Reedy Creek Elementary

Reedy Creek Elementary is a large public school in Charlotte, NC, serving roughly 850 students in grades PK–5 within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district, and sits in a community where nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Statewide, Reedy Creek ranks in the 45th percentile (#816 out of 1,492 North Carolina elementary schools) in 2025–26, placing it below the district average but notably ahead of most nearby CMS elementary schools that serve similarly high-poverty populations. For context, only Dorothy J Vaughan Academy at Parkside ranks higher among its immediate cluster; schools like Devonshire Elementary, Grove Park Elementary School, Hickory Grove Elementary, J. H. Gunn Elementary, and Joseph W Grier Academy all fall well below Reedy Creek in state rankings despite comparable poverty rates.

One of Reedy Creek’s biggest bright spots is its performance with African American students, who rank in the 83rd–84th percentile statewide and earn a 4-star rating — an especially meaningful result given the school’s near-universal economic disadvantage. Reedy Creek also stands out for better-than-typical attendance: its 2024–25 chronic absenteeism rate of 22.4% is below both the CMS district rate (26.8%) and the state rate (24.2%), and far better than neighbors like Devonshire Elementary at 41.2% or Joseph W Grier Academy at 37.2%. The school has also steadily improved its student-to-teacher ratio from 18.7 in 2022–23 to 15.3 in 2024–25, a favorable figure among its peer group. Meanwhile, Reedy Creek outperforms several nearby high-poverty schools on 3rd-grade reading — 53% proficient versus 26.4% at Devonshire and 45.5% at Grove Park — even if it trails the 72.9% posted by Dorothy J Vaughan Academy at Parkside.

Reading remains the clearest area for improvement, with Reedy Creek’s 4th-grade reading proficiency (50.0%) sitting roughly 9 points below the CMS average and 8 points below the state, and other reading scores also lagging district and state averages. The school also shows uneven results for high-need subgroups: English Language Learner students sit near the 22nd percentile (down sharply from prior years), and Special Education students have recovered from a catastrophic 6th percentile to the 41st percentile. On a positive trajectory, Reedy Creek has climbed from the 25th percentile in 2020–21 to the 45th percentile in 2025–26, with notable year-over-year gains in 3rd-grade reading (jumping from 39.4% to 53.0%) and 4th-grade math (from 51.3% to 62.9%). Though a high-poverty school like nearby Hickory Ridge Elementary in Cabarrus County Schools posts far higher scores with far more advantaged demographics, Reedy Creek’s ability to beat most of its own geographic peers — and its steady upward momentum — makes it a solid community school that is clearly rebuilding from the pandemic-era dip.