Murray-Massenburg Elementary

Murray-Massenburg Elementary is a public school in Durham, NC, serving about 517 students in grades PK-5 within Durham Public Schools. The school serves a high-poverty community: 99.4% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Overall, its 2025-2026 state rank of 1,151 out of 1,492 North Carolina elementary schools (23rd percentile) is below the Durham Public Schools average, and it carries a 1-star rating.

In nearly every tested subject and grade, proficiency rates at Murray-Massenburg fall below both district and state averages. The widest gap is in 4th-grade math, where 36.3% of students are proficient compared with 53.0% across Durham Public Schools and 61.4% statewide. A notable exception is 5th-grade science, where 63.8% of students are proficient — slightly above the district average. Poverty alone does not explain these results. Nearby schools like Morehead Montessori, Southwest Elementary, and Pearsontown Elementary serve nearly the same share of low-income students (roughly 97-99%), yet they rank at the 74th to 79th percentile statewide — far above Murray-Massenburg's 23rd percentile.

Results at Murray-Massenburg Elementary also swing sharply from year to year and across different groups of students. One year a class can jump 15-20 percentage points and the next year slide just as far, so it helps to look at trends rather than a single snapshot. The school earns mid-range results for its gifted and special-education students, but its English learner and low-income students are performing near the very bottom statewide — a clear sign that support is uneven. Attendance is a relative strength: chronic absenteeism is 27.9%, better than the district's 36.1% and much better than at nearby C C Spaulding Elementary (45.8%) or Fayetteville Street Elementary (52.9%). In short, Murray-Massenburg is below average on most measures, but not uniformly so — its greatest challenge is making sure every group of students gets the support it needs.