The top reported proficiency rate is 16% in Science. The lowest is 7% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Chattanooga Charter School of Excellence
Chattanooga Charter School of Excellence serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a public charter school within Hamilton County, located in the east side of Chattanooga. The school’s enrollment is predominantly Black and Hispanic, with a smaller share of white students and students of two or more races. The student body is sizable for an elementary school, and the school operates as a regular public charter, meaning it is publicly funded but independently managed under its own charter agreement.
The school’s most recent state assessment results, from Tennessee’s TNReady tests, show that the share of students scoring proficient or above was low in math, English language arts, and science. The proficiency rates across those subjects are well below what many families might expect, and a parent considering this school would want to understand the instructional strategies and supports in place to address these outcomes. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and data on chronic absenteeism and other academic indicators were not available. Free or reduced-price lunch eligibility data was also missing from the available records, so a fuller picture of the school’s economic composition is not possible from this information alone.
Chattanooga itself is a mid-sized city that has undergone a well-documented downtown revival, with a growing population, a diversified economy that includes automotive manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, and tourism, and a walkable core with cultural attractions like the Tennessee Aquarium. The city has been recognized for its riverfront redevelopment and greenway system, and it was named America’s first National Park City. The broader Hamilton County district, of which this charter school is a part, recently implemented a district-wide shift to structured literacy based on the science of reading, beginning with early grades. That change would affect how reading is taught at this school as well, though the school’s own curricular approach is not described in the available data.
The school’s charter status means it operates with some autonomy from the district, but it is still subject to state accountability standards. The comparison set that would normally place this school relative to other districts in Hamilton County was too small to yield any comparisons, so there is no external benchmark from that data to gauge how this school’s performance stacks up against peers in the county. The testing results themselves are the primary academic signal: they are low, and a family or resident would want to ask the school directly about its plans for improvement, its curriculum, and the resources it provides for students who are not yet meeting grade-level expectations.
There are no data on discipline, course access, staffing ratios, or special education and English learner populations, so those dimensions of the school experience are not part of this account. The school’s elementary-only grade span means that the academic measures available are limited to the state’s grades three through five assessments, and the outcomes there suggest that the school faces significant challenges in bringing students to proficiency. For a parent weighing this option, the low test scores are a clear signal to probe further, while the school’s location in a growing, revitalizing city offers a broader community context that may appeal to some families.
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