Best Middle Schools in Cornell, WI

Cornell, Wisconsin has just one middle school: Cornell Middle, which serves grades 6–8 with 83 students and is part of the Cornell School District at 708 Bridge St, Cornell, WI 54732. Because it is the only middle school in the city, there are no cross-city comparisons to make — the most useful benchmarks are the school against its district and the state, plus changes from year to year. About 63.86% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, per-student spending is $15,201, and the student-teacher ratio is 16.9.

Academics at Cornell Middle are uneven by grade and subject rather than uniformly strong or weak. In 2025–2026, English Language Arts was a clear strength: 6th grade ELA was 75% proficient against the state's 54.95%, and 7th grade ELA was 64.52% against 55.33%. The three-grade ELA average was 61.00% versus 54.89% statewide. Eighth grade, however, is the weak spot: 8th grade math was 13.04% against 53.67% statewide (a 40.63-point gap), 8th grade science was 26.09% against 51.86% (a 25.77-point gap), and 8th grade social studies was 43.48% against 64.63% (a 21.15-point gap). Sixth grade math was 46.43% against 53.60%. Averaged across the eight listed 2025–2026 tests, the school was at 46.26% versus the state's 55.51%. Year over year, ELA rose in all three grades — 7th grade jumped 28.81 points — while math was mixed: 7th grade gained 11.63 points, but 6th grade fell 17.21 points and 8th grade fell 20.29 points. Science dropped from 40% to 26.09%, and social studies slipped from 46.67% to 43.48%.

Attendance and dropout results are the school's standout strengths. Chronic absenteeism is 2.5% at the school, compared with 2.3% in the district and 17.3% statewide, and the dropout rate is 0.0%, better than the state's 1.1%. Even so, the school ranks 405 of 643 schools for 2025–2026, at the 37th percentile with 2 stars, while the district ranks 172 of 432 at the 60th percentile with 3 stars. The school's percentile has edged up from 31 to 32 to 37 over three years but remains below median. With only 83 students, a few students can shift a percentage substantially, so year-to-year swings may reflect cohort effects as much as schoolwide trends. The most impactful areas for attention appear to be 8th grade math and science, and the transition into 8th grade.