Summary:
Zip code 20004 in Washington, DC, is home to just one elementary school, School-Within-School at Goding, which serves grades PK–5 and stands out as one of the highest-performing elementary schools in the city.
For parents exploring this area, the single school option is a remarkable one. School-Within-School at Goding has earned a 5-star rating for two consecutive years and currently ranks 8th out of 124 elementary schools in DC, placing it in the 94th percentile. Its proficiency rates are far above the averages for District of Columbia Public Schools and the state: 76.3% of students are proficient in English Language Arts and 76.4% in math, compared to district rates of 44.1% and 33.3%, respectively. The school’s math performance is especially notable—nearly 43 percentage points above the district average. In science, 5th graders hit 50% proficiency, more than double the district and state averages. The strongest grade level is 4th grade, where both ELA and math proficiency reach 86.6%, while 3rd grade ELA is the lowest reported at 67.4%.
This high achievement is supported by strong resources: a student-teacher ratio of 10.8 and per-student spending of $27,522. Performance has also been stable year over year, with all-grades proficiency in ELA and math barely changing between 2024–2025 and 2025–2026. The “School-Within-School” name suggests a specialized or unique program, and the consistent, top-tier results point to a focused instructional model. One important caveat is that free/reduced lunch data is not reported, so it is not possible to analyze the school’s performance across income groups. Even so, for a zip code with a single elementary option, families can take confidence in a school that consistently outperforms its district and state by wide margins across every subject tested.
Thank you for your feedback!