The top reported proficiency rate is 21% in Math. The lowest is 11% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Trix Academy
Trix Academy is a charter school on Detroit's east side, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade under the Michigan Educational Choice Center, a single-school charter authorizer. The school sits in a residential stretch of the city, on a street of single-family homes in a part of Detroit where housing values run far below both the state and national benchmarks. Homes in the surrounding zip code are deeply affordable by any conventional measure, and rents sit well below what most Michigan households pay. This is a community where the cost of living is low, but where decades of disinvestment and population decline have left their mark on the built environment and local economic base.
The school itself is small for a pre-K-through-eight program, with roughly a couple hundred students spread across the grades. The student body is almost entirely Black, and every enrolled student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not report data on English learners or students with individualized education programs, so those populations, if present, are not visible in the available records. This is a school serving a high-poverty community in a city that has been working through long cycles of economic restructuring.
On Michigan's state assessments, Trix Academy's results are low. Across the tested grades in math, proficiency rates sit in the bottom range reported by the state, with most grades showing only a small fraction of students reaching proficiency and several grades reporting proficiency near the floor. English language arts results follow a similar pattern: a modest share of third graders and eighth graders demonstrate proficiency, while the middle grades show even less. Science and social studies results, tested in fifth and eighth grades, are similarly low. When measured against other districts in Wayne County, Trix Academy lands in the bottom quartile for overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades. A parent weighing this school may want to ask the administration directly what academic interventions and support systems are in place, since the state results indicate that most students are not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks.
Because Trix Academy does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report, and the school's structure as an elementary-middle program means it is not evaluated on measures that apply to secondary schools. Chronic absenteeism data was not available, nor was information on course offerings, staffing ratios, or discipline. These are gaps a family would want to fill by visiting and asking the school directly.
Detroit itself is a city in a period of renewed growth after a long population decline. Publicly reported census estimates show the city gaining residents for consecutive years recently, driven partly by immigration and new housing construction. Major development projects downtown, along the riverfront, and in neighborhoods like Midtown and Corktown have drawn attention and investment, though the benefits of that revitalization are unevenly distributed across the city's neighborhoods. The east side, where Trix Academy sits, has seen less of the concentrated reinvestment that has reshaped the downtown core. The city's economy remains anchored by the automotive industry, with the Big Three automakers and major health systems serving as primary employers, and the regional economy ranks among the largest in the Midwest.
For a family considering Trix Academy, the picture is straightforward. It is a small, community-based charter school serving a nearly uniform high-poverty student population in a neighborhood where housing is inexpensive. The academic results from state testing are weak across subjects and grades, and the school sits near the bottom of Wayne County's districts on proficiency. The available data does not speak to classroom culture, teacher continuity, extracurricular offerings, or family engagement, so those dimensions would need to come from a direct conversation with the school.
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