent, the school appears to provide a supportive environment that retains students, though the 9th-grade math scores are a clear red flag that parents should investigate further.
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