Summary:
ZIP code 54901 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin contains exactly one middle school — Vel Phillips Middle School — which serves grades 6–8 with 832 students as part of the Oshkosh Area School District. Because it is the only middle school in the area, there is no within-ZIP peer comparison, so the most useful benchmarks are the district, the state of Wisconsin, and the school's own results from the prior year.
Vel Phillips is rated 1 star and ranks 511 of 643 Wisconsin middle schools, putting it in the bottom quartile at the 21st percentile — though that figure has crept up from 16 in 2023–2024 and 17 in 2024–2025. In 2025–2026, every tested subject and grade came in below both district and state proficiency. Grade 7 is the weakest area: ELA 7 sits at 32.33% (23.00 points below state) and Math 7 at 33.05% (22.62 points below state), and both slipped from the previous year. Grade 8 Social Studies is the relative bright spot at 55.97%, the only school score above 50% and just 8.66 points under the state's 64.63%. Grade 6 showed the strongest momentum, with ELA up 13.50 points and Math up 13.84 points, and across the eight listed tests the school's average proficiency rose from about 33.60% to 38.93%, narrowing its average gap to the state from roughly 20.82 to 16.59 points.
The most urgent concern is chronic absenteeism: 30.2% at the school versus 16.9% in the district and 17.3% statewide, which is nearly 1.8 times the district rate. On the positive side, the dropout rate of 0.9% is lower than both the district's 1.6% and the state's 1.1%. The school serves a relatively high-poverty population, with 62.26% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, alongside $16,431 in per-student spending and a student-teacher ratio of 11.4. Overall, the picture is mixed but gradually improving, with Grade 7 achievement and absenteeism as the biggest barriers.
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