Summary:
North Clackamas School District 12 has four middle schools serving grades 6–8 — Happy Valley Middle School, Rock Creek Middle School, Alder Creek Middle School, and Rowe Middle School — with combined enrollment of 3,604 students, ranging from 747 at Rowe to 1,158 at Happy Valley. The district ranks 48 of 141 Oregon districts overall, but that district-level standing masks wide differences among its middle schools, which span from the 71st to the 22nd percentile. All four serve similar communities: free and reduced lunch rates fall within a single percentage point of each other, between 58.12% and 59.01%.
Happy Valley Middle School is the clear academic and attendance leader, with ELA proficiency at 50.3% and math at 37.4% — the highest of the group — plus the lowest chronic absenteeism at 21.7% and 4 stars in all three recent years. Rock Creek Middle School is the momentum school, improving from 193/371 to 134/371 and from 2 to 3 stars, with 7th grade ELA reaching 54.7%. Alder Creek Middle School has the lowest outcomes, holding 1 star across all three years with ELA at 29.1% and math at 21.5%, and an especially weak 8th grade (17.0% in both ELA and math). Rowe Middle School faces the biggest attendance challenge at 41.1% chronic absenteeism, though it has improved from 1 to 2 stars.
A few patterns are worth noting. Higher spending and smaller classes did not line up with better results here: Rowe ($22,251) and Alder Creek ($21,569) spend the most and score the lowest, while Happy Valley spends the least ($19,597) and scores highest. Science is a relative weakness across all four schools, and 8th grade performance lags in several. Because the four schools look so similar economically, the roughly 21-point ELA gap between Happy Valley and Alder Creek is not explained by that factor alone.
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