Blakemore Middle

Blakemore Middle in Boys Ranch, TX, is a very small rural school serving just 39 students in grades 6-8, and it is the only school within the Boys Ranch Independent School District (Isd).

This school stands out for its extraordinary resources, including a student-to-teacher ratio of just 4.4 to 1 and per-pupil spending over $42,000—roughly three to four times the state average. This allows for intensive, small-group instruction. However, the school’s academic performance is highly volatile, swinging dramatically from the top 11% of Texas middle schools in 2023-2024 to the 34th percentile in 2025-2026. With only 39 students, a single class of 13 can shift the entire school’s scores, so these swings reflect the specific needs of each year’s cohort rather than a systemic problem. On a positive note, the school has maintained a perfect 0% dropout rate for five years, and in 2024-2025, 100% of students taking Algebra I passed—53 points higher than the state average.

The school’s location in a community historically associated with a residential care facility for at-risk youth suggests it serves a unique student body with significant social and emotional needs. While Blakemore Middle has shown it can achieve elite results for specific groups, such as ranking in the 97th percentile for low socioeconomic status students in 2023-2024, that performance dropped to the 36th percentile just two years later. This inconsistency means the school is a high-stakes, high-resource environment capable of incredible success but also vulnerable to year-over-year changes. For parents, the key takeaway is that Blakemore Middle offers a supportive, well-funded environment with a strong track record of keeping students in school, but its academic results can vary significantly from year to year.