The top reported proficiency rate is 22% in English language arts. The lowest is 3% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on North Columbus Preparatory Academy
North Columbus Preparatory Academy is a charter school serving kindergarten through eighth grade in Columbus, located on Gladstone Avenue on the city's near north side. It is a small school with a student body that is overwhelmingly African American, drawing from a neighborhood that sits in a mixed-use part of the city with dense residential blocks and lower housing costs relative to the state benchmark.
The school's recent state test results show substantial academic strain. In English language arts, roughly one in five students in grades three through eight scored at proficiency on Ohio's state assessment. In math, the proficiency rate was far lower, under five percent. Science results fell between those two, around one in seven students. These results place the school in the bottom quartile for proficiency across the county's districts. There is no graduation rate to report, as the school does not serve high school grades. Chronic absenteeism and other school environment data were not available.
The enrollment is small, under a hundred and fifty students spread across nine grades, with kindergarten and fourth grade the largest cohorts and eighth grade the smallest. Free-or-reduced-price lunch participation, special education rates, and English learner rates were not reported in the data, making it difficult to assess whether the school serves a higher proportion of students with additional academic needs. The student body is more than ninety percent Black, with single-digit representations of Asian, Hispanic, White, and multiracial students, and one American Indian student.
The school does not offer visible program information in the available data, so a parent may want to ask directly about curriculum, pedagogy, special supports, and any distinctive pathways the school emphasizes. The charter operator is listed as ACCEL Schools, and the school's sponsor is St. Aloysius Orphanage. No significant recent district-level changes were found in the data.
Columbus itself is a growing city with a diversified economic base anchored by major employers in healthcare, finance, insurance, education, and public sector work. The metro is one of the fastest-growing in the U.S., with housing development concentrated in several submarkets, though the zip code where North Columbus Preparatory Academy sits is valued below both the state and national benchmarks. Rental costs in the area have risen modestly year-over-year. The broader Columbus region is adding residents and job growth steadily, supported by major initiatives including a planned semiconductor facility. Public transit through COTA serves the city, though coverage and frequency vary by neighborhood.
A parent considering this school should focus on understanding the academic support structures in place, what instruction looks like in classrooms, how the school approaches the weak test performance, and what recovery or intervention strategies are underway. The location is accessible by car and public transit, and the school size allows for closer student-staff relationships than a larger institution would offer. But the performance data show that students at this school are not meeting grade-level standards in core subjects at rates consistent with peers in the county, and that gap warrants direct conversation with school leadership about how they are working to close it.
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