Summary:
Middlefield, Ohio has three schools serving students from kindergarten through high school — two Cardinal Local schools enrolling about 727 students and the much smaller ACE Community Academy with 25 students — with no standalone middle school, since middle grades are housed inside Cardinal Junior/Senior High School (grades 6–12) and grade 6 also appears at Cardinal Elementary School.
Cardinal Junior/Senior High School is the clearest improver in the area: its state rank rose from 462 of 864 (47th percentile, 2 stars) in 2023–24 to 183 of 795 (77th percentile, 4 stars) in 2025–26, and its graduation rate is 96.6%, with the Cardinal Local district at 96.8%. It beat Ohio in every reported End-of-Course subject, from Biology (89.6% vs. 67.0%) to Geometry (59.2% vs. 43.3%). Its weak spot is the middle grades in the same building, especially 7th grade math at 26.3% proficient vs. 48.6% statewide. Cardinal Elementary School sits at about the 51st–54th percentile with 3 stars, and its early grades are strong — 3rd grade math 76.9% vs. 62.1% statewide — but 5th grade math (49.0% vs. 59.1%), 5th grade science (57.1% vs. 62.7%) and 6th grade ELA (54.2% vs. 56.0%) trail the state. Cardinal Elementary School also has the highest student-teacher ratio at 20.5 and a 46.21% free/reduced lunch rate, compared with 35.65% at the junior/senior high.
ACE Community Academy is a size outlier: 25 students, a student-teacher ratio of 8.3, and the area's highest chronic absenteeism at 34.6% (Cardinal Elementary School 16.7%, Cardinal Local district 19.1%, Cardinal Junior/Senior High School 22.3%). It reports no rank, test score, graduation rate, free/reduced lunch, or spending data — its lunch figure is not reported, not zero — so its academics cannot be compared here. Spending per student in 2018–19 was nearly identical at the two Cardinal schools ($11,478 and $11,360). Rank denominators differ by school, so percentiles are more meaningful than raw ranks.
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