Summary:
Middle schools in the Sparta Area School District in Wisconsin come down to two schools sharing the same address at 1225 N Water St in Sparta: Sparta Meadowview Middle, which serves grades 5–8, and Innovations STEM Academy, which serves grades 6–8. Despite the shared campus, their profiles are very different. Meadowview is the large, traditional middle school with 687 students, while Innovations is a small program of 90 students.
Innovations is the standout. In 2025–26 it ranked 226 of 643 schools — the 65th percentile with 3 stars — while Meadowview ranked 470 of 643, the 27th percentile with 1 star. That gap shows in test scores: Innovations' average across eight same-grade tests was 60.22% proficient, 16.10 points above Meadowview's 44.12%. The widest gap is 8th grade science, 61.54% versus 36.84%. Meadowview scored below the state in every reported test, though its 8th grade social studies result of 63.53% came close to the district (64.29%) and state (64.63%). Innovations scored above the district in every test and above the state in all but one, with 7th grade ELA at 69.70%.
Other measures tell a similar story. Meadowview has a higher free/reduced lunch rate (49.78% vs. 32.22%) and higher chronic absenteeism (6.4% vs. 2.2%), though both schools are well below the state's 17.3%, and both report a 0.0% dropout rate. Per-student spending is nearly identical ($15,789 vs. $16,024), and Meadowview actually has the smaller classes (10.6 vs. 16.7 students per teacher), so class size and spending alone do not explain the results. Keep in mind that Innovations' small size makes its year-to-year numbers more variable — its percentile has swung from 73 to 51 to 65 — while Meadowview has stayed in the bottom quartile each year.
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