Discovery Charter School

The Discovery Charter School district in Bahama, NC, is home to a single school: Discovery Charter, a combined middle and high school charter serving grades 6–12 with 453 students and a 15.4 student-teacher ratio. With only one campus, the district’s performance is exactly this school’s performance, so the insights below compare it directly against North Carolina state averages.

The school’s clearest strengths are middle school reading and 8th grade science. In 2025–2026, 8th grade science proficiency reached 78.5%, nearly 10 points above the state and up a striking 22.2 points from the prior year. Reading EOG scores in grades 6–8 all finished above state averages, led by 7th grade at 62.1% versus 56.3% statewide. Middle school math is also competitive: 6th grade (62.2%) and 8th grade (57.0%) both exceed state averages, while 7th grade math trails by only 2.8 points but improved 3.4 points year over year. Overall proficiency across all tested subjects moved from roughly 1.2 points below the state in 2024–2025 to about 0.4 points above in 2025–2026, a strong one-year gain.

Challenges remain concentrated at the high school level. English II and Biology end-of-course scores improved dramatically — up 12.7 and 12.9 points respectively — but still trail state averages by about 8 points each. Math III improved by 11.4 points yet remains 4.6 points below state, while Math I sits slightly above. The school’s 409th-place rank among 662 North Carolina high schools (2 stars) reflects this mixed picture. Chronic absenteeism affects 22.1% of students, better than the state’s 24.2% but still more than one in five. For parents, the bottom line is that Discovery Charter is a school on the rise: its middle grades, reading, and science are clear bright spots, high school results are improving quickly, and attendance is comparatively solid.