Achievement First Brownsville Charter School

ELA proficiency at 55.4% and math at 58% both clear the District 23 averages of 52.2% and 50.5%, respectively. Science proficiency lands at 58.1% — a respectable showing. The longer arc, though, is uneven: math scores swung from a 75.4% peak in 2019 down to 47.5% in 2022 before partially recovering, so the current 58% reads as a rebound rather than a steady climb. ELA has edged modestly upward from 46.4% in 2016, despite year-to-year dips. Grade 3 is the strongest cohort (68.1% math); grade 5 is the weakest in ELA at 43.3%.

Daily attendance at 89.8% sits above the district average of 88.6%, but chronic absenteeism is striking at 61.4% — meaning nearly two-thirds of students miss 10% or more of the school year. Parent satisfaction (97%), parent-teacher trust (100%), and parent-principal trust (99%) are unusually strong, though only 25 families responded to the survey (a 4% rate), so those numbers should be read as a snapshot of highly engaged families rather than the full parent body. Teacher-reported instruction quality is 72.6%, well below the district average of 89.4% — a real gap worth weighing.

The student body is 80% Black and 17% Hispanic, with small shares of Asian and other groups, for a diversity index of 36% — on the lower end for a New York City school. The economic need index of 77.9% reflects a high-poverty population: roughly 4 in 5 students come from low-income households. Ocean Hill itself has a median household income of $57,870 and a 26.6% poverty rate, with only 24.2% of adults holding a bachelor's degree — context that shapes who walks through the school's doors and the resources families can bring to bear at home.

Ocean Hill is a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood where roughly 1 in 4 residents lives below the poverty line and only about 1 in 5 households owns their home. With a median household income of $57,870 and a bachelor's-degree rate of 24.2%, it is a community where many families are navigating economic pressure. Households with children make up just 11.5% of the area — meaning this is not a heavily family-saturated pocket of Brooklyn, even though the school itself draws a young population from a wider catchment.

Rockaway Av on the C train is about a 6-minute walk, Broadway Junction (A and C) is about 10 minutes, and Chauncey St (J and Z) is about 12 minutes — solid subway access across three lines.