School for Human Rights, The

ELA proficiency of 61.9% sits modestly above the district average of 60.5% — a real achievement given where this school started. Math tells a different story: 36.4% trails the district's 57.3% by more than 20 percentage points, signaling that arithmetic and quantitative reasoning are the school's clear weak spot. The most striking thing is the trajectory itself: ELA went from 19.6% (2016) to 24.3% (2017) to 33.3% (2018) to 61.9% (2019), and math climbed from 11.2% to 36.4% over the same span. Whatever is happening in this building, it is moving in the right direction.

The day-to-day feel here is calm on paper — zero suspensions is remarkable — but the climate numbers tell a more complicated story. The 95.5% attendance rate is well above the district's 91%, which sounds great, yet 87.5% of students are chronically absent (missing 10%+ of the school year), with the rate running 91.3% among Black students. Parent satisfaction (71.6%) and teacher-reported instruction quality (69.8%) both trail district averages near 89-91%, suggesting teachers and families have meaningful concerns about what's happening in classrooms even as discipline stays under control.

The student body is 87% Black, 8% Hispanic, 3% White, with smaller Asian and Native American shares — a homogeneity that doesn't quite mirror the surrounding Prospect Lefferts Gardens-Wingate census, where the BA+ rate is 41.8% and homeownership sits at 22.5%. The school's economic need index of 79 (out of 100) is high, and 22% of students have IEPs, so a meaningful slice of the school needs additional support. Twenty-two percent of seats also serve English language learners, and the school runs ELL programs and Spanish instruction to meet that need.

Prospect Lefferts Gardens-Wingate is a middle-income Brooklyn neighborhood where the median household income is roughly $73,000 and the poverty rate runs around 16%. Homeownership is relatively low (22.5%) and the median home value is just under $950,000, reflecting the area's mix of long-time renters and newer owners moving into a block of prewar brownstones. With under 10% of households containing children, the school-age population is thinner than in many other parts of the city, and families here tend to be well-educated — over 41% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher.

The school is about an 8-minute walk from the Winthrop St station (2, 5 trains), 10 minutes from Sterling St (2, 5), and 13 minutes from Church Av (2, 5) — all on the same Eastern Parkway line, so a single line gets you there.