Imagine Columbus Primary Academy

Imagine Columbus Primary Academy is a K–8 school of about 283 students in Columbus, Ohio (43229), and it is the entire Imagine Columbus Primary Academy district — a single-school district, so there are no neighboring schools in the same system to compare it with. The useful comparisons are instead against the state of Ohio, between grades and subjects inside the school, and across years. It ranks 1,513th out of 1,560 ranked Ohio schools, placing it in the bottom 3%, and it has held zero stars for three consecutive ranking cycles. Roughly 41% of its students were chronically absent in 2025‑26, and its student-teacher ratio is 20.2 to 1.

Academically, the school trails the state on all 28 available grade-and-subject comparisons across two years, by an average of about 44 percentage points. Its strongest results sit in 7th grade: ELA at 33.3% proficient against a state rate of 62.7%, and Math at 25% against 48.6% — the narrowest gap anywhere in the data. Third grade ELA has been steady near 27% across two years. Weak spots cluster at the top of the school: 8th grade Science posted 0% in both years (state: 61.2%), 8th grade Math 0%, and 6th grade Math 3.8%. Fourth grade ELA fell from 30.4% to 15.0%, the largest single-year decline in the file.

Math is the weakest subject overall, averaging about 12.0% versus 22.7% in ELA and 8.4% in Science. The school did gain ground year over year — about 0.8 points — but the state gained roughly as much (0.9 points), so the gap is not closing. Grade-level results swing sharply from one year to the next, which likely reflects students arriving and leaving rather than instruction alone, so one year's figure should not be read as a verdict on a grade. Two gaps limit interpretation: free/reduced-price lunch status is not reported, and per-student spending of $7,252 dates back to 2018‑19.