Best High Schools in Zip Code 27022

In zip code 27022, located in the Lawsonville area of Stokes County, North Carolina, there is just one high school serving the area: Stokes County Academy, a small public school in Stokes County Schools that serves grades 6 through 12 and enrolls only 59 students. Because this is the only school in the area, all attention falls on Stokes County Academy, and the picture it paints is concerning: the school consistently ranks in the bottom 3% of North Carolina high schools, receives zero stars in state accountability ratings, and dramatically underperforms both its district and the state across nearly every metric.

Stokes County Academy serves a highly vulnerable population: nearly 95% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and the school’s chronic absenteeism rate is 48.1% — more than double the state average of 24.2% and roughly 2.5 times the district rate of 19.1%. The graduation rate is just 45.7%, compared to 89.3% for Stokes County Schools and 88.8% statewide. Academic proficiency is extremely low across all subjects and grade levels; for example, in 2025–2026, only 14.3% of 7th graders were proficient in math versus 56.2% statewide, and only 16.7% of students passed Biology versus 58.5% across North Carolina. In many cases, proficiency gaps exceed 40 percentage points, and the school’s strongest recent result — 33.3% proficiency in 8th grade science — is still less than half the state rate.

The school does have a very low student-teacher ratio of 6.8-to-1 and spends $15,262 per pupil, suggesting significant resources are being directed toward these students, yet outcomes remain persistently low. There are some slight year-over-year improvements in reading, science, and Biology, but with only about 59 students spread across seven grade levels, small changes in raw numbers can create large swings in percentages. Stokes County Academy stands out as a clear outlier even within its own district, since Stokes County Schools is a middle-of-the-pack district ranked 147th out of 246 in North Carolina, while the academy sits near the very bottom of all state schools. This combination of deep poverty, extreme absenteeism, low graduation rates, and systemic academic distress points to a school in need of intensive, targeted intervention and support.