Riverside Leadership Academy

Riverside Leadership Academy is a K-7 school in New Bern, NC, serving 374 students as its own single-school district rather than belonging to Craven County Schools or Jones County Schools like the schools around it. Overall, the school ranks in the 34th percentile statewide with a 2-star rating, putting it in the lower-middle tier of North Carolina elementary schools. Among nearby options, only J.T. Barber Elementary and Oaks Road Academy rank lower, while schools like Creekside Elementary and Albert H Bangert Elementary post much stronger results.

The biggest concern for parents is chronic absenteeism: 26.4% of Riverside students miss enough school to be considered chronically absent, the highest rate among all nearby schools and well above the state average of 24.2%. This is especially striking because nearby schools with very high poverty rates, such as Albert H Bangert Elementary (where nearly 99% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch), still keep chronic absenteeism below 10% while ranking far higher academically. Riverside's 4th-grade math proficiency is also a serious outlier at just 29.2%, compared with a 61.4% state average, and it trails every other school in the local comparison group. In contrast to the school's overall ranking, middle-grade reading is a genuine strength: 7th-grade reading proficiency is 68.0%, nearly 12 points above the state average, and 6th-grade reading also exceeds the statewide figure.

There are other positive signs worth noting. Fifth-grade science jumped from 22.9% proficiency in 2024-25 to 76.1% in 2025-26, landing above the state average — a dramatic improvement that may reflect successful interventions or simply a different group of students. Another notable pattern is that male students at Riverside rank at the 53rd percentile statewide, while female students rank at just the 17th percentile, suggesting outcomes are not yet equitable across all groups. For parents, the bottom line is that Riverside shows real strengths in upper-grade literacy, but the school's most urgent priorities should be improving early-grade math, tackling chronic absenteeism, and closing the gaps among student subgroups. Nearby schools in the same area are demonstrating that strong attendance and academic success are achievable regardless of poverty levels.