Summary
Penn (William) High School is a public high school located in New Castle, Delaware, serving 2,077 students in grades 9-12. The school is part of the Colonial School District, which is ranked 26 out of 32 districts in the state and has a 1-star rating from SchoolDigger.
Penn (William) High School consistently ranks in the bottom third of Delaware high schools, with its academic performance, as measured by standardized test scores, significantly below the state averages. For example, in the 2024-2025 school year, only 33.05% of 11th-grade students were proficient or better in SAT/English Language Arts, compared to the state average of 47.41%. The school's performance is particularly low in mathematics, with only 7.34% of 11th-grade students proficient or better in SAT/Mathematics, compared to the state average of 18.4%. The school's four-year graduation rate has ranged from 83.3% to 88.9%, slightly below the state average, and its dropout rate has fluctuated between 2.5% and 6.4%, which is higher than the state's average.
Compared to nearby schools, such as Great Oaks Charter School, Howard High School of Technology, and Calloway (Cab) School of the Arts, Penn (William) High School generally underperforms in academic metrics, graduation rates, and subgroup performance. For example, Calloway (Cab) School of the Arts, a public magnet school, ranks among the top 5 high schools in Delaware and significantly outperforms Penn (William) High School across various academic measures. The school's high rates of chronic absenteeism, ranging from 20.4% to 40.4% in recent years, may be linked to the socioeconomic challenges faced by its student population, which is relatively high in proportion of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
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