Linden Charter Academy, Flint MI

Original Research by School Decision on Linden Charter Academy

Linden Charter Academy is a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter school on Flint's north side, serving a student body that is predominantly Black and overwhelmingly from low-income households. Nearly every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and the enrollment is distributed fairly evenly across the nine grade levels, giving the school a steady, mid-sized feel for its grade band. Because it does not extend through twelfth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and no chronic absenteeism or attendance figures were available in the data provided.

The academic picture from the most recent Michigan state assessments is genuinely mixed, with some patterns a parent would want to understand. In English language arts, the school shows a clear upward arc as students move through the grades. Third and fourth grade proficiency starts on the lower side, but by sixth grade a larger share of students are meeting state benchmarks, and by seventh and eighth grade the proficiency rate rises to a slim majority of tested students. That is a real bright spot, suggesting older students at Linden are building reading and writing competence at a level many similar schools would envy.

Math follows a different pattern. Third and fourth grade proficiency sits in the low range, dips sharply in fifth grade, then rebounds in sixth and seventh grade to a more middling level before falling again in eighth grade on the PSAT. Science results are modest across the two tested grades, and social studies shows a wide gap between fifth grade, where very few students reached proficiency, and eighth grade, where a much larger share did. Taken across all tested subjects and grades, the school's overall proficiency lands above the midpoint among districts in Genesee County. That positioning is worth noting: among the county's districts, this school outperforms the typical peer on proficiency, even though many individual grade-level results remain modest.

A parent considering this school may want to ask how the staff supports students in fifth grade math specifically, where the drop is pronounced, and whether the strength in middle-grade ELA is the product of a particular program or set of teachers that could be sustained. The data we received did not include staffing, course access, discipline, or program offerings, so we cannot speak to those dimensions. 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.

Flint itself shapes much of the context around Linden Charter Academy. The city is a post-industrial community built on its automotive past, when General Motors employed a massive workforce that has since contracted dramatically. Decades of population decline and disinvestment followed, leaving a built environment of older residential neighborhoods, vacant lots from demolition activity, and commercial strips along major corridors. The downtown core along Saginaw Street is more concentrated and walkable, with the Capitol Theatre, the Sloan Museum, and the University of Michigan-Flint campus nearby, but outside that core the city is largely auto-dependent. Public transit through the Mass Transportation Authority serves the broader area. Annual events like Back to the Bricks and the Flint Jazz Festival reflect the city's automotive heritage and its community revival efforts.

The housing market here is among the most affordable in the state. Typical home values in the school's zip code sit at a small fraction of the statewide benchmark and well below the national figure, and rents are correspondingly low. For families prioritizing low housing costs, this is an accessible market. At the same time, the area's long economic recovery is still in progress, and large-scale new housing construction was not evident in the sources we reviewed.

No parent-relevant district-level changes were identified for this single-school charter district in the recent period, so there is little to report on strategic shifts or new initiatives. A family evaluating Linden Charter Academy is looking at a school serving a predominantly low-income, predominantly Black student population in a city working through decades of structural change. Its academic results are uneven but show real strength in upper-grade literacy, and its overall proficiency stands above the typical Genesee County district. Whether it fits a given family depends on how those strengths align with a child's needs, and a conversation with the school about the middle-grade math dip and the support structures behind the ELA gains would help fill in the picture.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 324%

School 24% · District 24%

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 424%

School 24% · District 24%

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 512%

School 12% · District 12%

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 628%

School 28% · District 28%

even with state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

Grade 741%

School 41% · District 41%

▲ 12 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 20%

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 322%

School 22% · District 22%

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Grade 438%

School 38% · District 38%

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 534%

School 34% · District 34%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 642%

School 42% · District 42%

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 755%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 21 pts above state median · ▲ 31 pts above county median

Grade 856%

School 56% · District 56%

▼ 6 pts below state median · even with county median

Science

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 27%

▼ 13 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 819%

School 19% · District 19%

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 513%

School 13% · District 13%

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

Grade 844%

School 44% · District 44%

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

This schoolLinden Charter Academy, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 8Lower-income57%Higher-income50%7 pp gap