Achievement First Bushwick Charter School

Proficiency rates here run well above the District 32 average: 60.3% in ELA versus a district figure near 46%, and 65.5% in math versus a district figure near 43% — a 14- to 22-point edge depending on the subject. The historical record tells a more nuanced story. Math proficiency was in the high 80s from 2016 through 2019 before dropping to 48.8% in 2022, and has since stabilized in the mid-60s. ELA followed a similar arc, peaking around 74% in 2018 and sitting at 60% now. Current scores are strong by district standards but still well below the school's pre-2020 peaks, especially in math. By grade, eighth graders post the strongest ELA results (74.2%) while third graders lag (43.6%) — a common pattern when younger students are still building reading stamina. Science proficiency is reported at 50%, a middling figure.

The day-to-day picture here is mixed. Parent satisfaction is healthy at 89.2%, even if slightly below the district average of 93%. Teacher-reported instruction quality, however, sits at 74.8% — about 11 points below the district figure of 86.1%, which is worth a prospective parent asking about directly during a tour. Attendance as a building-wide rate (93.1%) is fine and a touch above the district's 91.9%, but the chronic absenteeism figure of 78.3% tells a very different story: nearly four in five students miss at least 10% of the school year. That gap between a decent average attendance rate and an extraordinarily high chronic-absence rate suggests the school is doing fine with the families who show up consistently, but a large share of students are missing meaningful chunks of the year — which can quietly erode the academic gains the test scores reflect.

The student body is 72% Hispanic and 24% Black, with small numbers of White, Asian, and multiracial students, and a diversity index of 42%. Twenty-five percent of students have IEPs — a notably high share for a charter — and the economic need index of 79.4 indicates a high concentration of students from lower-income households. This mix closely mirrors the surrounding neighborhood: Bushwick West skews Latino and Black, with a 20% poverty rate and a median household income around $87,000.

Bushwick West is a working- and middle-income neighborhood where renters dominate (homeownership sits at 11%) and the median home value is just over $880,000. Median household income is about $87,000, and 44% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher — a solid educational-attainment figure for the area, though 20% of residents live below the poverty line. Only about 11% of households include children, which is lower than many Brooklyn families expect, but the school still pulls from a deep enrollment pool.

The M train at Knickerbocker Avenue is about a two-minute walk, the L at DeKalb Avenue about nine minutes, and the M at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues about eight minutes — three nearby subway options that make drop-off by transit genuinely easy for commuting families.