Summary:
Zip code 28146 in Salisbury, North Carolina, is served by two public middle schools—Erwin Middle and Southeast Middle—both part of Rowan-Salisbury Schools and serving grades 6-8. Both schools contend with very high poverty levels, with free/reduced-price lunch eligibility at roughly 98-99%, and both struggle with chronic absenteeism around 35%, significantly above the state average of 24.2%. Despite these comparable challenges, Erwin Middle stands out as the stronger school, outperforming Southeast Middle in every subject and grade level tested, and earning 2 stars compared to Southeast's 1 star for 2025-2026.
Erwin Middle has shown clear upward momentum, improving its state percentile from the 15th to the 31st percentile over two years and posting an average EOG proficiency of 47.7% in 2025-2026. Its strongest results include 57.7% proficiency in 8th grade science and 51.8% in 7th grade reading, and it meets or exceeds district averages in most subjects. Southeast Middle is improving from a much lower baseline, raising its average EOG proficiency from 26.3% to 35.4% and its star rating from 0 to 1, while also making a dramatic 27-point jump in 8th grade math proficiency, from 6.5% to 33.5%. However, Southeast still trails Erwin by roughly 12 percentage points overall and remains below both district and state averages in most subjects, with 7th grade math a particular weakness at just 25.6% proficient.
For parents comparing these two schools, Erwin Middle is clearly the better-performing option within this zip code, despite its own gaps relative to state averages in math and reading. Southeast Middle is trending in the right direction but remains well behind, suggesting that school-level factors make a measurable difference even when poverty and attendance profiles are nearly identical. Both schools serve high-poverty populations and face chronic absenteeism rates roughly 11 points above the state, and neither yet reaches state-level proficiency in any tested subject.
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