The top reported proficiency rate is 28% in English language arts. The lowest is 15% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on East Side Charter School
East Side Charter School operates as a single-school charter district in New Castle County, Delaware, serving students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The enrollment is small for a district, with a student body that is almost entirely Black, along with a very small number of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, nor were figures for special education or English learner populations, so the economic and linguistic profile of the student body is not available from the data we received. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report; that gap reflects the grade band rather than a missing result.
On state assessments, East Side's results are low and have been climbing back from a steep post-pandemic drop. In English language arts, proficiency fell sharply between the first and second years of the available trend, then has recovered in each successive year, reaching its most recent point just below where it started. Math followed a similar arc, dropping to a very low point the year after the initial reading and then improving steadily across the three years since, with the most recent results approaching the pre-drop level but still not matching it. Science proficiency sits lower than either reading or math. Social studies results, reported by grade level for a prior year, show modest proficiency in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades. When placed among New Castle County's districts on an overall proficiency index, East Side falls in the bottom quartile.
The chronic absenteeism figure stands out. Among the county's districts for which this measure is reported, East Side's rate sits in the bottom quartile, and it is high in absolute terms. This is the kind of soft spot a parent may want to look into directly with the school, since persistent absence can both reflect and compound the academic challenges the proficiency numbers show.
On the spending side, East Side's per-pupil current expenditure lands in the middle range of New Castle County's districts, in the upper half. That suggests the school is not starved of resources relative to its neighbors, even with its academic results lagging.
The district brief points to an expansion effort. Publicly reported records indicate that East Side applied for a major modification to increase its authorized enrollment and to construct a new STEM Hub at its current location, with funding from a Chemours investment. The planned STEM Hub would bring partnerships with NASA, Code Differently, and Barclays, and would offer evening, weekend, and summer access to maker space and technology for students, parents, and community members. The modification also projected gradual enrollment growth over several fiscal years. If completed, this would add both seats and STEM-focused facilities to a school whose current academic profile is mixed.
Several things a parent might want were not in the data. We found no locale brief for the surrounding community, no housing values or rents, no information on discipline practices, course access beyond what is implied by the grade band, staffing ratios, or program offerings. The school's charter and magnet status fields were blank, though the name and district brief make clear this is a charter entity. Civil rights data was not available.
What the assembled picture shows is a small, predominantly Black K-through-8 charter school with below-average proficiency results that are trending upward after a sharp decline, a very high chronic absenteeism rate that warrants direct questions, middling-to-solid financial resources, and an expansion plan centered on STEM. Families considering East Side would be looking at a school with a clear growth trajectory in its test scores and an ambitious facilities plan, set against the reality that current academic results and attendance are both areas where the school is working from behind relative to its county peers.
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