Cambridge Middle School

Cambridge Middle School is a 399-student school serving grades 6–8 on Deerpath Drive in Cambridge, Ohio, and it is the only middle school in the Cambridge City district. It ranks 713th of 1,046 Ohio middle schools — the 32nd percentile, or 2 stars, in 2025-2026 — and it has drifted downward over the past decade, from the 53rd percentile and 3 stars in 2015-2016.

Among nearby schools, Cambridge sits at the bottom. It trails Ridgewood Middle School (63rd percentile), Newcomerstown Middle School (54th), Meadowbrook Middle School (47th), Buckeye Trail Middle School (43rd) and East Muskingum Middle School (74th). East Muskingum is only about 9 miles away, serves a similar small-town population, and outperforms Cambridge on every 2025-2026 grade-level test. Notably, staffing is not the problem: at 12.8 students per teacher, Cambridge has more teachers per student than most of these higher-performing schools, including East Muskingum (20.3).

Two findings stand out most. First, 8th-grade science fell sharply to 21.2% proficient — a 27.6-point one-year drop against a state average of 61.2% — even though the same group of students improved in 8th-grade math and reading, pointing to something specific to science instruction rather than to the students. Second, chronic absenteeism is the region's highest at 28.6%, roughly twice East Muskingum and Newcomerstown and more than three times Ridgewood, though it has fallen by about half since 2021-2022. A bright spot: 6th-grade math sits at 60.5%, above the state and up 14.6 points from the prior year. Algebra I shows 100% proficiency, but that reflects a small accelerated group rather than the whole school — 8th-grade math proficiency is 37.8%.