L.F. Addington Middle

L.F. Addington Middle in Wise, Virginia, is a grades 5–8 school serving 387 students, and it is part of Wise County Public Schools, a district ranked 2nd out of 131 in the state. The school itself is an academic standout: it ranked 9th out of 416 Virginia middle schools in 2025–2026 (98th percentile) and has finished in the top 10 in four of the last six reported years. Among nearby schools, Coeburn Middle ranks 11th, Union Middle ranks 30th, Ridgeview Middle ranks 141st, and Rye Cove Intermediate ranks 158th — making L.F. Addington the clear leader in the region.

The school’s greatest academic strength is math, with proficiency rates between 86% and 94% in grades 5–8 — roughly 30 to 40 percentage points above the state average in the upper grades — and 100% proficiency in 8th-grade Algebra I. Reading is also strong in grades 6–8, where proficiency ranges from 88% to 93%. Perhaps most impressive, L.F. Addington Middle ranks 5th in Virginia for low-income students and 6th for disabled students, showing that its success is genuine and inclusive rather than limited to any one group of learners.

L.F. Addington Middle serves a high-need population — more than 100% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch — yet it outperforms nearby schools that serve fewer economically disadvantaged families. Its student-teacher ratio of 11.2 is also favorable. The main areas to watch are 5th-grade reading (77.9% proficient, below the district’s 81.5%) and a recent rise in chronic absenteeism, which jumped from 4.2% to 15.4% in one year but remains lower than Union Middle (20.0%) and Ridgeview Middle (29.7%). Overall, L.F. Addington is a consistently high-performing school that does particularly well with students who often face the biggest barriers.