Summary:
ZIP code 45817 covers Bluffton, Ohio, and contains exactly one middle school: Bluffton Middle School, located at 116 S Jackson St in the Bluffton Exempted Village district. Because there is only one middle school in this ZIP code, there is no local peer to compare against — the school serves grades 6 through 8 with 294 students, and it is the only building in the district covering the tested middle grades.
On performance, Bluffton Middle School is a strong outlier for the state. It ranks 43rd of 1,046 Ohio middle schools (96th percentile, 5 stars) and has climbed three years running, from 98th to 67th to 43rd. Its proficiency is above the state in every tested area, by margins of roughly 22 to 38 percentage points: science 8th grade at 86.1% (state 61.2%), math 6th at 89.4% (state 56.2%), math 7th at 83.2% (state 48.6%), math 8th at 79.6% (state 52.0%), ELA 6th at 77.9%, ELA 7th at 87.9%, ELA 8th at 83.5%, and Algebra I at 100% (state 61.6%). That Algebra I result is the only place the school (100%) exceeds its own district (84.8%), which suggests the exam is taken by a small, selected group of advanced students rather than all 8th graders. Sixth-grade math aside, the school's average rose from about 82.7% to 86.0% year over year, widening its lead over the state, which moved only slightly.
Two features round out the picture. Chronic absenteeism is 6.0%, below the district's 6.7%, and the student–teacher ratio is 19.6:1, working out to roughly 15 teachers. Yet 80.27% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch — high economic need sitting alongside very high achievement, a contrast the data does not explain. Science is the one soft spot, down 5.4 points year over year, though still far above state. Note also that the spending figure, $9,356 per student, is from 2018–2019 and is too old to compare with current results.
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