Honestly, they run below the county average, and which set of schools you get depends on which side of King’s Grant you buy on. Both assigned elementary schools earned a D from the state for 2024-25, the two middle schools a C, and the two high schools a C.
We get this question from relocating buyers almost every week, because King’s Grant is where a lot of them land. It is one of the few places left in New Hanover County where a three-bedroom house on a real lot still starts under $300,000, fifteen minutes from downtown and fifteen from Wrightsville Beach. Families find the price, then ask about the schools, and they deserve a straight answer rather than a shrug.
So here it is, with the state’s own numbers attached. The schools serving King’s Grant are not the county’s strongest. That does not make it a bad place to buy a house. It does mean you should know the letter grades, understand what they measure, and check which side of the attendance line your address falls on before you write an offer.
Which schools does King’s Grant actually feed?
Two different sets, and this is the part most buyers miss. An attendance boundary runs straight through the middle of the neighborhood, so two houses a few streets apart can send children to entirely different schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade.
When we built our King’s Grant neighborhood guide we ran 96 points across the neighborhood through the New Hanover County Schools locator on October 5, 2026. The split was clean.
East and central King’s Grant, 53 of the 96 points, feeds John J. Blair Elementary at 6510 Market Street, Emma B. Trask Middle at 2900 North College Road and New Hanover High School at 1307 Market Street. Addresses on Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Lord Thomas, Spicewood, Dandelion, Plymouth and Patsy all landed here.
Western King’s Grant, 43 of the 96 points, feeds Wrightsboro Elementary at 2716 Castle Hayne Road, Holly Shelter Middle and E. A. Laney High School, both at 2700 North College Road. Addresses on Kings Drive, Kenningston Street and Glenlea Drive landed here.
- John J. Blair Elementary: grade D, score 51, growth not met at 59.5 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- Wrightsboro Elementary: grade D, score 48, growth met at 75.5 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- Emma B. Trask Middle: grade C, score 61, growth not met at 67.8 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- Holly Shelter Middle: grade C, score 61, growth met at 78.3 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- New Hanover High School: grade C, score 56, growth not met at 52.6 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- E. A. Laney High School: grade C, score 62, growth not met at 50.0 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- For comparison, Ogden Elementary four miles east: grade A, score 88, growth exceeded at 90.4 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
- For comparison, John T. Hoggard High in town: grade B, score 75, growth met at 80.6 NC Department of Public Instruction, School Report Cards, 2024-25
Read the two sides against each other and the difference is thinner than the street addresses suggest. Both elementary schools carry a D. Both middle schools scored 61. The two high schools are six points apart. Whichever side of King’s Grant you buy on, you are buying into roughly the same academic picture.
What a D and a C actually mean in North Carolina
North Carolina builds a school performance grade from two pieces, weighted 80 percent on achievement and 20 percent on growth, and the letter scale runs A for 85 to 100, B for 70 to 84, C for 55 to 69, D for 40 to 54 and F below 40 (NC Department of Public Instruction, 2024-25 accountability release, September 2025).
Because achievement carries four fifths of the weight, the grade tells you a great deal about the students a school enrolls and less about what the school does with them. That is why the growth column matters. Growth measures how much a school moved its students from where they started that year.
Look at the two elementary schools with that in mind. Blair and Wrightsboro both carry a D, but Wrightsboro met its growth target at 75.5 while Blair missed at 59.5. Same letter, different story. The same split shows up at the middle schools: Holly Shelter met growth at 78.3, Trask missed at 67.8, and both landed on 61 overall.
We are not telling you a D is fine. We are telling you that a parent comparing two addresses in King’s Grant should look at the growth numbers, because the letters are nearly identical and the growth numbers are not.
How this should change your search, and how it should not
If school assignment is your first filter, King’s Grant is probably not where you start. Ogden Elementary, four miles east, carries an A at 88. Hoggard High, across town, carries a B at 75. Those addresses cost more, and that is the trade this county makes you make.
If you are buying here for the price and the location, which is why most of our buyers look at King’s Grant, the honest move is to treat the school question as a decision rather than a dealbreaker. New Hanover County has magnet and choice options, charter schools and private schools, and plenty of families in this neighborhood use them. Several of our clients have bought here, enrolled their children elsewhere, and been glad they kept the mortgage small enough to pay tuition.
What you should not do is take a listing’s word for the assignment. The boundary layer behind the district locator is dated 2022 to 2023, and boundaries in a county adding this many rooftops get redrawn. Run the exact address through the district’s own tool, and if a child’s school matters to you, ask the district to confirm it in writing before due diligence ends.
For what the houses themselves cost and what the rest of the neighborhood is like, our King’s Grant guide carries the current listing range, the flood sampling and the Gordon Road widening. If you want to compare against the rest of the county first, start with our guide to the best neighborhoods in Wilmington and our New Hanover County market update.
A performance grade is a snapshot of one year, and it is mostly a measure of test scores, which track household income closely across North Carolina. It does not tell you about the teacher your child gets, the band program, the AP list or whether your family will be happy there. We have had clients tour Laney and love it, and clients who looked at the same letter grade and bought in Ogden instead. Both were reasonable. If the schools are the deciding factor in your move, visit them, and do not let a letter on a spreadsheet make the call by itself.
Related questions people also ask
Can I request a different school in New Hanover County?
New Hanover County Schools assigns students by address, but the district also runs magnet and specialty programs and an annual school choice process that families can apply to. Seats are limited and applications run on a calendar, so a transfer is a possibility rather than a guarantee. If attending a particular school matters to your purchase, contact the district directly about the current choice window and confirm what is available before you commit to an address.
Does a school’s letter grade affect home values?
In our experience it affects demand more than it affects price directly, and the effect is strongest at the elementary level, where parents of young children are most sensitive to assignment. Neighborhoods with highly rated elementary schools in New Hanover County tend to see shorter days on market and fewer price reductions. The letter grade is one of several things moving a price, alongside flood zone, age of the house, lot and commute, and it is rarely the largest of them.
Is King’s Grant a good place to live if I do not have school-age children?
For many buyers, yes, and the school question falls away entirely. You get mature tree canopy, deep lots, county parks inside and beside the neighborhood, and a drive of roughly fifteen minutes to both downtown Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. The trade-offs are an aging housing stock with a median year built of 1979, no walkable commercial center, and traffic on Market Street and North College Road at rush hour.
Before you fall for a house here, pull up the New Hanover County Schools locator and run the exact street address, not the neighborhood name, then write down which of the two school sets comes back. Bring us that address and we will tell you honestly what the rest of the block has sold for, what the flood determination is likely to show, and whether the school assignment is the thing that should move you somewhere else. Schedule a consultation and we will work through it with you.
Sources: NC Department of Public Instruction, North Carolina School Report Cards, 2024-25 school performance grades and growth, read October 29, 2026; NC Department of Public Instruction, 2024-25 accountability release, September 2025, for the grading scale; New Hanover County Schools attendance zone locator, 96 points sampled October 5, 2026, as recorded in our King’s Grant neighborhood guide; Tidal Realty Partners King’s Grant neighborhood guide and New Hanover County market update.
