Best High Schools in Zip Code 21217

Zip code 21217 in Baltimore is home to two high schools, Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts and Renaissance Academy, both part of the Baltimore City Public Schools district, serving grades 9 through 12 in an area where over 92% of students face significant economic hardship.

Both schools are struggling profoundly, but they show different patterns of challenge. Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts has a slightly higher graduation rate at 57.5% and a lower dropout rate of 30.0%, compared to Renaissance Academy which has a graduation rate of just 33.3% and a staggering dropout rate of 56.4%. Chronic absenteeism is a crisis at both schools, with 81.9% of students at Augusta Fells Savage and 88.0% at Renaissance Academy missing significant school time—nearly double the district average of 46.4%. Academic proficiency is extremely low across the board, with math proficiency at 0% and 1.4% respectively, and English Language Arts proficiency at 1.8% and 11.1% for the 2025-2026 school year.

A striking finding is that Renaissance Academy actually spends more per student ($38,693 vs. $30,282) and has a lower student-teacher ratio (10.7:1 vs. 13.4:1) than Augusta Fells Savage, yet it has worse outcomes across nearly every metric. This suggests that increased funding alone cannot overcome the deep challenges these schools face, including extreme poverty and a fundamental crisis of student engagement. The data shows that both schools are performing at a fraction of the already low district averages, indicating these are among the most challenged schools in the state.