Best Public Middle Schools in the Tri-Cities
The Tri-Cities region — Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland in Benton and Franklin counties — has a middle-school landscape unlike anywhere else in the state. Three large districts (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) account for almost the entire enrollment, the area's economy is tied closely to Hanford and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the student body is roughly half Hispanic. The leading middle schools cluster in Richland, where the lab-affiliated workforce concentrates, with Kennewick's newer suburban middle schools close behind.
Leona Libby Middle School in West Richland leads the list. The school is the Richland district's fourth and newest middle school, funded by a 2013 bond and opened on a thirty-acre campus near Keene Road and Belmont Boulevard; it is explicitly designated a STEAM school (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) and serves about 800 students. Desert Hills Middle in Kennewick takes second, and Chinook Middle, also Kennewick, takes third. Enterprise Middle in West Richland (Richland district) and Carmichael Middle in Richland round out the top five — three of the top five schools come from the Richland district alone.
Ray Reynolds Middle in Pasco, at rank six, is the highest-ranked Pasco school. Pasco School District serves a student body that is roughly seventy percent Hispanic and thirty percent English-language learner, and the district has been the most rapidly-growing major school district in Eastern Washington for more than a decade — Ray Reynolds opened relatively recently to absorb that growth. Chief Joseph Middle (Richland) and McLoughlin Middle (Pasco) follow at ranks seven and eight. Horse Heaven Hills Middle and Park Middle, both Kennewick, close out the list.
The data shape here is striking: the top-ranked school's SBA math proficiency (53 percent) drops to 24 percent at the tenth-ranked school, the widest top-to-bottom spread among all middle-school regional lists on the Atlas. This is partly a function of the ELL share — schools with smaller ELL populations cluster at the top, schools with larger ELL populations occupy the lower ranks — and partly a reflection of how concentrated educational resources are in Richland, where lab-employee household income substantially exceeds the regional median. The Kennewick district places four schools in the top ten despite serving a more demographically mixed catchment.
A note on scope: this ranking covers public middle schools whose attendance area is in Benton or Franklin County, ordered by Smarter Balanced math and ELA proficiency averages from OSPI's most recent Report Card. SAT, AP, and Polaris figures are unavailable at the middle-school level. Schools with fewer than thirty tested students are excluded for statistical stability. Charter and option schools are eligible if classified as public; private middle schools, including Tri-City Prep and several Christian schools, appear in a separate ranking.
Ranked schools
- 001LEONA LIBBY MIDDLE SCHOOLRICHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON61%
- 002DESERT HILLS MIDDLE SCHOOLKENNEWICK SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON56%
- 003CHINOOK MIDDLE SCHOOLKENNEWICK SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON44%
- 004ENTERPRISE MIDDLE SCHOOLRICHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON42%
- 005CARMICHAEL MIDDLE SCHOOLRICHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON38%
- 006RAY REYNOLDS MIDDLE SCHOOLPASCO SCHOOL DISTRICT · FRANKLIN37%
- 007CHIEF JOSEPH MIDDLE SCHOOLRICHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON37%
- 008MCLOUGHLIN MIDDLE SCHOOLPASCO SCHOOL DISTRICT · FRANKLIN34%
- 009HORSE HEAVEN HILLS MIDDLE SCHOOLKENNEWICK SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON32%
- 010PARK MIDDLE SCHOOLKENNEWICK SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON30%
- 011COLUMBIA MIDDLE SCHOOLCOLUMBIA (WALLA WALLA) SCHOOL DISTRICT · WALLA WALLA24%
- 012HIGHLANDS MIDDLE SCHOOLKENNEWICK SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON22%
- 013FINLEY MIDDLE SCHOOLFINLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON19%
- 014STEVENS MIDDLE SCHOOLPASCO SCHOOL DISTRICT · FRANKLIN18%
- 015KIONA-BENTON CITY MIDDLE SCHOOLKIONA-BENTON CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT · BENTON14%
- 016ELLEN OCHOA MIDDLE SCHOOLPASCO SCHOOL DISTRICT · FRANKLIN14%
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