Summary:
ZIP code 88061 in Silver City, New Mexico, contains one middle school, La Plata Middle, which serves grades 7–8 with 259 students and belongs to Silver Consolidated Schools. Because it is the only middle school in the area, it defines the local middle-school landscape, and the district ranks 30 of 87 statewide and has 3 stars.
The school’s clearest strength is English language arts. In 2025–2026, all-grade ELA proficiency was 52.38%, above the state’s 44.66% and just above the district’s 52.13%. Seventh-grade ELA was especially strong at 58.12%, more than 11 points above the state and only slightly below the district. Math is the main concern: all-grade math was 23.38%, below both the district (31.18%) and state (27.85%). Eighth-grade math was the weakest result at 15.79%, below the district and state, while seventh-grade math was 30.77%, above the state. Eighth-grade science was 35.96%, above the state’s 34.33% but below the district’s 39.55%.
Year over year, ELA improved sharply by 7.66 points, more than the district’s 5.11-point gain and far more than the state’s 0.47-point gain. Math was essentially flat (+0.21), and science declined by 3.88 points, a larger drop than the district’s and state’s. The school serves a very high-poverty population, with 99.61% free/reduced lunch, and has a favorable student/teacher ratio of 11.3. Its ranking fell from 4 stars/70th percentile in 2023–2024 to 3 stars/56th percentile in 2024–2025, then edged up to 57th percentile in 2025–2026—above the state median but below the district’s 66th percentile. The clearest priorities are 8th-grade math and reversing the science decline.
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