Dowagiac Union High School has again received strong marks on its biennial report card from The Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

The high school received a “B” letter grade, ranking 132nd out of all Michigan high schools, according to the results of the Midland-based think tank’s “2016 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card,” published earlier this month.

The comparative study gave the Dowagiac high school a score of 103.59, placing in the school just shy of the top 20 percent of schools throughout the state.

Researchers with The Mackinac Center determined the scores for the study by compiling Union High School students’ average scores from the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 Michigan Merit Examinations, a standardized test issued to Michigan juniors. These numbers were then compared to the average test scores from high schools with similar enrollment and socioeconomic conditions, the latter determined by the percentage of juniors enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program (in Dowagiac’s case, 67.8 percent).

Union High School scored the highest among high schools in Cass County. Marcellus High School ranked 146th, with a CAP score of 103.26; Edwardsburg High School ranked 191st, with a score of 102.26; and Cassopolis’ Ross Beatty High School ranked 539th, with a score of 95.51.

Dowagiac rose in the ranks since The Mackinac Center’s last CAP study in 2014, where the school ranked 155th in the state. In the first CAP study in 2012, Union High School ranked 91st.

The results come just one year after the district’s elementary buildings performed well in a similar Mackinac Center study, which ranked Sister Lakes Elementary as the top performing school in its category.

The high school’s modest improvement came as welcome news to Dowagiac Union Schools’ administrators.

“It shows we are moving in the right direction, and getting better and better and better,” said Dawn Conner, deputy superintendent with the district.

Conner credits the high school staff and leadership as well as the freshmen mentoring program, where retired staff work alongside new students at the school, with the school’s performance on the scorecard. She also praised the improvements the high school has made to its algebra instruction.

While the district has its own internal goals for the performance of its students on standardized testing and other figures, seeing its buildings perform strongly on external studies from The Mackinac Center, Bridges magazine and the state department of education is always a strong boost to morale, Conner said.

“Teaching is a hard job, and just keeps getting harder all the time,” Conner said. “So anything we can do to make our staff, our students and our parents feel better about the school is great.”

As she has done in previous years, Conner plans on sharing the results of the study with the public during an upcoming meeting of the district board of education, she said.

With administrators planning on transitioning the high school to seven period days in the near the future, along with the planned improvements to classrooms coming from the planned renovation of Union High, Conner expects the school’s students to continue to excel in the years to come, she said.

“These numbers just reaffirm that we are moving in the right direction,” Conner said. “We are all about continuous improvement in the district. With all the positive things we have lined up in the near future, I see us continuing to move further and further up the scale.”