Martin County West Junior High

Martin County West Junior High is a small, rural middle school in Sherburn, Minnesota, serving grades 7 and 8 with 101 students as the only middle-grade school in the Martin County West School District. It is a school in a real, sustained upswing: after bottoming out at the 34th percentile of Minnesota middle schools in 2020–21, it has climbed every year since, reaching the 60th percentile (3 stars, 217th of 546 schools) in 2025–26 — above its own district's 54th-percentile standing.

Results differ sharply by subject. In 2025–26, math proficiency was 44.6%, essentially matching the state and beating the district; reading was 42.4%, roughly six points behind the state; and science was 14.0%, well below the state's 25.5% and the district's 23.1%. Science is the school's most persistent gap, though 14% is actually its best science result in four years. The bigger internal story is the grade split: the 8th grade scored at or above state norms in every subject (56% in math, 52% in reading), while the 7th grade lagged in every subject (33.3% in math, 32.7% in reading).

Among student groups, female students ranked in the 73rd percentile (4 stars) and low-income students in the 68th percentile — above the school as a whole — while male students ranked 38th (2 stars). Compared with the nearest similar school, Granada Huntley East Chain Middle School (81 students, grades 6–8, about 19 miles away), Martin County West leads in math (44.6% vs. 28.1%), science (14% vs. 8%), and class size (16.4:1 vs. 48.5:1), and serves a lower-poverty population (33.66% vs. 48.15% free/reduced lunch). With only about 50 students per grade, small year-to-year swings are noise; the multi-year trend is the real signal.