Summary:
Vandalia-Butler City is served by a single middle school, Morton Middle School, located at 8555 Peters Pike in Vandalia, Ohio, and serving grades 6 through 8 with 699 students. Because it is the district's only middle school, the district's figures for these grades are essentially the school's own figures. The school has a student-teacher ratio of 16.2 to 1 and a free/reduced-price lunch rate of 36.77%, a moderate level.
Morton's clear strengths are English language arts, science, and advanced mathematics. In ELA, the school was at or above the state in all three grades, with 7th grade (68.9 vs. 62.7 state) the strongest. Eighth grade science came in at 70.9% proficient against a 61.2% state rate, nearly 10 points above. Most striking are the End-of-Course results: Algebra I reached 84.8% proficient (state 61.6%) and Geometry 75.6% (state 43.3%) — the Geometry gap of 32.3 points is the largest positive gap in the data. Algebra I also improved 11.7 points year over year, the counter-trend among subjects.
The school's vulnerability is narrow but severe: general-education mathematics in the upper grades. Proficiency runs 59.2% in 6th grade, 34.5% in 7th, and just 18.2% in 8th — against a 52.0% state rate in 8th grade, a gap of 33.8 points that widened from the prior year. This same staircase appeared the year before, suggesting a grade-level instructional issue rather than one hard test. Morton's state ranking has slipped accordingly, from the 57th percentile and 3 stars in 2023-2024 to the 49th percentile and 2 stars in 2025-2026, now below its own district. Chronic absenteeism, at 16.0%, is essentially at the district norm and is not an obvious driver. Parents should know Morton performs well above state norms in ELA, science, and accelerated math, while 7th and 8th grade general math is the clear area to watch.
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