As a Midtown resident, I was happy to see that Inman Middle School ranked sixth out of 199 Metro Atlanta middle schools in my 2011 middle school rankings. I always knew that Inman was considered a high-quality school, but I didn’t know just how impressive it’s performance was until I started digging into the data released by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. Inman excels every way you look at it.

I’ve explained previously that a significant portion of the variation in school performance is explained by needs level. Therefore, it is important to benchmark schools against others with similar needs. Inman Middle School falls into Needs Index 4, meaning that students at Inman are slightly more advantaged than the state average (Methodology). Therefore, Inman is benchmarked against other state schools whose students are also slightly more advantaged than the state average.

For grades 6 through 8, I have attached charts of school CRCT scores (Methodology) for Inman and the average for Metro Atlanta schools with similar needs (Needs Index 4).  

In every grade and every subject, Inman Middle School is outperforming the average of its peers. It is also consistently outperforming the state as a whole.  

• Inman’s sixth-grade class outscored 98% of schools with similar needs and 97% of all Georgia middle schools.
• Inman’s seventh-grade class outscored 96% of schools with similar needs and 94% of all Georgia middle schools.
• Inman’s eighth-grade class outscored 96% of schools with similar needs and 94% of all Georgia middle schools.

Not only are Inman’s academics top-notch, but students have the added benefit of learning in a fairly diverse environment. Thirty-five percent of the school’s students are classified as economically disadvantaged, and the schools ethnic composition is shown in the attached pie chart.

Congratulations to Inman Middle and all its students and teachers for their impressive performance! 

For more analysis of Atlanta’s schools, visit Grading Atlanta.

A Couple of Qualifiers:

It is important to remember that my ranking system is based upon an analysis of Georgia standardized test scores, which I consider one important indicator of school quality. I have not visited all 199 elementary schools in the metro area. Further, my ranking system does not attempt to incorporate qualitative evaluations of the approaches employed by each school.  It’s just by the numbers.