Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 27712

Zip code 27712 contains exactly one middle school, George L Carrington Middle, which serves grades 6–8 with 771 students as part of Durham Public Schools. Because no other middle school exists in this zip code for comparison, the most meaningful evaluation measures Carrington Middle against district and statewide benchmarks. By those standards, the school is clearly struggling, serving an exceptionally high-need population where 99.61% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch — meaning effectively the entire student body comes from low-income households.

Academically, George L Carrington Middle ranks in the bottom fifth of North Carolina middle schools, sitting at the 18th percentile (635 out of 778) for 2025-2026, and it has earned just a 1-star rating in each of the past three years. In the most recent testing year, every subject and grade level fell below both district and state averages. The deficits are especially large at the 8th-grade level, where math proficiency was 33.6% versus 53.0% statewide, reading was 36.6% versus 56.1%, and science was 47.1% versus 68.6% — gaps of roughly 19 to 22 points. Even in 6th grade math, the school's 40.2% proficiency trails the state's 59.2% by a wide margin.

Chronic absenteeism is a severe issue, with 45.8% of students chronically absent in 2024-2025 — nearly double the state rate of 24.2% and well above the district's 36.1%. There is some encouraging news: 7th graders improved dramatically from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026 in both math (+13.3 points) and reading (+13.6 points), suggesting a possible cohort-specific or instructional bright spot. However, 6th and 8th grade scores declined over the same period, and 8th grade science fell from near-parity with the district to 15 points behind in just one year. With a 15.1:1 student-teacher ratio and per-student spending of $10,263, the school is not drastically under-resourced; rather, the combination of concentrated poverty, extreme absenteeism, and accumulated academic need explains much of the performance gap.