Relocation content about small districts follows a script. Find the highest number available, quote it without a year, and move on. Camden County Schools gives you a good one to work with: five schools, zero D or F grades, and an A-rated early college. That is a genuinely clean record and I have no interest in undercutting it.
But there is a second column in the state’s data, and it is the one that tells you what you actually want to know.
The full 2024-25 record
| School | Grade | Score | Growth | Growth index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camden Early College High School | A | 91 | Exceeded | 96.3 |
| Grandy Primary School | B | 80 | — | — |
| Camden Intermediate School | B | 71 | Not Met | 55.9 |
| Camden County High School | B | 70 | Met | 79.6 |
| Camden Middle School | C | 67 | Not Met | 62.6 |
NCDPI 2024-25 School Performance Grades and EVAAS growth designations. Grandy Primary carries no growth designation because its grade levels sit below the state testing window that generates one.
Achievement and growth measure different things
North Carolina’s School Performance Grade is 80 percent achievement, 20 percent growth. That weighting means the letter grade is mostly a description of how students test — which is heavily correlated with the households those students come from.
The growth designation is the other question: given where these students started, did they move as far as the model expected? That is closer to a measure of what the school itself contributed.
A school can score well on the first and poorly on the second. Two of Camden’s did.
What “Not Met” at a B school means
Camden Intermediate scored a B on 71 points, with growth Not Met at 55.9. Camden Middle scored a C on 67, with growth Not Met at 62.6.
That pattern usually describes students who arrive testing reasonably well and leave testing about as well as they arrived. The absolute results are respectable. The measured value added is below expectation.
Some context that cuts in the district’s favor:
- Camden County’s median household income is $91,078 in 2024 dollars over the 2020-2024 period, per the Census Bureau. Achievement scores in a district with those household incomes are partly a description of the families.
- These are small schools. The whole district has 1,918 students across five buildings. A single grade-level cohort can swing a growth index in a school that size, and one year of Not Met is a data point, not a trend.
And some that does not:
- Two of five schools, in consecutive grade bands — intermediate and middle — is the part of a K-12 pipeline where growth matters most and where a family notices it least, because the letter grades still look fine.
The Early College is the real story
Camden Early College High School: A, 91 points, growth Exceeded at 96.3.
That is not a school coasting on demographics. It is scoring high and moving students further than the model predicts. North Carolina’s early colleges are cooperative innovative high schools where students take community college coursework alongside high school work — Camden’s partners with College of The Albemarle, and students can leave with substantial transferable credit.
The catch for a buyer: it admits by application, not by attendance zone. You cannot buy a house into it. If it is part of your plan, ask the district about the application window, the selection criteria, and how many county students apply versus are admitted — and ask whether any of that changes once the new high school campus is occupied.
What I would actually ask
If I were relocating a family here, I would make three calls before writing an offer:
To the intermediate and middle school principals. Not “how are your scores.” Ask what the EVAAS growth index was this year, what it was the two years before, and what they changed in response. A principal who answers that in specifics is telling you something real about the building.
To the district central office. Where does the new high school project stand, which building would my child be in this coming year, and does that change next year? Camden has a substantially funded project intended to bring the high school and the early college onto one campus, and its status is worth confirming from the district rather than from any web page, including this one.
To transportation. This is a 240-square-mile county with five schools. Ask what the actual bus route is from the actual address.
The full chapter, with the district’s enrollment, the new-campus project details and what the state’s designations mean, is here.