Summary:
ZIP code 97814 covers Baker City, Oregon, where two middle-level schools serve a combined 494 students in Baker School District 5J: South Baker Intermediate School, which serves grades 4–6 with 268 students, and Baker Middle School, which serves grades 7–8 with 226 students. Because the two cover different grade bands, they function more as a pipeline than as direct peers, and the district overall is rated 43rd of 141 in Oregon, at the 70th percentile with 4 stars.
Baker Middle School is the stronger of the two academically, posting higher proficiency in all three subjects — ELA (36.8% vs. 32.3%), math (28.9% vs. 18.2%), and science (25.9% vs. 23.0%). Its math rate edges just above the district average of 28.4%, the only school-subject result here to do so, though it is still below the state's 32.9%. Its best result is 7th-grade ELA at 43.1%, near the district's 44.2% and state's 45.3%. South Baker Intermediate School has the larger enrollment and lower per-student spending ($16,946 vs. $19,133), but its math proficiency is the clear concern — 18.2% overall and just 11.7% in 5th grade, the lowest figure in this data set.
Both schools face similar conditions: high poverty rates (81.72% and 84.07% free/reduced lunch), near-identical student-teacher ratios (15.4 and 15.2), and chronic absenteeism that beats the state's 33.5% but trails the district's 26.1% — 31.6% at South Baker and 30.8% at Baker Middle. One striking gap: district science proficiency is 37.8%, above the state's 30.6%, yet neither middle-level school reaches 30%. Likewise, the district's 4-star, 70th-percentile rating sits well above Baker Middle's latest school rank of 219 of 371, at the 41st percentile with 2 stars. In short, the district's strong overall standing appears to be carried by other schools and grade levels.
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