Summary:
Bluffton Exempted Village has just one middle school — Bluffton Middle School, serving grades 6–8 to 294 students at 116 S Jackson St in the small northwest Ohio community of Bluffton — so families here have a single option, and it happens to be one of Ohio's strongest middle schools.
Ranked 43rd of 1,046 Ohio middle schools in 2025-2026 — the 96th percentile, with 5 stars — it has earned five stars three years running, climbing from the 91st to the 94th to the 96th percentile. Achievement beats state norms on all eight reported Ohio State Tests: Math 6 at 89.4% proficient versus 56.2% statewide, Math 7 at 83.2% versus 48.6%, Math 8 at 79.6% versus 52%, ELA 6 at 77.9% versus 56%, ELA 7 at 87.9% versus 62.7%, ELA 8 at 83.5% versus 58.3%, Science 8 at 86.1% versus 61.2%, and Algebra I at 100% versus 61.6%. Across all eight, the school averages 86% proficient against 57.1% statewide, a spread of about 29 points.
Progress is real but uneven. Math 8 gained 9.5 points and ELA 8 gained 7.1, while Math 7 rose 6.0 points even as the state slipped 1.4; Math 6, by contrast, gained just 2.5 points against a 4.3-point state gain, and Science 8 was the only assessment to fall, down 5.4 points while the state fell 1.8. Chronic absenteeism is 6.0%, below the district's 6.7%, and with 80.27% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch and a student-teacher ratio of 19.6, the results stand out — though the $9,356 per-student spending figure dates to 2018-2019 and is too old to compare with current budgets. The 100% Algebra I score reflects a small, selected group of advanced students, not all 294. Overall: an elite, consistently 5-star school whose main open questions are Science 8 and whether one school at this staffing level can sustain these results.
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