Valence College Preparatory Charter School

Both ELA (68%) and math (70%) sit comfortably above the district averages of about 63%, and the overall score of 2.76/4 clears the district's 2.51 — but the real story is the trajectory. Math jumped from 48% to 70% and ELA from 54% to 68% over four years, the kind of sustained climb you rarely see in middle-school data. Eighth-grade math at 83% suggests students land hardest once they've been at Valence for a couple of years, which is a good sign for a school families commit to entering in fifth grade.

Survey numbers tell a split story: parent-teacher trust (95%), parent-principal trust (95%), and teacher-reported instruction quality (94%) all clear citywide norms and signal that families and staff feel good about each other once they're engaged. But chronic absenteeism is genuinely high at 77.5% — meaning more than three of every four students miss 10% or more of the school year — and teacher collegial trust sits at a relatively low 68%. Family survey response was 26%, which means the glowing parent numbers reflect a self-selecting slice of the school community, something worth factoring in.

The student body is 93% Hispanic with a diversity index of just 18% — one of the more demographically concentrated middle schools in the area. The economic need index of 86.6 puts the vast majority of students in or near poverty, which contrasts sharply with Rego Park's solidly middle-class profile and signals the school draws from a broader catchment than the surrounding blocks. IEP enrollment at 16% is in the normal range for the city.

Rego Park is a stable, middle-class Queens neighborhood where more than half of adults hold a bachelor's degree, four in ten households own their home, and the median home value clears $620,000. Households with children make up about 18% of the area, and the poverty rate is comparatively low at 11%, giving the blocks around the school an established, owner-occupied feel rather than the renter-heavy turnover common elsewhere in the borough. The school sits among families who look quite different demographically from the families inside its doors.

The 63 Dr–Rego Park station on the M and R lines is about a three-minute walk — one of the easier subway commutes in Queens — with 67 Av (M, R) eight minutes away and Woodhaven Blvd (M, R) roughly thirteen minutes on foot.