Summary:
ZIP code 53717 in Madison, Wisconsin, has just one middle school: Ezekiel Gillespie Middle School, which serves grades 6–8 with 462 students as part of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
For 2025–2026, the school’s overall test proficiency was 44.2%, compared with 50.1% for the district and 55.5% for the state. That is an improvement from 42.0% the prior year, narrowing the gap to the district from -6.9 points to -5.9 points and to the state from -12.4 points to -11.3 points. The strongest areas were 8th grade Social Studies at 54.17%, the school’s highest proficiency rate, and 8th grade ELA at 48.59%, which was only 1.85 points below the district. 7th grade ELA showed the biggest jump, rising from 37.23% to 46.63%, a gain of 9.40 points. Other year-over-year gains included 6th grade Math +3.90 points, 8th grade ELA +4.73 points, 7th grade Math +1.89 points, 8th grade Math +1.13 points, and 6th grade ELA +1.02 points. The dropout rate was low at 0.7%, better than the district’s 1.2% and the state’s 1.1%. Chronic absenteeism was 27.1%, better than the district’s 29.6% but still much higher than the state’s 17.3%.
Every tested subject and grade in 2025–2026 was below both district and state averages. Science 8 was the lowest at 36.11%, which is 10.97 points below the district and 15.75 points below the state. Math 7 was also a major gap at 40.74%, 10.83 points below the district and 14.93 points below the state. Social Studies 8 and Science 8 both declined year over year. The school’s rank was 473 out of 643 schools in 2025–2026, placing it in the 26th percentile with a 1-star rating; the district also ranked in the 26th percentile with 1 star. The school has 53.25% free/reduced lunch, $20,024 in spending per student, and an 11.4 student-teacher ratio. Because ZIP 53717 contains only this one middle school, there are no other local schools to compare it with.
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