Summary:
The Decatur Independent School District (Isd) is home to one middle school, McCarroll Middle, which serves grades 6 through 8 with an enrollment of 838 students and a moderate level of economic diversity, as 45.47% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
McCarroll Middle shows a clear strength in advanced mathematics, with an exceptional 96.97% proficiency rate in Algebra I, far exceeding the state average of 54.03%. This indicates a highly successful advanced placement program for select students. However, the school faces a persistent challenge in 8th-grade Social Studies, where only 22.43% of students were proficient, well below the state average of 31.69%. A notable trend is the "8th Grade Bounce" in math: while 6th and 7th-grade math proficiency is low (26.25% and 28.68% respectively), 8th-grade math jumps to 54.68%, surpassing the state average. This may reflect effective instruction or the fact that top math students are taking Algebra I, leaving a different cohort in the standard 8th-grade math class.
Overall, McCarroll Middle is a stable, mid-performing school with a state ranking in the 54th to 61st percentile over the last three years. It maintains a very low dropout rate of 0.2%, suggesting a supportive environment. The school’s key areas for improvement are strengthening foundational math skills in 6th and 7th grades and addressing the persistent weakness in 8th-grade Social Studies. With a student-teacher ratio of 16.1:1 and spending of $9,403 per student, the school has a solid foundation for targeted efforts to boost performance across all subjects.
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