Eastway Middle

Eastway Middle is a grades 6–8 public school in Charlotte, NC, serving 849 students as part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and it has consistently ranked in the bottom 12th percentile of North Carolina middle schools. More than 99% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and chronic absenteeism is very high at 44.1% — well above the district rate of 26.8% and state rate of 24.2%. Eastway is not, however, the lowest-performing school in its immediate cluster: it beats Martin Luther King Junior Middle, which has similar poverty and even higher absenteeism, on nearly every 2025–2026 test, including 7th grade math (48.2% vs. 17.6%).

Proficiency rates at Eastway generally run 15–30 points below district and state averages across subjects and grades. In 8th grade, reading proficiency is just 26.3% against a state average of 56.1%. The clear exception is math, which has improved meaningfully: 7th grade math rose from 24.8% proficiency in 2022–2023 to 48.2% in 2025–2026, competitive with nearby Northeast Middle (41.9%). Reading remains the school's biggest academic weakness, with little sustained improvement. The most telling comparison is to First Ward Creative Arts Academy, which has virtually identical poverty yet ranks in the 91st percentile statewide and achieves reading proficiency near 80% — proof that similar demographics can yield dramatically better outcomes.

Eastway's own data shows real pockets of strength. African American students rank in the 59th percentile statewide (up from the 37th), gifted students in the 89th, and low-income students have climbed from the 14th to the 40th percentile. But Hispanic students rank in the 6th percentile and special education students in the 14th, and chronic absenteeism has remained stubbornly high for five straight years. McClintock Middle serves a similarly high-poverty population yet outperforms Eastway by 15–25 points in most subjects, showing that poverty alone does not determine results. Reducing absenteeism and building on math momentum while targeting reading and the lowest-performing subgroups are the clearest paths forward for Eastway.