Academic State Championships

Walkerville High School, located in the Manistee National Forest north of Muskegon, doesn’t have a football team. But the district is in the playoffs. The Walkerville Wildcats join 126 other school districts that advanced to the semifinals of Bridge Magazine’s State Academic Championships.

Using a database of school statistics, Bridge is honoring champions in academic categories ranging from fourth-grade reading to college readiness and graduation rates. Districts are split into eight divisions, just like in football, but the academic divisions are crafted by community type and socioeconomic status.

Last week, 213 school districts made the academic playoffs. Schools that made the semifinals this week include expected academic powerhouses such as Forest Hills and Bloomfield Hills, but also small, rural schools such as Parchment, Ida and Pewamo-Westphalia.

What schools will win? And what are the keys to their success that can be learned by other districts? Find out next week, when Bridge Magazine unveils our State Academic Champions.

For now, check the links below to see if your school made the Academic Final Four.

*In a few divisions, more than four schools tied for the state championship and so not all show up in our Final Four. In those cases, ties were broken by giving the nod to schools with higher percentages of free lunch, usually an indicator of poverty. Next week, all school districts that tied for or won a division will be crowned a “state champion.”