Summary:
There is just one school in zip code 38132: Southern Avenue Charter School Of Academic Excellence Creati, an elementary school serving grades K–5 with 302 students in Memphis, Tennessee. Because there are no other schools in the area for comparison, this overview focuses on how the school stacks up against its district, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and the state of Tennessee.
The school has never earned more than 1 star from SchoolDigger, and its state ranking has fluctuated: it ranked in the 15th percentile in 2025–2026, up from the 14th percentile the year before, after a brief jump to the 28th percentile in 2024–2025. Math proficiency is a major concern, falling sharply from 33.8% in 3rd grade to just 12.8% in 5th grade—far below the state average of 47.4%. English language arts shows the opposite trend, with 5th-grade ELA proficiency at 31.9%, actually above the district's 27.8% but still below the state's 42.7%. Science is the school’s strongest subject relative to its district, with 30.1% proficiency versus the district's 28.4%, but that is still well below the state's 46.9%. Overall, the school is within a few points of its district average in most subjects but trails state averages by roughly 17–20 percentage points.
A dramatic 14.4-point drop in all-grades ELA proficiency between 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 (from 36.8% to 22.4%) deserves close attention, as does the school’s severe chronic absenteeism rate of 38.5%—more than double the state’s 18.3% and 8.3 points higher than the district’s 30.2%. Per-pupil spending is a very high $29,135, which makes the low proficiency rates and high absenteeism especially troubling. While the school is part of a district ranked 137th out of 141 in Tennessee, it still manages to beat district averages in math and science, offering a few bright spots—particularly 3rd-grade math, 5th-grade ELA, and science—amid significant academic and attendance challenges.
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