New Heights Academy Charter School

New Heights now outperforms District 6 on both ELA (53.5% vs 47.1%) and math (58.2% vs 52.1%). The bigger story is the trajectory: math proficiency has roughly tripled since 2016, climbing from 22.7% to 58.2%, while ELA has nearly doubled from 29.5% to 53.5% — a sustained, multi-year climb with no obvious reversals. Test scores by grade show sixth-graders still ramping up (52% ELA, 40% math) but jumping sharply by seventh grade, when math proficiency hits roughly 72%.

The parent-school relationship is the school's strongest signal: 96% of families say they're satisfied, and 97% trust both their child's teacher and the principal. Teacher-side trust is decent but more modest — teacher-principal trust at 87% and teacher-rated instruction quality at 89% land roughly in line with district averages rather than above them. Daily attendance (91.7%) is slightly above the district average, but 86.7% of students are flagged as chronically absent — an unusually high figure worth asking the school about directly.

The student body is 88% Hispanic, 9% Black, and about 1% each Asian and White, with an economic need index of 90.7 — a population that closely mirrors the surrounding Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill census tract, where median household income sits around $65,600 and roughly a quarter of residents live in poverty. Sixteen percent of students have IEPs, which is a meaningful share of the school.

Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill is a working- and middle-class stretch of upper Manhattan where about 13% of households have children at home, the homeownership rate is low at roughly 14%, and most residents rent. About 41% of adults have a bachelor's degree, and the median home value for those who do own is roughly $604,000 — a neighborhood where longtime Dominican families sit alongside newer arrivals and young professionals moving into the prewar housing stock.

Three subway options sit within about a six-minute walk: the C at 155 St, and the A, C, B and D trains at 145 St.