Summary:
Zip code 53717 on Madison's west side is served by two public schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District: Vel Phillips Memorial High School, serving grades 9–12 with 2,004 students, and Ezekiel Gillespie Middle School, serving grades 6–8 with 462 students. There are no elementary or alternative schools in this zip code, so families here feed into one middle school and one high school.
The high school is the stronger of the two and outperforms its district, which itself ranks 321st of 432 Wisconsin districts (26th percentile, 1 star). Vel Phillips Memorial has earned 3 stars in each of the last three years, ranking between the 55th and 64th percentile. It beats both the district and the state in ACT English language arts, math, and science in both years shown, and its graduation rate of 90.6% is above the district's 84.6% and just below the state's 92.0%. One caution: 10th-grade social studies fell 6.76 points, from 50.70% to 43.94%, dropping below both district and state, and 36.5% of students are chronically absent — more than one in three, compared with 29.6% districtwide and 17.3% statewide.
The middle school is the bigger academic concern. It holds 1 star and ranks between the 23rd and 26th percentile, and it falls below both the district and the state in every test result shown across both years. Its widest gaps are in 8th-grade science (36.11% proficient, 15.75 points below the state) and 7th-grade math (40.74%, 14.93 points below). Notably, it spends more per student — $20,024 versus $18,129 — and has a smaller student-teacher ratio, 11.4 versus 15.7, while posting lower results. Its chronic absenteeism is 27.1%, above the state but below the district. Dropout rates at both schools are low.
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