Summary:
The Hale Center Independent School District (Isd) contains a single middle school, Carr Middle, which serves 161 students in grades 5 through 8 in a high-poverty area where nearly 80% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Carr Middle shows a mixed performance profile with notable strengths and weaknesses. The school's most impressive achievement is in advanced mathematics, where 100% of students taking the Algebra I End of Course exam were proficient in the 2025-2026 school year, far exceeding both the district average of 43.48% and the state average of 54.03%. However, this success contrasts sharply with significant struggles in foundational math, particularly in 5th grade where only 14.63% of students were proficient compared to the state average of 47.38%. The school also experiences a dramatic "math cliff" between 7th and 8th grade, with 8th grade math proficiency dropping to 22.58% in 2025-2026, well below the state average of 47.24%. Reading scores are a relative strength, coming closer to state averages, while science and social studies remain critical weaknesses, with 5th grade science at just 11.43% proficiency in 2024-2025.
The school benefits from a very low student-teacher ratio of 9.7:1, which should allow for individualized attention, yet overall proficiency across all subjects averages about 36.6%, trailing the state average of 46.5% by roughly 10 percentage points. The school has shown a fragile upward trend in state ranking, improving from the 25th percentile (1 star) in 2023-2024 to the 34th percentile (2 stars) in 2025-2026. The dropout rate is an excellent 0.0%, and spending per student is $9,888. The inconsistent performance across grade levels suggests that outcomes may be highly dependent on specific teachers or student cohorts, making it important for parents to investigate individual grade-level instruction when considering this school.
Thank you for your feedback!