Social Justice PCS

Social Justice PCS is a single public charter middle school in Washington, DC, serving grades 5–8 with just 97 students. The school also operates as its own local education agency, meaning the district data mirrors the school’s own results, and the current LEA/district rank for Social Justice PCS is 38 out of 46 DC districts, placing it at the 17th percentile with a 1-star rating. Over the past three years, Social Justice PCS has seen notable swings in its standing: it ranked 41st out of 70 schools in 2023-24 (2 stars), improved to 27th out of 69 schools in 2024-25 (3 stars), then fell sharply to 53rd out of 67 schools in 2025-26 (1 star). That dramatic one-year decline moved the school from above-median performance to well below the middle of the pack.

Academically, the biggest concern is mathematics. In 2025-26, only 4.6% of students at Social Justice PCS were proficient in math, compared to the DC state average of 28.2% — a gap of nearly 24 percentage points. Grade-level results are even starker, with 6th-grade math at 3.8% proficiency and 7th-grade math at 3.5%, both far below state averages above 27%. English Language Arts is less severe but still lagging: 28.9% proficiency versus the state’s 39.6%. From 2024-25 to 2025-26, math proficiency dropped from 14.4% to 4.6%, and ELA fell from 35.2% to 28.9%. Because enrollment is only 97 students, these percentages can shift with just a handful of students, but the current low performance is unmistakable.

Spending and class size make the outcomes especially noteworthy. Social Justice PCS spends $35,598 per student and maintains a very low student-teacher ratio of 6.2 to 1, meaning small classes and substantial per-pupil investment. Yet those resources are not translating into strong academic results, particularly in math. The school also does not report free/reduced-price lunch data, which limits context on its student demographics. Overall, Social Justice PCS is a small school with high spending and small classes, but its dramatic drop in 2025-26 and critically low math proficiency suggest a need for targeted intervention and a closer look at what changed over the past year.