Middle Schools in Northwest Local

Northwest Local serves grades 6–8 at three middle schools in Hamilton County, Cincinnati: White Oak Middle School (703 students), Pleasant Run Middle School (661), and Colerain Middle School (528) — 1,892 students combined. The district ranks 557th of 773 Ohio districts, in the 28th percentile with one star.

All three schools earn two stars and sit in the bottom third of Ohio middle schools, clustered within seven percentile points of one another. Colerain Middle School has the strongest academics, averaging 45.6% proficiency across seven measures, with the smallest classes (15.1 students per teacher) and the highest per-student spending ($6,998 in 2018-19). White Oak Middle School, the largest, posted the standout result — 100% Algebra I proficiency in both years — and the best 7th-grade ELA score of the three (64.1%, above the state's 62.7%), but also the lowest single result, 10.4% in 7th-grade math. Pleasant Run Middle School ranks lowest (30th percentile) with the weakest composite (40.3%), the highest chronic absenteeism (32.2%), and the lowest spending ($6,338).

The most striking pattern is 7th-grade math, where district proficiency was halved to 17.1% in a year the state barely moved. All three schools fell — White Oak by 21.9 points, Colerain by 23.8. In contrast, 8th-grade math improved at every school, and Algebra I results are excellent across all three (97–100%), though that likely reflects a small, accelerated group rather than the general 8th-grade population, whose grade-level math proficiency sits around 41–45%. Every school trails the state in every other subject, and chronic absenteeism exceeds the district's 27.1% rate at all three.