Digital Arts and Cinema Technology High School

The numbers here are hard to sugarcoat: ELA proficiency of 18.5% sits roughly 47 percentage points below the District 15 average of 65.5%, and math proficiency is 0%, against a district average of about 63%. The most recent proficiency data we have is from 2017-18, when math had already collapsed from 6% the year prior and ELA slipped from 21.6%. The school's overall quality score of 0.37 out of 4 is far below the district average of 2.58, placing it well behind every peer school listed. Trajectory matters: while only two historical data points exist, both subjects moved in the wrong direction over that window.

Day-to-day, this school looks calm and connected on paper. There are zero suspensions in a district where the average is about 0.28%, parent-principal trust is at 97%, and parent satisfaction sits at 96%. Teacher-staff trust numbers are also high (95% on instruction, 93% collegial), though only 30 teachers responded, which is a small sample and worth keeping in mind. The major climate red flag is chronic absenteeism at 41.4% — more than four in ten students miss enough school to be flagged — which is well above what you'd see at a healthy peer school and almost certainly drags down academic outcomes.

The student body is 41% Black, 45% Hispanic, 7% White, and 3% Asian, with a diversity index of 63% and 22% of students classified as IEP. By contrast, the surrounding neighborhood of Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill-Gowanus-Red Hook is one of Brooklyn's wealthiest enclaves, with a median household income near $140,000 and a 67.6% college-educated rate. That means the families who live within walking distance of the school are largely different, demographically and economically, from the families who send their kids there — a common pattern for screened citywide high schools that draw from across Brooklyn.

The school sits in the Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill-Gowanus-Red Hook area, a part of Brooklyn known for brownstones, a strong food scene, and family-oriented streets. Household incomes in the six figures and a 67.6% bachelor's-degree rate tell you this is a settled, educated, owner- and renter-mixed pocket of the borough — though homeownership of just over 31% and a 13.5% poverty rate show it's not uniformly affluent. With about one in five households including children, there are plenty of local families, even if many of the students here commute in from elsewhere.

Subway access is genuinely convenient: the Bergen St station (F, G) is about a four-minute walk, Carroll St (F, G) is about seven minutes, and Borough Hall (4, 5) is roughly an eleven-minute walk.