Summary:
Lancaster City, Ohio is home to two middle schools — General Sherman Junior High School and Thomas Ewing Junior High School — both serving grades 6–8 and together enrolling 1,336 students in the Lancaster City district.
General Sherman is the stronger academic performer in the most recent year, outscoring Thomas Ewing in all eight reported 2025–26 test areas and earning a statewide rank of 438 out of 1,046 (58th percentile, 3 stars). Thomas Ewing ranked 501 out of 1,046 (52nd percentile, 3 stars), but it has improved steadily, moving up from 2 stars and the 44th percentile in 2023–24. Thomas Ewing's 7th-grade ELA score of 71.3% in 2024–25 was the highest non-Algebra result in the data set, though it fell to 62.4% in 2025–26. General Sherman's 8th-grade Science score of 69.4% was well above both the district and the state. Both schools posted exceptional Algebra I results — General Sherman at 100% in both years, Thomas Ewing at 100% and then 93.8% — but that course is typically taken by a small, advanced group, so those rates do not represent the full student body. For context, the Lancaster City district itself sits at the 39th percentile with 2 stars.
Chronic absenteeism is a concern at both schools and is higher at Thomas Ewing, at 29.5%, compared with 26.9% at General Sherman and 26.3% for the district. Notably, Thomas Ewing has a smaller student-teacher ratio (18.2 vs. 19.4) and higher per-student spending in 2018–19 ($6,649 vs. $6,258), yet General Sherman generally had higher proficiency and lower absenteeism. Some data is missing: free/reduced lunch percentages are not reported for either school, and the spending figures are several years old, so socioeconomic context is unavailable.
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