Best Middle Schools in Union, MS

Union, Mississippi is home to one middle school, Union Middle School, which serves grades 5–8 and is part of the Union Public School District. With 286 students and a strikingly high free/reduced lunch rate of 98.95%, this school stands out as a high-poverty campus that still manages to beat state averages in most subjects — a strong indicator of effective instruction and student engagement. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 13.4% is far better than the state average of 23.9%, and the school has held a 4-star rating for three consecutive years, while its district ranks in the top 15% of Mississippi districts.

In terms of academic performance, Union Middle School outperformed the state in 9 of 10 tested subject/grade combinations in 2025-2026 and in all 10 the prior year. Average proficiency across all subjects was 57.9% in 2025-2026, still above the state's 52.2% but down from 61.7% the year before. The strongest areas are 5th grade science (75.8% proficient), 6th grade math (69.5%), and 5th grade ELA (65.6%). The weakest spots are upper-grade literacy: 7th grade ELA (43.5% proficient) and 8th grade ELA (43.7%), both of which remain below the school's own lower-grade ELA scores. The school's state ranking has slipped from the 82nd percentile in 2023-2024 to the 71st percentile in 2025-2026, though it remains above the median.

A few trends are worth monitoring. The school’s advantage over the state is shrinking, especially in science, where the gap fell from +15.3 points to just +0.4 points in one year. 8th grade science proficiency dropped sharply from 74.3% to 54.3%, a dramatic shift that may reflect small cohort variation but deserves attention. Meanwhile, upper-grade ELA has been a consistent weak spot across both years, suggesting a need for targeted literacy intervention as students progress. Because Union has only one middle school, there are no local peer schools for comparison; the most meaningful benchmarks are Mississippi state averages and the school’s own year-over-year performance.