Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 54814

ZIP code 54814 has one middle school, Bayfield Middle, serving grades 6–8 with 96 students in Bayfield, Wisconsin, as part of Bayfield School District. It is the only middle school in the area. Strengths include $27,364 per-student spending, an 11:1 student-teacher ratio, and a reported 0.0% dropout rate, below the district’s 0.5% and the state’s 1.1%. The district is ranked 419th of 432 Wisconsin districts, at the 3rd percentile with 0 stars. Bayfield Middle’s rank history is in the bottom portion of state middle schools: 555 of 643, 14th percentile, 1 star in 2025–2026; 536 of 628, 15th percentile, 1 star in 2024–2025; and 505 of 641, 21st percentile, 1 star in 2023–2024.

Chronic absenteeism is the most striking red flag: 45.7% in 2024–2025, nearly half the student body and about 2.6 times Wisconsin’s 17.3% rate. The school also reports 58.33% free/reduced lunch. In Forward Exam proficiency, every reported subject and grade in both years is below the state average. Across the listed tests, Bayfield Middle averaged 31.99% in 2025–2026 versus Wisconsin’s 55.51%, a gap of -23.52 points. In 2024–2025, it averaged 29.57% versus the state’s 54.42%, a gap of -24.85 points. The school improved by about 2.4 points while the state improved by about 1.1 points; the gap narrowed slightly but remains very large.

In 2025–2026, results rise by grade level in ELA and math: ELA goes from 20.00% in grade 6 to 25.81% in grade 7 to 31.82% in grade 8, while math goes from 23.33% to 32.26% to 40.91%. Year-over-year gains appear in ELA 8 (20.69% to 31.82%), Math 6 (14.71% to 23.33%), and Math 8 (34.48% to 40.91%), but Science 8 declined from 44.83% to 36.36%. The largest gaps versus state include Math 6 in 2024–2025 (14.71% vs. 52.98%) and ELA 6 in 2025–2026 (20.00% vs. 54.95%). School and district scores are identical, and the ranking trend is flat-to-declining. Overall, this is a small, relatively well-resourced school with a favorable student-teacher ratio and a reported 0.0% dropout rate, but it faces severe chronic absenteeism and broad academic underperformance relative to Wisconsin.