Urban Action Academy

Proficiency numbers aren't reported for this school, so there's no clean apples-to-apples comparison with the district's 58% ELA and 61% math averages. What is reported is a serious course catalog for a school this small: AP courses, ELL support, and Spanish are all on the menu, alongside an unusually long sports list and a roster of clubs that reads like a small college. The 77.8/100 program richness score reflects that breadth, which is impressive for 146 students.

The day-to-day feel here is unusually warm for a city high school. Parent satisfaction is 89% — slightly below the district average of 93% — but parent-teacher trust (92%) and parent-principal trust (96%) are both high, and 97% of teachers rate their own instruction quality positively, well above the district's 90%. The most striking number is zero suspensions across the entire school, in a district where the average suspension rate hovers near 1%. That combination — strong teacher trust, zero discipline incidents, and families who feel heard — points to a close, well-run community.

Three out of four students here are Black, with another 16% Hispanic and a small but visible White and Asian minority — a diversity index of 45%. One in four students has an IEP, which is higher than most Brooklyn high schools, and the economic need index of 83 means most students qualify for free lunch. The neighborhood around the school tells a slightly different story: Canarsie's median household income is about $82,000 and the homeownership rate is over 50%, so many families attending this school come from a working- and middle-class base that's invested in the area.

Canarsie is a mostly owner-occupied southeast Brooklyn neighborhood where about 15% of households have kids at home and roughly 29% of adults hold a bachelor's degree. The median home value sits near $688,000, and the poverty rate of 13% is meaningfully lower than the city average, pointing to a stable, family-rooted community. The neighborhood has the feel of a place where multigenerational households and Caribbean-American family networks have settled in for the long haul.

The L train's Canarsie-Rockaway Pkwy terminal is about a 10-minute walk from the school, and East 105 St on the same line is roughly 14 minutes on foot — both manageable for older students, but a stretch for little ones.