Schools in Charlotte
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is the district serving most of the city, and while a clean, sourced district-wide NC accountability letter grade for 2024-25/2025-26 was not found from a primary NC DPI source this session -- a real gap, disclosed rather than papered over -- what is sourced is real, positive momentum: 83.4% of CMS schools (146 of 175 assessed) met or exceeded academic growth goals in 2024-25, the highest share in the district's history, alongside several individually top-ranked campuses.
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Learn moreA Real, Disclosed Gap: No Confirmed District-Wide Letter Grade This Session
Unlike Houston ISD's clean, sourced 2026 Texas Education Agency "B" district grade documented in this project's Houston stack, a specific CMS district-wide North Carolina School Performance Grade letter for 2024-25 or 2025-26 was not confirmed from a primary NC DPI or NC School Report Cards source this session, despite searching directly for it. This is disclosed honestly as a research gap rather than filled with an invented letter grade -- readers should check the NC DPI Accountability Data Sets and Reports or ncreports.ondemand.sas.com directly for the current district and campus-level grades before relying on this page for a school-quality decision.
What Is Sourced: Real, Record Academic Growth in 2024-25
What is confirmed, per NC DPI's September 2025 data release and CMS's own reporting, is genuinely positive: 83.4% of CMS schools (146 of 175 assessed campuses) met or exceeded state academic growth goals in the 2024-25 school year -- described as more CMS schools meeting or exceeding growth than at any point in the district's history. This growth measure is different from (and doesn't substitute for) an overall school performance letter grade, but it is a real, sourced, positive trend worth weighing on its own terms.
Individually Top-Ranked Campuses
Niche's 2026 rankings named Ardrey Kell High School (Ballantyne, part of CMS) the #12 best public high school in North Carolina with an A+ Niche grade. Community House Middle (also Ballantyne) and Providence High (southeast Charlotte) were separately described as consistently top-rated within CMS by GreatSchools-based reporting. Note that Marvin Ridge High School, cited in the same research pass as the #1-ranked public high school in the broader Charlotte area for 2026, is located in Waxhaw and is part of Union County Public Schools, not CMS -- worth not conflating the two districts when researching a specific Charlotte-area address.
CMS Doesn't Cover All of Charlotte's Metro Footprint
As with any major metro, Charlotte's broader urbanized area extends into surrounding counties served by entirely separate school districts -- Union County Public Schools (Waxhaw, Marvin Ridge, Weddington) and other neighboring county systems each carry their own separate NC accountability ratings, separate from CMS. This matters concretely for anyone comparing a Charlotte city address against a nearby suburban address in a different county: confirm the actual assigned district and campus for any specific address via the NC DPI or NC School Report Cards site rather than assuming a single district-wide statistic applies metro-wide.
Key takeaways
- A specific CMS district-wide NC School Performance Grade letter for 2024-25/2025-26 was not confirmed from a primary source this session -- a real, disclosed research gap, unlike the clean sourced grade found for Houston ISD in the companion file.
- 83.4% of CMS schools (146 of 175 assessed) met or exceeded state academic growth goals in 2024-25, per NC DPI data -- the highest share in district history, though a growth measure, not a substitute for an overall letter grade.
- Ardrey Kell High School (CMS, Ballantyne) ranked #12 among NC public high schools per Niche 2026 (A+ grade); Community House Middle and Providence High are separately cited as consistently top-rated CMS campuses.
- Marvin Ridge High School, cited as the Charlotte area's top-ranked public high school for 2026, is in Union County Public Schools (Waxhaw), not CMS -- don't conflate the two districts.
- Charlotte's broader metro extends into other counties with entirely separate school districts and ratings -- confirm the specific assigned district/campus for any address via NC DPI rather than relying on a citywide CMS statistic.
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