Growing Up Green Charter School

With 51.3% ELA proficiency, Growing Up Green sits about 9 points below the district average of roughly 61%, and its 39.2% math proficiency trails the district by nearly 23 points — students here are catching up, not leading. The good news is the post-pandemic ELA recovery is real, climbing from 46.5% in 2022 to 51.3% this year, and elementary grades are noticeably stronger (Grade 5 ELA hits 59.3%, Grade 3 math 59%). Math, however, dropped from 45.7% last year to 39.2% this year, and the slide is concentrated in the upper grades: just 20.3% of 6th graders and 11.4% of 8th graders hit math proficiency.

The trust and safety climate here is genuinely strong: 97% parent-teacher trust, 95% parent-principal trust, and 98% teacher-reported safety all beat or match district averages, and teachers rate their collegial trust at 87%. Day-to-day, this reads as a warm, communicative school where families feel heard. The hard number is attendance — 60.6% of students are chronically absent (missing 10% or more of school days), far above what you'd see at a typical district school, even though daily attendance (90.2%) is only modestly below the 92.4% district average. The takeaway: families who show up feel deeply connected, but a lot of kids aren't in the building regularly.

Growing Up Green's 754 students are 44% Hispanic, 26% White, 14% Black, and 11% Asian — a notably White-skewed mix for a charter in this part of Queens, with a 79% diversity index and an economic need index of 60.2 (meaning roughly 6 in 10 students qualify for economic need). Twenty percent of students have IEPs, above the citywide share. Because only about 10% of households in the surrounding neighborhood have children, the student body almost certainly draws from a wider geography than the immediate blocks.

Queensbridge-Ravenswood-Dutch Kills is a dense, renter-dominated corner of Long Island City with a median household income around $70,500, a 19.4% poverty rate, and homeownership at just 16.4%. Only about 10% of neighborhood households include children, which makes this more a neighborhood of working adults than of young families. Roughly 39% of adult residents hold a bachelor's degree, and the median home value sits near $841,000 — a reflection of LIC's rapid price growth rather than who actually lives in the rentals.

The school is a quick 4-minute walk from the 39 Av-Dutch Kills stop on the N and W lines, with Queens Plaza (E, F, R) and Queensboro Plaza (7) each about 7 minutes away, giving families three subway options for getting to and from school.