Central Wake High School

Central Wake High School is a small charter high school in southeast Raleigh, North Carolina, serving 293 students in grades 9–12 under the single-school Central Wake Charter High School district. The school ranks 626th out of 662 North Carolina high schools — roughly the 5th percentile — and earns zero stars on SchoolDigger. That places it among the lowest-performing high schools in the state, which is especially striking because nearby public schools are generally strong: Needham Broughton High, Enloe High, Wake Early College of Health and Science, and Vernon Malone College and Career Academy all rank in the 71st–97th percentile statewide.

Perhaps the most striking metric is the graduation rate: just 23.0% in 2025–2026, compared with the state rate of 88.8%. Even nearby high-poverty schools such as Southeast Raleigh High (80.9%) and Phillips High (72.4%) graduate a much higher share of their students. Chronic absenteeism is also severe, at roughly 85–89%, more than triple the state average of about 24%. End-of-course proficiency rates are far below state averages — Biology is 5.1% versus 58.5% statewide, and Math I is 13.3% versus 42.1%. The student-to-teacher ratio of 37.4:1 is more than double the ratio reported at most nearby schools, including Needham Broughton High and Enloe High.

There are small signs of progress: the graduation rate has more than doubled from 8.7% in 2021–2022, and subgroup rankings for African American and low-income students have moved upward, though they remain critically low. Still, when the majority of students are chronically absent, meaningful academic improvement is extremely difficult. Central Wake High School remains firmly in the bottom 5% of North Carolina high schools, and a real path forward will likely require focusing on attendance and student support before academic outcomes can improve.