During the 2011-12 school year, just 5 percent of Highland Park eighth graders scored proficient or better on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test in mathematics.[22] Astoundingly, this was an improvement. No district eighth grader scored proficient or better on either the 2010-11 or 2009-10 MEAP mathematics test.[23]
Just one other conventional school district reported zero students scoring proficient or better on the eighth grade MEAP mathematics test during those two years — the Buena Vista School District.[24] That district was closed and dissolved in 2013.[25]
Highland Park eighth graders fared better on the state reading test, with 48 percent scoring proficient in 2011-12, up from 21 percent during the 2010-11 school year.[26] But high school students reported worse scores. No student scored proficient or better on the Michigan Merit Exam test in mathematics (administered to 11th grade students) during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, and only 3 percent did in the following year.[27] Student scores were higher on the MME reading test, but nothing to brag about: 14 percent of students scoring proficient or better during the 2011-12 school year.[28]