Prince Chapman Academy

Prince Chapman Academy is a public elementary school at 4808 E Paulding Rd in Fort Wayne, Indiana, serving grades 3–6 with 819 students — the largest enrollment of any school in its comparison group — as part of East Allen County Schools, in a high-poverty section of the city's east and southeast side where 83.76% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Academically, the school ranks 946th of 1,015 Indiana elementary schools in 2025-26 — the 7th percentile, with 0 stars — and it has stayed between the 7th and 17th percentile for a decade. Its 2025-26 ILEARN results are the lowest or near-lowest among nearby schools with comparable data: ELA 12.56%, Math 17.41%, Science 9.59%, and 5th-grade Social Studies 8.15%, last in the peer group. Those figures land at roughly 31–50% of the district rate and 24–43% of the state rate. For comparison, John S Irwin Elementary School, about 2.5 miles away, posts ELA 45.83% and Math 40.97%, while Timothy L Johnson Academy, 1.66 miles away, serves a nearly identical poverty level (82.73%) and produces nearly identical results (ELA 15.63%, Math 17.86%).

Attendance is the school's clearest strength: 15.2% of students were chronically absent in 2024-25, better than both its district (18.7%) and the state (16.7%), and down from 28.9% five years earlier — a 47% relative reduction achieved while the district's own absenteeism worsened. That success has not yet shown up in learning. Its PK–2 feeder, Southwick Elementary School, has the highest absenteeism in the group at 22.5%, and Prince Chapman's 3rd graders already arrive at 15.72% ELA proficiency versus 38.88% for the district, suggesting much of the gap is inherited before grade 3. Per-student spending is $11,812, second-lowest in the set and up 18.6% in four years.