Little Milligan

Little Milligan is a small elementary school serving grades PK-8 in the rural town of Butler, Tennessee. With just 119 students, the school has a predominantly White student population and is part of the Carter County School District, which is ranked 88 out of 139 districts in the state.

Despite its small size and district ranking, Little Milligan has shown remarkable academic improvement in recent years. In the 2023-2024 school year, the school ranked 194 out of 1,008 Tennessee elementary schools, earning a 4-star rating from SchoolDigger. This is a significant jump from its previous rankings, which were mostly in the bottom half of the state. Little Milligan has performed particularly well with its White and low-income student subgroups, ranking 203 out of 840 and 55 out of 877 Tennessee elementary schools, respectively, in these categories. The school's test scores in core subjects like Mathematics, English Language Arts, and Science have consistently outperformed the Carter County and Tennessee state averages.

When compared to other nearby schools in the Carter County district, Little Milligan stands out as a high-performing outlier. For example, in the 2023-2024 school year, Little Milligan's 71% proficiency rate in ELA was significantly higher than the Carter County average of 34.1% and the state average of 37.6%. This suggests that the school has implemented effective strategies and practices that could be valuable for other schools to learn from, particularly in the areas of equity and inclusion, where Little Milligan has excelled with its diverse student population.