Brooklyn Prospect Charter School - CSD 13

Brooklyn Prospect's academic story is one of the more dramatic turnarounds in the data: in 2017, only 29.5% of students were proficient in ELA and 42.5% in math. By 2025, those numbers climbed to 82.3% and 80.8%, respectively — roughly 30 points above the district average in both subjects. The leap happened between 2017 and 2018 and the school has built on it every year since, with the strongest scores concentrated in 3rd grade (87.5% ELA, 92.4% math). The one dip to watch is 6th-grade math at 68.1%, which lags behind other grades and is the school's softest spot. Math also wobbled in 2022 (55.1%) but recovered quickly, suggesting a resilient program rather than a fragile peak.

Day-to-day, this feels like a school where families are bought in and kids show up — the 97.1% attendance rate is well above the district's 89.2%, and 551 families completed the survey. Parents report high trust in teachers (92%) and the principal (93%), and teachers rate instruction quality at 90%. The number worth sitting with is the 76% teacher-principal trust score — noticeably below the other climate metrics, and a possible signal of friction between staff and leadership even as families feel heard. Discipline is the other wrinkle: the 6% suspension rate is more than four times the district average, though the trend is moving in the right direction (120 suspensions in 2021-22, 86 in 2023-24). Teacher-reported safety is high at 96%.

Brooklyn Prospect's student body is more racially mixed than its surrounding neighborhood. The school is 42% White, 33% Black, 12% Hispanic, 8% multiracial, and 5% Asian, with a diversity index of 75%. Its economic need index of 34.8 is moderate — the lottery draws from across the borough, so families here don't perfectly mirror the wealthy Downtown Brooklyn census tract just outside the doors. Nineteen percent of students have IEPs, which is on the higher side and worth asking about in terms of how special education services are staffed. The 551 family survey responses out of 657 students suggest an unusually engaged parent base, though some of that is double-counting siblings.

The school sits in the Downtown Brooklyn-DUMBO-Boerum Hill area, one of the wealthiest and most educated parts of the borough: median household income is about $150,272, 73.3% of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher, and the median home value is $1.46 million. Only about 15% of households here have children, and homeownership is low at 25.9% — most residents are renters, many of them young professionals. The poverty rate is 15.5%, which is modest for NYC but worth noting given the overall affluence. The school draws a more economically and racially mixed student body than the immediate census tract, in part because the lottery pulls applicants from a wider geography.

Exceptionally well-connected — Hoyt St (2, 3) is about a 2-minute walk, DeKalb Av (B, Q, R) and Jay St-MetroTech (R) are each about 3 minutes away, giving families access to six subway lines within a stone's throw.