Urban Choice Charter School, Rochester NY

Original Research by School Decision on Urban Choice Charter School

Urban Choice Charter School closed permanently on July 1, 2023, after the New York Board of Regents voted not to renew its charter. The school no longer operates, and any family considering it should know that nearly a quarter-thousand K through middle grade students who expected to return in fall 2023 were forced to find new schools elsewhere.

The closure ended a period of institutional instability. The school was first recommended for closure in 2020, a process paused by the pandemic. When it reopened, state authorizers granted only one- and two-year charter renewals instead of a full five-year term, a signal that the school had not made sufficient academic progress to warrant longer authorization.

State testing data from the school's final year, 2022-23, shows why. In mathematics, proficiency across the school's middle-grade cohort was very low. In Grade 4, roughly one in seven students met the state standard; in Grade 6, about one in twenty; in Grade 7, just a handful. Grade 8 was slightly better at about one in sixteen. The Grade 5 and Grade 3 cohorts had no students meet proficiency that year, though Grade 3 had no students tested.

English language arts results were similarly weak across the lower grades. Grade 3 proficiency was roughly one in twenty students; Grade 4 and Grade 5 each hovered around one in seven. Grade 6 reached about one in six. Notably, Grade 8 was substantially stronger, with about four in ten students meeting the standard, suggesting the school may have served older middle-grade students somewhat more effectively. Grade 8 science proficiency was about one in five students, the school's strongest single result in 2022-23.

The only older data available comes from social studies in 2009-10, when the school showed proficiency close to saturation in Grade 5 and about one-third of Grade 8 students meeting the standard. These results are from thirteen years before closure and do not reflect the school's condition at the end.

Enrollment data, student demographics, household income profile, staffing levels, school climate measures, and detailed attendance records are not available from the data provided, so a full picture of the school's operating environment cannot be drawn. The state testing results form the primary academic record visible now.

Urban Choice was a regular public charter school, not a magnet program and not a Title I designated school in the available records. Rochester itself is a mixed urban community along the Genesee River, with a compact downtown anchored by civic institutions and surrounded by residential neighborhoods built through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Housing in the city's zip codes is relatively affordable compared to state and national medians, and the region's largest employers are in healthcare, higher education, and advanced manufacturing. However, the city experienced decades of population decline before recent downtown revitalization efforts began filling in vacant parcels and converting historic buildings to housing.

Because Urban Choice closed three years ago, no family is considering enrollment. The school's history serves instead as a record of an institution that struggled academically over a number of years, received warnings from state authorizers, and ultimately did not survive charter renewal review.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 30%

School 0% · district not reported

▼ 59 pts below state median

Grade 414%

School 14% · district not reported

▼ 44 pts below state median

Grade 50%

School 0% · district not reported

▼ 51 pts below state median

Grade 65%

School 5% · district not reported

▼ 40 pts below state median

Grade 73%

School 3% · district not reported

▼ 50 pts below state median

Grade 86%

School 6% · district not reported

▼ 31 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 35%

School 5% · district not reported

▼ 47 pts below state median

Grade 414%

School 14% · district not reported

▼ 38 pts below state median

Grade 514%

School 14% · district not reported

▼ 41 pts below state median

Grade 617%

School 17% · district not reported

▼ 29 pts below state median

Grade 717%

School 17% · district not reported

▼ 31 pts below state median

Grade 842%

School 42% · district not reported

▼ 6 pts below state median

Science

Grade 821%

School 21% · district not reported

▼ 12 pts below state median

Social studies

Grade 595%

School 95% · district not reported

▲ 4 pts above state median

Grade 836%

School 36% · district not reported

▼ 42 pts below state median

This schoolDistrict average, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income8%Higher-income20%12 pp gap