Summary
Ucp Downtown Charter is a small public charter elementary school in Orlando, FL, serving 188 students in grades PK-5 within the Orange district, and it faces significant challenges despite having the highest per-student spending and lowest student-teacher ratio in the area.
Academically, Ucp Downtown Charter has consistently ranked in the bottom 1% of all Florida elementary schools for the past three years, earning a 0-star rating. Test scores are critically low, with proficiency rates in English Language Arts and Math often at 0% or in the single digits. This starkly contrasts with nearby schools like Audubon Park School and Baldwin Park Elementary, which are top performers in the 93rd and 88th percentiles, respectively. Even Engelwood Elementary, a lower-performing school, shows some proficiency, while Ucp Downtown Charter remains at the 0th percentile. For example, in the 2025-2026 school year, 4th-grade proficiency in both ELA and Math was 0%, compared to 45% and 53% at Engelwood Elementary.
The school's most pressing issue is a chronic absenteeism rate of 53.9%, which is dramatically higher than any nearby school and more than 2.5 times the district average. This rate has been consistently above 50% for the last five years, peaking at 67.9% in 2022-2023. Despite spending $21,927 per student—nearly double the spending of top-performing schools like Audubon Park School ($12,135) and Baldwin Park Elementary ($12,142)—and maintaining a low student-teacher ratio of 11:1, the school is failing to achieve academic success. This "high spend, low performance" paradox suggests that the challenges are profound and that the current model is not effectively addressing them. For comparison, Passport Charter, another small charter school, performs better (6th percentile) with a much lower absenteeism rate (22.9%) and spends less than half per student ($10,583).
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