The top reported proficiency rate is 46% in Math. The lowest is 27% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Dublin Preparatory Academy Dba Northside Preparatory Academy
Dublin Preparatory Academy, operating under the name Northside Preparatory Academy in Cincinnati, is a tuition-free public charter serving kindergarten through eighth grade. The school enrolls about three hundred students, most of whom are Black, in a compact, diverse cohort that includes small numbers of students of Hispanic, multiracial, and white backgrounds. The school is managed by ACCEL Schools and sponsored by Richland Academy of the Arts. Its defining feature is not a particular academic program but rather its pedagogical model: the school has positioned itself around daily social-emotional learning and a relationship-based, whole-child approach rather than a standard curriculum-only offering. That framing is the central reason a family would select this school over a neighborhood Cincinnati Public option.
State testing results in math proficiency run at a level below where parents might expect. In grades three through eight, about half of students met proficiency on Ohio's math assessment, while English language arts proficiency was substantially lower, with only about a quarter of students reaching proficiency. Science results, drawn from a smaller tested cohort, showed proficiency near those ELA levels. Across tested subjects, proficiency overall placed the school in the bottom tier relative to other districts in Hamilton County. The school is one of only a handful of schools in the county's comparison set with comparable testing data; the majority of its county neighbors operate traditional public districts serving high school and therefore report graduation rates that do not apply here. The school has no graduation rate because it does not serve high school grades.
The school earned a Momentum Award from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, a state recognition for schools improving achievement while continuing to show student growth. For a charter school whose results have historically lagged Ohio statewide averages, this state-level signal of trajectory improvement is a concrete, parent-relevant marker of the direction the school is heading, distinct from any single-year test snapshot.
Data on free-or-reduced-price lunch qualification and on students with disabilities or English learners was not available, so a parent seeking to understand economic need or service capacity for students with specific requirements may want to reach directly to the school. The enrollment is stable across grades, with the largest cohort in kindergarten and enrollment holding steady through the middle grades. Housing values in the school's Cincinnati zip code sit modestly below the Ohio state median, and rents have been rising at a steady pace. Cincinnati itself is a mid-sized Midwestern city with a downtown core of growing employment, cultural life, and apartment development; neighborhoods vary sharply from highly walkable historic areas like Over-the-Rhine to more car-dependent hillside residential zones. The school sits in a part of the city where the peer environment would be heavily Black and would reflect the city's broader economic and demographic pattern.
The school's value proposition for families centers on its relational and social-emotional architecture rather than on test-score prowess or advanced academic programming. A parent drawn to that pedagogical stance and willing to engage with proficiency results that lag county norms would find alignment here; a family prioritizing academic acceleration or strong baseline proficiency would have reason to explore other options in or around Cincinnati Public Schools.
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