Best Middle Schools In Houston

ALL MIDDLE SCHOOLS

BEST SCHOOL DISTRICTS

BEST HIGH SCHOOLS

BEST ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

The 2020 best Houston middle schools lists on this page identify the traditional open enrollment, selective enrollment and charter middle schools that scored highest on the 2019 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) evaluations administered statewide by the Texas Education Agency.

To make the evaluation of each schools’s academic performance more precise and meaningful, an academic performance index that indicates the relative combined STAAR score of each Texas middle and junior high school has been constructed. The way it works is that a school with an academic performance index level at 82.6 would have combined STAAR scores that are 17.4 percent lower than the scores of the state’s top performing middle school. Each school also has been assigned an academic performance score based on its rank in the overall academic performance index. Schools that rank among top 10 percent of schools included this study received an academic performance score of 10, schools in the next lower ninth decile received a score of 9, and so on. Accountability ratings awarded by the TEA in were not considered in this ranking analysis since in addition to STAAR scores these ratings take into account factors that generally have no meaningful linkage to the academic performance of individual students, such as changes in student performance at the school on the STAAR evaluations from one year to the next. Such factors may be meaningful to administrators and teachers, but not to most parents or students. Also not considered in this study are frequently, sometimes purposefully, misleading subjective factors such as opinions of self-selected contributors of anonymous parent and student reviews and "expert insights" regarding teacher quality.

Most of the schools listed in the complete Houston public middle schools rankings are open enrollment schools and a relatively few are magnet and charter schools. Clicking on these 2020 top Houston open enrollment middle schools, 2020 top Houston selective enrollment middle schools and 2020 top Houston charter middle schools jump links displays those ranking views. The high schools identified in these lists also are among the top ranked middle schools in the state of Texas.

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Open enrollment middle schools

Of the 304 Houston public middle and junior high schools included in this analysis, 1,423 are traditional open enrollment schools which are operated by local independent schools districts and where the only requirement for admittance is student residency in the school's attendance area. The Houston open enrollment middle schools that rank highest in academic performance and the cities/towns they serve are shown below.

The data presented in this table can be sorted by clicking on the table headings. You also can limit the data display to a single school or school district by typing the name of a school or school district in the Search box. Additional performance and other information for middle schools located in the communities profiled on this website can be accessed by clicking on the name of the school.

2020 top Houston open enrollment middle schools

rank	campus	district	students	academic performance index	accountability rating	STAAR scaled score	attended by students living in
1	Fort Settlement Middle School	Fort Bend ISD	1,538	85.9	A	96	Sugar Land
2	Beckendorff Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,699	83.7	A	95	Katy
3	Smith Middle School	Cypress-Fairbanks ISD	1,555	82.4	A	95	Cypress
4	Seven Lakes Junior High School	Katy ISD	2,032	82.0	A	95	Katy
5	Tays Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,718	80.3	A	95	Katy
6	McCullough Junior High School	Conroe ISD	2,141	80.2	A	95	Conroe, Spring, The Woodlands
7	Lanier Middle School	Houston ISD	1,464	78.9	A	94	Houston
8	Sartartia Middle School	Fort Bend ISD	1,326	78.7	A	94	Richmond, Sugar Land
9	Austin Middle School	Galveston ISD	564	78.4	A	94	Galveston
10	Beck Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,001	76.8	A	94	Katy
11	Creekside Park Junior High School	Tomball ISD	766	76.3	A	94	Spring, The Woodlands, Tomball
12	McMeans Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,136	76.0	A	94	Houston, Katy
13	Memorial Middle School	Spring Branch ISD	1,336	76.0	A	94	Bunker Hill, Houston
14	Woodcreek Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,587	75.9	A	94	Katy
15	Miller Junior High School	Pearland ISD	895	75.6	A	94	Manvel, Pearland
16	Spillane Middle School	Cypress-Fairbanks ISD	1,539	74.1	A	94	Cypress, Houston
17	League City Intermediate School	Clear Creek ISD	1,066	73.3	A	93	League City
18	Pin Oak Middle School	Houston ISD	1,213	72.0	A	93	Bellaire, Houston
19	Cinco Ranch Junior High School	Katy ISD	1,272	71.6	A	93	Katy
20	Riverwood Middle School	Humble ISD	1,066	70.9	A	93	Houston, Humble, Kingwood
21	Devers Junior High School	Devers ISD	50	70.5	A	93	Devers
22	Hamilton Middle School	Cypress-Fairbanks ISD	1,490	70.3	A	93	Cypress, Houston, Willow Park
23	Willow Wood Junior High School	Tomball ISD	1,353	69.7	A	93	Cypress, Tomball
24	Salyards Middle School	Cypress-Fairbanks ISD	1,592	69.4	A	93	Cypress
25	Reading Junior High School	Lamar CISD	2,026	67.8	A	92	Richmond, Rosenberg, Sugar Land

Selective enrollment middle schools

In addition to their open enrollment schools, a number of Texas school districts also operate selective enrollment schools. Selective enrollment schools provide career-oriented or specialized curriculum in addition to academic subjects, and admittance typically is based on students' previous academic performance and interests demonstrated in student interviews, auditions, essays, and other similar faculty assessments. As would be expected, since admission to selective enrollment schools generally is highly selective and limited, the average standardized test results of the selective enrollment schools generally are much higher than results attained by the open enrollment schools that their students otherwise would attend.

2020 top Houston selective enrollment middle schools

rank	campus	district	students	academic performance index	accountability rating	STAAR scaled score
1	Spring Branch Academic Institute	Spring Branch ISD	111	95.6	A	98
2	Mandarin Immersion Magnet School	Houston ISD	748	80.5	A	95
3	Project Chrysalis Middle School	Houston ISD	279	73.3	A	93

Charter middle schools

Generally speaking, any student can apply for admission to a Texas charter school, though the school's charter can specify certain restrictions. A typical example of this would be that a student must reside in a specific town or city in order to apply for admission. In most cases, the school's admissions policy also will describe its lottery process. A charter school must use a lottery process when the number of applications to the school exceeds the number of available spaces.

2020 top Houston charter middle schools

rank	campus	district	students	academic performance index	accountability rating	STAAR scaled score
1	Cornerstone Academy	Spring Branch ISD	377	76.8	A	94
2	Houston Gateway Academy - Elite	Houston Gateway Academy	807	70.1	A	93
3	Energized for STEM Academy Southwest Middle School	Houston ISD	218	69.1	A	93

Source: Texas Education Agency

Similar Houston area elementary schools and high schools student performance ranked lists are available on these best Houston public elementary schools and best Houston public high schools pages. Rankings for school districts are shown on this best Houston school districts page.

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