Summary:
The Por Vida Academy district in Texas consists of two small high schools—Por Vida Academy Charter High School in San Antonio and Por Vida Academy Corpus Christi—serving a total of 175 students and earning a low 1-star state rating, placing it in the bottom 15% of Texas districts.
The standout school is clearly Corpus Christi, which significantly outperforms its San Antonio counterpart across nearly every measure. In the 2024-2025 school year, Corpus Christi achieved a 73.68% proficiency rate in English II Reading—nearly four times higher than San Antonio’s 18.92%—and posted a 66.67% Biology proficiency rate versus San Antonio’s 26.67%. Corpus Christi also earned a 3-star rating (61st percentile) compared to San Antonio’s 0-star rating (6th percentile). While Corpus Christi’s ranking dropped to the 32nd percentile in 2025-2026, it remains far ahead of San Antonio’s 12th percentile. The graduation rate gap is stark: 69.0% at Corpus Christi versus 46.4% at San Antonio, with dropout rates of 5.9% and 11.8%, respectively.
A critical red flag is the district’s exceptionally high spending—$40,927 per student in San Antonio and $30,586 in Corpus Christi, more than double the national average—yet academic outcomes remain poor, especially in math. In 2025-2026, 0% of San Antonio students were proficient in Algebra I, while Corpus Christi reached only 40%, both well below the state average of 54%. However, Corpus Christi’s lower student-teacher ratio (11.7:1 versus 17.5:1) and stronger performance in U.S. History (71.43% proficient, above the state average) suggest it could serve as a model for improving the struggling San Antonio campus. The district’s inconsistent performance and the massive gap between its two schools indicate that local leadership and campus-level practices, not district policies, are the key drivers of student success.
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