Summary:
Canaan Community Academy is a public charter elementary school serving 183 students in grades K-8 in the rural town of Canaan, Indiana. The school faces significant challenges, including low academic performance, high poverty levels, and rising chronic absenteeism, which set it apart from the surrounding schools in the area.
Canaan Community Academy has a much higher percentage of white students (93.99%) compared to nearby schools, which range from 87.83% to 95.03% white students. However, the school's academic performance, as measured by ILEARN test scores, is significantly lower than the surrounding schools across all grade levels and subject areas. For example, in the 2023-2024 school year, only 19.23% of Canaan Community Academy students were proficient or better in English Language Arts, compared to the surrounding schools' range of 29.41% to 50.35%. In math, only 13.46% of Canaan Community Academy students were proficient or better, compared to the surrounding schools' range of 36.86% to 66.44%. Additionally, Canaan Community Academy has experienced a sharp increase in chronic absenteeism, rising from 17.4% in 2020-2021 to 39.4% in 2022-2023, which is much higher than the surrounding schools, which range from 12.0% to 32.9%.
Canaan Community Academy also faces significant socioeconomic challenges, with over 96% of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a high level of economic disadvantage among the student population. This is significantly higher than the surrounding schools, which range from 45.67% to 70.02% free or reduced-price lunch recipients. Despite the school's increased spending per student, from $8,121 in 2019-2020 to $12,029 in 2021-2022, these resources do not appear to be translating into improved academic outcomes for the students. The surrounding schools, while not all high-performing, generally outperform Canaan Community Academy across a range of metrics, suggesting that the school may be facing unique challenges that the other schools in the area are not experiencing to the same degree.
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