Summary:
This analysis covers one school, KIPP Durham College Preparatory, a K–8 school in Durham, NC, serving 380 students with nearly all students (99.21%) qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The school reports as its own district, also named KIPP Durham College Preparatory, and is ranked in the bottom 6 percent of North Carolina schools in the most recent SchoolDigger rankings.
KIPP Durham College Preparatory faces significant challenges. Chronic absenteeism is 51.3% — more than double the state rate of 24.2%. Reading proficiency trails the state average in every tested grade, with the largest gap in 3rd grade where just 21.1% of students are proficient versus 55.6% statewide. Math is more mixed: 7th-grade Math proficiency (66.1%) beats the state average (56.2%), while 4th-grade Math (28.9%) trails the state (61.4%) by more than 32 points. The school's overall state ranking has been improving, though, moving from a 0th percentile rank in 2020–21 to the 6th percentile in 2025–26.
There are notable bright spots worth celebrating. 7th-grade Math jumped by over 33 points from 2024–25 to 2025–26, and 8th-grade Science improved by 21 points. The school also made gains in 3rd-grade Math (+18.3 points) and 8th-grade Math (+15.9 points). However, 6th grade declined sharply in both Math and Reading. Given the nearly universal poverty concentration and high absenteeism, the school faces steep external challenges, but it is showing real momentum. The most urgent priorities should be reducing chronic absenteeism, strengthening early-grade literacy where fewer than 25% of 3rd and 4th graders are proficient, and replicating the strategies that produced strong 7th-grade Math and 8th-grade Science results across other grade levels. The school's trajectory is upward even as it remains in the bottom tier of North Carolina schools.
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