Foreign Language Academy, Kansas City MO

Original Research by School Decision on Foreign Language Academy

Foreign Language Academy is a regular public school in Kansas City, Missouri, serving prekindergarten through eighth grade as part of the Kansas City 33 district. The school is a neighborhood public school, not a charter or magnet institution. It sits in a major urban center that is the largest city in Missouri by population and land area, a city of broad commercial districts, historic residential neighborhoods, and an extensive park and boulevard system. The city is car-dependent overall, with walkable cores downtown and in areas like the Country Club Plaza and River Market.

The student body of this school is diverse. More than half of the students are Hispanic. Black students make up the next largest group, followed by White students, then students of two or more races, Asian students, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students. Economically, every enrolled student in the reported data qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school in a context of very high economic need. Enrollment is moderate for a PK-8 campus, with the largest grade-level cohorts in kindergarten and first grade, and smaller numbers in the middle-school grades of sixth, seventh, and eighth.

On state assessments for the 2024-25 school year, results were mixed and varied by grade and subject. In English language arts, proficiency rates were reported in several grades. Fifth graders posted a rate in the low forties. Third, sixth, and seventh graders each landed in the low to mid thirties. Fourth and eighth grade results were suppressed, meaning the data was not reported, often due to a small group size that could compromise student privacy. In math, proficiency rates for grades three, four, five, and six each fell in a range of roughly thirty to thirty-eight percent proficiency. Seventh and eighth grade math results were suppressed. In science, fifth graders posted a proficiency rate in the mid thirties, while eighth graders posted a rate well below that, a result that a parent may want to discuss with the school to understand the context.

When placed against other districts in Jackson County, the school’s overall proficiency index, which takes the mean of reported proficiency rates across tested subjects and grades, sits above the midpoint of the county districts. That comparative context is based on the school’s own available data and places it in the upper half of the county’s districts, though the absolute rates point to a significant share of students not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks. Because the school serves only through eighth grade, it does not have a graduation rate, and no chronic absenteeism data was available for comparison.

The parent district, Kansas City Public Schools, received full state accreditation in August 2022 after a five-year period of provisional accreditation, a publicly reported milestone that ended years of uncertainty about the district’s oversight status. The district has maintained its accredited standing since then.

The school’s location in the Kansas City 33 district means that families are part of a large urban public school system that has been through a period of governance transition. The school itself, as a PK-8 building, provides a single-campus academic pathway from early childhood through middle school, meaning students would need to transition to a different high school after eighth grade. The student body is heavily economically disadvantaged, and the academic attainment on state tests is modest in the grades where results were reported, with some grades hitting in the range of conventional proficiency and others falling below. A parent considering this school should weigh its immersion in a large urban setting, the diversity of its student population, and the fact that academic proficiency rates across grades and subjects are mixed, with some results in a range that families may want to investigate further by talking with the school about instructional supports and student progress patterns.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 332%

School 32% · District 19% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 438%

School 38% · District 18% · ▲ 21 pts above district

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

Grade 531%

School 31% · District 14% · ▲ 17 pts above district

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 632%

School 32% · District 22% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 336%

School 36% · District 20% · ▲ 16 pts above district

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

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 21% · ▲ 20 pts above district

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

Grade 633%

School 33% · District 20% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Grade 731%

School 31% · District 22% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Science

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 17% · ▲ 19 pts above district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

Grade 818%

School 18% · District 20% · ▼ 3 pts below district

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

This schoolKANSAS CITY 33, 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.