Middle Schools in Cascade School District 5

Middle schools in Cascade School District 5 come down to a single campus: Cascade Junior High School, which serves grades 6 through 8 to 647 students in Turner, Oregon, and therefore is the district's entire middle-level system. With only one middle school in the area, there are no local peer schools to compare it against — the meaningful yardsticks are Oregon statewide averages and the school's own trend over time.

By those yardsticks, the school performs well above the state. In 2025–2026, 62% of students met the standard in English language arts versus 43.8% statewide, 40% in math versus 32.9%, and 42.3% in science versus 30.6%. Results are consistent across grades — ELA was 63.7% in 6th grade, 60.6% in 7th, and 61.9% in 8th — while math runs from 38.2% in 6th to 43.6% in 8th. Math is the relative soft spot: it is the school's lowest subject and its smallest margin over the state, +7.1 points. The school ranks 59th of 371 Oregon middle schools (84th percentile, 4 stars), up from 114th two years earlier — steady improvement across three reporting cycles, with the star rating rising from 3 to 4.

Attendance is the standout. Chronic absenteeism is 16.9%, below the district's 22.1% and roughly half Oregon's 33.5%, meaning students are in class and learning. Those results come in a high-poverty setting: 63.68% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Per-student spending is $16,720 and the student–teacher ratio is 18.8, implying roughly 34 teachers. One more thing worth knowing: the district's all-grades scores are lower than the school's in every subject, so the junior high is currently the district's strongest-performing segment. Keep in mind that proficiency rates are a snapshot of grade-level standards mastery, not a measure of individual student growth.