Detroit Edison Public School Academy, Detroit MI

Original Research by School Decision on Detroit Edison Public School Academy

Detroit Edison Public School Academy is a charter school on Detroit's near east side, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The student body is large for a single-site charter, and the enrollment is overwhelmingly Black, with a substantial majority of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school sits in a part of Detroit where housing costs run well below both the state and national benchmarks. Typical home values in the surrounding zip code are modest by any standard, and recent data shows those values still declining year over year, while rents have edged up slightly. For families looking to buy near the school, that means relatively accessible price points compared to most of metro Detroit, though the market reflects the broader disinvestment and uneven recovery that defines this part of the city.

The school's academic results tell a two-part story. In the elementary grades, Detroit Edison Public School Academy performs well. Third-grade math proficiency sits above half, and English language arts results in grades three through five are consistently strong, with the fifth-grade ELA rate among the highest in the building. Fourth and fifth graders also produce solid math results. This is a school where the early grades appear to be building real literacy and numeracy, and a family enrolling a young child here would be entering at a point of visible academic strength.

The picture shifts in the middle grades. Math proficiency drops sharply beginning in sixth grade and stays low through eighth, with only a small fraction of students reaching proficiency on the PSAT-based eighth-grade assessment. ELA holds up better across the same span, and eighth-grade ELA proficiency is actually quite high, suggesting the school's reading and writing instruction sustains its effect where math does not. Science and social studies results fall in between, with fifth-grade rates on the lower side and eighth-grade rates in those subjects reaching a more comfortable middle range. The overall proficiency index, which averages results across tested subjects and grades, places this school in the top quartile relative to districts in Wayne County, a position driven largely by the elementary performance. The middle-grade math decline is the clearest soft spot in the data, and a parent with a child approaching sixth grade may want to look into this further with the school.

Because the school does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and that absence simply reflects the grade band. Chronic absenteeism data was not available, and information on special education enrollment, English learner counts, discipline, staffing ratios, and course access was also missing from the available data. These are gaps a parent might reasonably ask the school to fill directly.

Detroit itself is undergoing a period of cautious renewal. After decades of population loss, the city has posted consecutive years of growth, driven partly by immigration and new housing development. Publicly reported revitalization efforts have concentrated downtown and in Midtown, with riverfront expansion, the Hudson's site redevelopment, and the Gordie Howe International Bridge under construction. The school's immediate area, closer to the east side, sits outside the main corridors of that investment, and the housing data reflects that distance. Walkability in Detroit is uneven, concentrated in the downtown core and diminishing in outer neighborhoods, so families considering this location should expect car dependence for most daily needs.

The district brief turned up no recent curriculum, governance, or fiscal changes with lasting parent impact, so there is nothing new to flag on that front. What a family finds here is a charter school with genuinely strong early-grade instruction, particularly in reading, set in an affordable but still-recovering neighborhood. The middle-grade math results are the question worth pressing on.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 355%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 28 pts above county median

Grade 446%

School 46% · District 46%

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 18 pts above county median

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 46%

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Grade 614%

School 14% · District 14%

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

Grade 719%

School 19% · District 19%

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 815%

School 15% · District 15%

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

English language arts

Grade 351%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 26 pts above county median

Grade 459%

School 59% · District 59%

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 30 pts above county median

Grade 559%

School 59% · District 59%

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

Grade 648%

School 48% · District 48%

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 26 pts above county median

Grade 751%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 27 pts above county median

Grade 870%

School 70% · District 70%

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 28 pts above county median

Science

Grade 537%

School 37% · District 37%

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

Grade 853%

School 53% · District 53%

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 30 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 531%

School 31% · District 31%

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 852%

School 52% · District 52%

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▲ 26 pts above county median

This schoolDetroit Edison Public School 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 3Lower-income47%Higher-income65%19 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income55%Higher-income67%12 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income54%Higher-income74%20 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income40%Higher-income65%25 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income46%Higher-income59%13 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income73%Higher-income67%6 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income49%Higher-income75%26 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income45%Higher-income50%5 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income43%Higher-income56%13 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income9%Higher-income26%17 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income19%Higher-income19%1 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income14%Higher-income17%3 pp gap