Commonwealth High School

There is one school in the Commonwealth High School district: Commonwealth High, a high school in Charlotte, NC, serving grades 9–12 with 377 students. This school stands out for the severe depth of the challenges it faces, consistently ranking in the bottom 5% of North Carolina high schools. With a 0-star SchoolDigger rating and a state rank of 627 out of 662 high schools (5th percentile), it ranks near the very bottom on almost every metric. Its graduation rate is just 23.3% compared to the state average of 88.8%, and an alarming 87.7% of students are chronically absent versus about 24% statewide. Academic proficiency is far below state averages in every subject: only 8.5% are proficient in Biology, 29.6% in English II, 21.1% in Math I, and 35.7% in Math III, while state averages range from 42% to 69%.

Chronic absenteeism likely drives many of these low outcomes—when nearly nine in ten students are chronically absent, instruction has little chance to take hold. The school’s student-teacher ratio is also very high at 32.2 students per teacher, meaning individualized attention is extremely limited. However, there are slight signs of year-over-year improvement. Compared to the prior reported year, proficiency rose in Biology (5.1% to 8.5%), English II (25.8% to 29.6%), and Math III (16.7% to 35.7%), a notable gain of 19 percentage points in Math III. The school’s state percentile also improved from the 2nd to the 5th percentile, though this was largely because more schools were included in the rankings rather than a major change in its actual rank.

For parents, the picture is clear: Commonwealth High is in urgent need of intervention. The combination of a 23.3% graduation rate, 87.7% chronic absenteeism, and proficiency gaps of 30 to 50 percentage points below state averages suggests a schoolwide engagement and instructional crisis that goes beyond any single subject. Free/reduced lunch data was not reported, so the full extent of student poverty cannot be assessed, but the available indicators all point to a school where re-engaging students must be the first priority before academic proficiency and graduation outcomes can meaningfully improve.