The top reported proficiency rate is 28% in English language arts. The lowest is 10% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Ingenuity Prep Pcs
Ingenuity Prep PCS is a single-school public charter network in the District of Columbia, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The school reached full grade span maturation in the 2021-22 school year, meaning families can now enroll a child in pre-kindergarten and keep them in the same building through eighth grade. In early 2023, the DC Public Charter School Board voted to continue the school's charter after a ten-year review, finding that the school met its charter goals and did not violate the law or commit fiscal mismanagement. That vote confirms the school will remain operational, which matters for families thinking about long-term continuity.
The enrollment is moderately sized for a DC charter serving this grade band, with students distributed fairly evenly across grades. The student body is almost entirely Black, with a very small number of Hispanic students and a handful of students from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, so the economic background of the student population is not something we can characterize from the available data. Information on special education enrollment and English learner status was also missing, which limits the picture of how the school serves students with additional needs. A parent looking into support services would want to ask the school directly about its special education and English learner programming.
On state assessments, the most recent DC results show a clear split between English language arts and math. In ELA, proficiency rates climb as students move into the upper grades, with seventh and eighth grade results reaching the school's strongest levels. The middle-grade ELA performance suggests that students who stay at Ingenuity Prep through the upper elementary and middle years build real literacy skills. By contrast, math proficiency is low across every tested grade, with the sharpest drop in sixth grade and rates staying flat through seventh and eighth. A parent may want to look into the school's math curriculum and instructional approach, particularly how it supports students as they transition into the more demanding middle-grade math sequence. Science results, drawn from an earlier testing cycle, show proficiency near zero in both tested grades. The science assessment was last administered under a prior year, so these results may not reflect current instruction, but they are the most recent available and are worth discussing with the school.
There is no graduation rate for Ingenuity Prep because the school does not serve high school grades. That gap is structural rather than a missing measure of performance. The same applies to college readiness metrics, AP or dual-credit offerings, and other high-school-only data points. What the school offers instead is a continuous pre-kindergarten through eighth grade pathway under one roof, which families may value for stability and community.
Several categories of information that would help a parent form a fuller picture were not available in the data we reviewed. There is no locale brief describing the surrounding neighborhood or community context, no housing or rental data, no staffing or teacher turnover information, no discipline or attendance data, and no course access or extracurricular program details. We looked for the district's strategic priorities and program offerings but found little, so we left those out rather than guess. Civil rights data and a neighbor comparison set were also absent, which means we cannot position Ingenuity Prep against nearby DC charters or traditional public schools on the metrics a family might want to compare.
What the available data does tell a parent is this. Ingenuity Prep is a predominantly Black, pre-kindergarten through eighth grade DC charter that recently cleared its ten-year charter review and offers a continuous K-through-8 pathway. Its students show meaningful growth in English language arts by the upper grades, but math proficiency is consistently low across all tested grades and science results from the most recent available cycle were weak. Families drawn to a single continuous school community through middle school may find the stability appealing, and those who prioritize literacy outcomes in the upper elementary and middle grades will see something building there. The math and science results are the area a parent would want to press on most directly in a conversation with school leadership.
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