Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 28613

Zip code 28613 has just one middle school: Newton-Conover Middle, serving grades 6 through 8 in Conover, NC, as part of Newton Conover City Schools, a district that ranks in the 71st percentile statewide. The school enrolls 559 students, and nearly all of them (99.46%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, making this a very high-poverty school. Its student-teacher ratio is 14.9, and its chronic absenteeism rate of 21.7% is slightly above the district rate (20.7%) but better than the state average (24.2%).

Newton-Conover Middle has held a steady 3-star rating over the past three years, though its statewide percentile rank has slipped gradually from the 58th to the 52nd percentile. The most recent year shows a clear academic strength in mathematics: the school beat the state average on every middle school math EOG test, with the largest margin in 8th grade (+7.2 percentage points). Reading results are more mixed, with 6th grade being a notable weak spot at 45.2% proficiency compared to the state’s 54.8%, a gap of 9.6 points. Science proficiency improved dramatically in 8th grade, jumping from 54.5% to 64.7% in one year, though it still trails the state average of 68.6%. Year-over-year trends vary widely by grade, with strong math gains in 6th and 7th grades but a drop in 8th-grade math.

For parents, the big picture is that Newton-Conover Middle is a high-poverty school that performs above the state average in math but below average in 6th-grade reading and 8th-grade science. The disconnect between the district’s strong 4-star rating and the school’s more middling 3-star state ranking suggests other schools in the district may be boosting the overall district profile. Chronic absenteeism remains a concern, affecting roughly one in five students. Since this is the only middle school serving the zip code, its trends directly shape the local educational experience; watching grade-level changes in reading and math will be especially important in coming years.