The top reported proficiency rate is 9% in Science. The lowest is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Rowland Academy
Rowland Academy serves grades six through eight in Harrisburg, a mid-sized city anchored by state government and downtown civic institutions. The school sits within the Harrisburg City School District, which in June 2025 became the first school district in Pennsylvania to exit state receivership, returning governance to the elected school board after years under state control. That transition marks a structural shift, though the district enters a five-year monitoring phase with state advisory presence, shaping decisions about schools, programs, and budgets.
The immediate context for Rowland is a district-wide reconfiguration approved in 2024 that has fundamentally reshaped middle-grade schooling. All middle schoolers in the district were routed to two schools: Camp Curtin Academy or Marshall Math Science Academy. Rowland itself entered a three-year phase-out beginning in 2024-25. In 2026, the district board moved toward closing Rowland and Marshall Academy, with Camp Curtin projected to absorb the shift. For families with middle-schoolers, this means that Rowland is a transitional school in a reconfiguring system, and enrollment is declining as the phase-out proceeds.
Rowland's enrollment sits at just under six hundred students across three grades, with the school serving a student population that is almost entirely eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. Racially and ethnically, the school is majority Hispanic, with substantial Black enrollment and smaller shares of Asian, multiracial, and white students. Data on special education identification and English learner status was not available in the records reviewed.
Academic performance is a critical concern. On the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment in 2024-25, the school's students showed proficiency rates of zero percent in mathematics, 3.7 percent in English language arts, and 8.6 percent in science (as of the prior year). These proficiency rates place Rowland in the bottom quartile on an overall proficiency index when compared to other districts in Dauphin County. The district has launched a corrective reading program at elementary grades and is adding post-secondary preparation initiatives at the high school in response to persistent academic gaps across the system; such curricular efforts are the main strategies available to address student outcomes.
Harrisburg itself is a walkable downtown city with state government as the primary employer, a diversified economy including health care and growing technology sectors, and public amenities including Riverfront Park and an active arts district. Housing in the zip code is moderately priced relative to the state benchmark and notably below the national median, with rental costs also well below national levels. The area is a seller's market with recent population inflow, though the city has launched an affordable housing development fund. School property taxes increased for the first time in years with the 2025-26 budget, raising the mill rate after the end of pandemic federal aid and reflecting recovery plan requirements; families should anticipate continuing annual school tax pressure.
Rowland Academy is a regular public school in a district undergoing governance transition and structural reconfiguration. The combination of very low proficiency results, a declining enrollment due to the phase-out plan, and the district's simultaneous exit from receivership and reorganization of middle-grade schooling means that families considering this school should understand it as a building in transition within a system navigating significant change. A parent may want to look into the timeline of the phase-out and where middle-grade students will be reassigned, and to discuss directly with the district what academic supports and programming Rowland continues to offer during its final years of operation.
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