The top reported proficiency rate is 24% in English language arts. The lowest is 10% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Gordon Parks Elem.
Gordon Parks Elementary is a public charter school in Kansas City serving pre-kindergarten through fourth grade. It occupies a location on Wyoming Street in the city’s Midtown area, a mixed residential and commercial zone within a major urban center. The school itself is small, with an enrollment of just over a hundred students across grades PK through four.
The student body is predominantly Black and Hispanic, with a smaller share of white students and a handful of students who identify as two or more races. Every student at the school qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of the high concentration of economic need the school serves. The school does not report the share of students who receive special education services or who are English learners, so a parent should check with the school directly for those details.
Gordon Parks is a charter school, authorized to operate independently of the traditional Kansas City Public Schools system. It occupies its own district, also named Gordon Parks Elementary, so there is no larger district apparatus to navigate for enrollment or governance decisions. The school’s website would be the place to look for its educational approach, application process, and any lottery or enrollment preferences.
State testing results for the 2024-25 school year paint a straightforward picture. In fourth-grade math, just under a tenth of students scored at the proficient level or above. In fourth-grade English language arts, roughly a quarter of students reached that threshold. Third-grade results for both subjects and fifth-grade science results were suppressed by the state, meaning too few students were tested or the data were not reportable under state rules; the science figures available are from much earlier. Overall, across the tested grades and subjects, proficiency is low. The school’s composite proficiency index places it in the bottom quarter when compared with other districts in Jackson County. A parent considering Gordon Parks would want to talk directly with the school about how it addresses academic gaps, what interventions are in place, and what frameworks guide instruction.
Because Gordon Parks serves only through fourth grade, there is no high school graduation rate to examine, and the school’s small size means that many of the metrics used to evaluate larger schools, such as chronic absenteeism or discipline rates, are either not available or not published.
The school’s Midtown Kansas City location puts it in a neighborhood that has seen some residential reinvestment in recent years, with apartment conversions and new construction occurring downtown and along the streetcar corridor a short drive north. The area is generally car-dependent for daily errands, though some pockets of walkability exist around the nearby Country Club Plaza and the Crossroads Arts District. Housing in the area’s ZIP code is roughly on par with the state median home value; rents have been rising modestly.
Gordon Parks Elementary serves a small, economically disadvantaged student population in an urban charter setting. The most direct questions for a family are what academic supports the school provides to address low proficiency, what the school’s specific instructional model is, and whether the early-elementary-only span works for a family’s longer-term schooling plan. The school offers no course-access data, no staff-to-student ratios, and no program listings in the available information, so those are natural starting points for a follow-up conversation with the school’s leadership.
See more original research from School Decision →