William B Travis World Language Academy, Grand Prairie TX

Original Research by School Decision on William B Travis World Language Academy

William B. Travis World Language Academy sits on the northeast side of Grand Prairie, a mid-sized city woven into the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex whose population is notably diverse and substantially foreign-born. Resident employment in the area clusters around health care, manufacturing, and retail, and the city draws industries across aerospace, logistics, and technology. The school is part of Grand Prairie ISD, a regular public charter school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

The defining feature of Travis is its world language identity. The name signals a dual-language or multilingual instructional focus, and the demographic picture is consistent with that mission: the student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic, and the vast majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, meaning the school serves a high-need, largely Spanish-speaking community. Specific English learner counts were not reported in the data provided, so a fuller picture of how those students are distributed and supported is worth asking the school directly.

On the Texas STAAR assessments, the results are uneven and, in some grades, quite low. The school uses the Spanish-language STAAR in third and fifth grade for math, and English-language STAAR elsewhere. In the third-grade math Spanish assessment, none of the small tested group reached proficiency. Fifth-grade math on the Spanish version was similarly low. Fourth and eighth grade math on the English version were stronger, with roughly half of tested students reaching proficiency, which is a more encouraging result for those cohorts. In ELA, fourth grade stood out with nearly two-thirds of students proficient; the middle school grades ranged from the mid-thirties to the mid-forties in ELA proficiency. Science results in fifth and eighth grade were in the low thirties. Social studies at eighth grade was particularly low, with only about one in seven students reaching proficiency. Across all tested subjects and grades, the school's overall proficiency index places it below the midpoint among districts in Dallas County.

A few things complicate a straight reading of these numbers. The school has only one year of available trend data, so there is no trajectory to evaluate. Some of the tested groups in specific grades are small enough that a handful of students' results can shift the rate substantially. The gap between Spanish-administered and English-administered results in the same subject and adjacent grades is also something a parent would want to raise with the school, particularly around how students transition between instructional languages.

Housing near the school is priced below the Texas state benchmark and well below national medians, making the neighborhood accessible to families across a range of incomes. Rents have held relatively flat year over year, and the price-to-income ratio sits at a moderate level compared to national norms. The area is part of the broader DFW housing market, which has seen modest softening.

No program-specific information was provided in the data, so the structure of the world language curriculum, the specific languages offered beyond Spanish, and any pathway details for the middle grades are gaps a visiting parent should fill directly with the school. Grand Prairie ISD's strategic priorities were searched but could not be confirmed before the research budget ran out, so district-level context is thin here.

Travis makes the most sense for families who specifically want a language-immersive public school environment and whose children are entering early grades in a Spanish-bilingual setting. The academic results, particularly in the middle grades and in science and social studies, are areas to ask the school about in concrete terms: what supports exist for students who are not yet reaching grade-level proficiency, and how does the language transition structure affect tested outcomes.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 30%

School 0% · District 38% · ▼ 38 pts below district

▼ 40 pts below state median · ▼ 35 pts below county median

Grade 448%

School 48% · District 39% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 42% · ▼ 42 pts below district

▼ 41 pts below state median · ▼ 38 pts below county median

Grade 612%

School 12% · District 27% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 22 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 722%

School 22% · District 25% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Grade 851%

School 51% · District 34% · ▲ 17 pts above district

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▲ 14 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 310%

School 10% · District 45% · ▼ 35 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median · ▼ 27 pts below county median

Grade 463%

School 63% · District 45% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 17 pts above county median

Grade 543%

School 43% · District 40% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Grade 644%

School 44% · District 46% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 737%

School 37% · District 42% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

Grade 835%

School 35% · District 38% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Science

Grade 530%

School 30% · District 12% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 832%

School 32% · District 37% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 815%

School 15% · District 21% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

This schoolGRAND PRAIRIE ISD, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 6Lower-income44%Higher-income40%4 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income0%Higher-income43%43 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income49%Higher-income40%9 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income13%Higher-income0%13 pp gap