The top reported proficiency rate is 15% in English language arts. The lowest is 7% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Compass Community School Midtown Campus
Compass Community School Midtown Campus is a charter high school in Memphis, serving grades nine through twelve. It sits within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the city’s large public district. The school’s location on North McLean Boulevard places it in the Midtown area, where Overton Park, the Memphis Zoo, and Rhodes College are nearby. This is a dense urban setting with access to civic and cultural anchors such as Beale Street, the National Civil Rights Museum, the FedExForum, and the Mississippi Riverfront. The city’s public library system and bus network operated by the Memphis Area Transit Authority serve residents across the area.
The school enrolls several hundred students, a modest size for a high school in an urban district. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a substantial proportion of Black students and much smaller shares of white students and students of two or more races. Federal lunch eligibility data was not available, so the share of households at or near the poverty line within the school is unknown from this report. Similarly, counts of students with disabilities and English learners were not provided; those are important dimensions a parent may want to ask the school about directly.
State testing data comes from the 2020-21 school year, which was disrupted by the pandemic, and only one year of results is available. The assessment used was TNReady, and the school’s participation rate was high, meaning nearly all students took the tests. In English language arts, roughly one in seven students scored at the proficient level or above. In math, the proficiency rate was suppressed by the state, meaning it did not meet the threshold for public reporting. In science and social studies, proficiency was in the single digits. Across all tested subjects and grades, the school’s overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile among the districts in Shelby County. These are low attainment numbers, and a parent considering Compass Community School Midtown Campus will want to understand what academic supports and interventions the school offers, how it approaches instruction, and what progress it has seen since that testing year.
The school is a charter school, which means it operates independently of the district in some aspects but remains publicly funded and tuition-free. Charter status can come with a distinct academic model, staffing flexibility, or a specific mission, though no program details or curricular focus were reported in the data available for this narrative. No information was provided on Advanced Placement courses, dual enrollment, career and technical education, or special programs. A parent would need to reach out to the school to learn what postsecondary pathways it emphasizes.
Graduation rate and chronic absenteeism data were not available for this school, so those standard measures of high school performance are absent from this picture. That gap often reflects the nature of a small charter school that may not have been included in state accountability reports for that year, but a parent should confirm with the school whether a four-year graduation rate is tracked and what it has been historically.
The housing market in the school’s ZIP code shows home values and rents that are lower than the state and national medians, with both declining modestly year over year. The estimated monthly mortgage and rent are below national averages, and the cost of renting relative to household income sits at a level many families can manage. This suggests that the immediate neighborhood around the school is more affordable than much of the Memphis region, though a parent should consider commute patterns from their own part of the city.
We looked for recent district-level developments such as the Reimagining 901 plan involving school closures and a property tax referendum that was publicly reported, but the search did not yield usable summary results. A parent may want to follow local news for updates on how those changes affect this school.
Compass Community School Midtown Campus presents as a small urban charter high school serving a predominantly Hispanic and Black student body in a culturally rich and affordable part of Memphis. The academic proficiency numbers from the most recent available testing year are low, and key outcome metrics are missing. The school’s charter status may offer a distinctive approach, but without program information, a parent’s next step is to visit, ask about academic supports and graduation pathways, and examine whether the school’s trajectory matches their child’s needs.
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