Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell is a PK–8 school at 3595 Bosworth Rd on Cleveland's west side, serving 235 students in the Cleveland Municipal district — the smallest of that district's PK–8 buildings in this comparison. In 2025–2026 it ranked 1,308th of 1,560 Ohio schools (16th percentile, 1 star), which is above its district's own position (689th of 773, 11th percentile, 1 star) but well below the state. Its rank history is a two-act story: a decade-long climb to a peak of 31st percentile and 2 stars in 2022–2023, followed by three consecutive years of decline.

The school's most striking feature is a sharp split between grade levels. Third-grade math proficiency was 66.7% — nearly double the district rate and slightly above the state — while seventh-grade ELA fell to 4.0%, against 34.7% for the district. Averaged across all reported tests, proficiency is roughly 25%, and the school declined on 8 of 14 tests compared with the prior year. The pattern suggests that whatever is working in the earliest grades is not carrying through to grades 7 and 8, where results have slid into single digits.

Chronic absenteeism is the other major concern at 46.4% — better than the district's 54.3%, but roughly four times the 11.9% at nearby Harrison Elementary School in Lakewood City. Class sizes are the smallest among district peers (13.8 students per teacher) and per-pupil spending ($12,159) sits at the high end, yet Garfield Elementary School — same district, similar spending, 23.3 students per teacher — ranks 41st percentile with 29.5% absenteeism. The closest neighbor, Constellation Schools: Westside Community School of the Arts, posts similar proficiency but higher absenteeism (56.0%). One caution: with 235 students spread across PK–8, individual grade results rest on very small groups, so year-to-year swings are best read as directional rather than precise.