The top reported proficiency rate is 45% in Social studies. The lowest is 33% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Newton D Baker School
Newton D Baker School serves prekindergarten through eighth grade in Cleveland, a large mixed-use city on Lake Erie's southern shore that has undergone a quiet population rebound in recent years after decades of decline. The school sits on the city's southwest side in the West 159th Street corridor, in a neighborhood with modest home values and relatively stable rental costs. The enrollment is small, distributed fairly evenly across the grade bands, with a student body that is roughly evenly split between Black students and white students, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of Asian and multiracial students.
The academic picture shows proficiency that falls below the midpoint among Cuyahoga County districts on the standardized measures Ohio reports. In math for grades three through eight, about one-third of students score at proficiency or above. English language arts fares slightly better at just under two-fifths of students proficient, and science trails the other subjects. These are weak results in absolute terms, and they place the school well below county median performance. The school has only one year of recent testing data available, so trend information cannot be computed. Older data from social studies testing shows variation by grade level, with fourth-graders performing better than sixth-graders, but that is a historical snapshot and not a current picture.
Within the broader Cleveland Metropolitan School District context, the school operates under two significant changes. The district passed a substantial operating levy and bond extension in November 2024 that increased property taxes materially, a direct cost for any family buying or renting in the district. More immediately, the district board approved in December 2025 a consolidation plan that will merge 39 schools and close 18 buildings by the 2026-27 school year, reducing the district from 88 to 59 schools. Nearly one-fifth of all district students will be reassigned as a result. Whether Newton D Baker participates in those mergers or remains standalone is not specified in the available data, so a parent may want to check directly with the district about the school's status in the consolidation plan. The district also eliminated cellphones for students district-wide in the 2024-25 school year and introduced PowerSchool, an online grade book that gives parents direct access to their child's marks.
The school's enrollment profile reflects the southwest Cleveland location. Free-or-reduced-price lunch counts were not available in the data, which typically means either the data was suppressed or the school did not report it. The testing participation rate is very high, above 98 percent, indicating the school conducted the assessments with strong compliance. No information on special education identification rates, English learner populations, teacher staffing, attendance, discipline, or course offerings beyond core tested subjects appears in the available data. A parent evaluating this school may want to reach out directly to ask about program breadth, support services for students not meeting proficiency benchmarks, and the school's specific role in the district's consolidation planning.
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