The top reported proficiency rate is 52% in Science. The lowest is 26% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lea Henry C Sch
Lea Henry C School is a neighborhood elementary and middle school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in West Philadelphia. The school has a small enrollment for its grade band, drawn entirely from the immediate area. Nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is racially and ethnically diverse, with a substantial Black enrollment, a significant Asian enrollment, and smaller White and Hispanic populations.
On state assessments, the school's results are below proficiency. In English language arts (most recent data, 2024-25), proficiency among grades 3-8 stood in the low-to-middle range. In mathematics for the same grades and year, proficiency was notably lower, in the bottom quarter. Science assessment results from 2022-23 showed more than half of tested students meeting proficiency, though that data is two years old and involved a smaller tested group. Math proficiency is the clearest area where a parent may want to look into further with the school, both to understand current instructional approaches and to ask how the school is working to build numeracy skills.
The school is part of the Philadelphia City School District, which recently adopted new curriculum frameworks city-wide. Beginning in 2024-25, all district K-8 schools are teaching English language arts using the science-of-reading approach (EL Education for elementary and middle grades), and in 2023-24 the district rolled out Illustrative Mathematics for K-12. These are significant instructional changes that touch every classroom. Early data shows that reading proficiency dipped slightly after the first year of the new ELA curriculum, with a large share of students still not reading at grade level across the district. The math curriculum was only one year into implementation when the 2024-25 results reported here were collected.
Philadelphia itself is a dense, walkable city with strong neighborhood identity and excellent public transit. The Lea Henry C School address sits in West Philadelphia, an area anchored by University City and its major educational and healthcare institutions (University of Pennsylvania, Drexel, Children's Hospital). The neighborhood has a mix of rowhouses, local commercial corridors, and access to parks and transit. Housing costs in the school's ZIP code are moderate by national standards, and the area continues to see modest development activity, though growth is concentrated in Center City and University City rather than in all neighborhoods equally.
The district is undergoing a major facilities transformation. An approved master plan will close schools, co-locate programs, and modernize campuses over the coming decade. That plan directly affects school assignment zones and building conditions. State testing data for this school was not available before 2024-25, so tracking improvement or decline over time is not possible from the data provided here. The count of students with IEPs and English learners is not reported, so a parent should ask the school directly about support services and how it serves students with different learning needs.
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