Kipp Freedom Charter School, Bronx NY

Original Research by School Decision on Kipp Freedom Charter School

KIPP Freedom Charter School in the Bronx serves kindergarten through eighth grade as a charter school with a current enrollment around the low-to-mid hundreds. The school sits in a dense urban neighborhood on Jerome Avenue and serves a student population that is predominantly Hispanic and Black, with a substantial share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Academic performance shows mixed results across subjects and grades. In math, third-graders perform at roughly a two-thirds proficiency rate, seventh-graders at a higher level approaching three-quarters, but sixth-graders fall to just over half. In English language arts, eighth-graders show the strongest results at around two-thirds proficiency, while sixth-graders score lower, near four-tenths. The school did not test eighth-graders in math for the year measured here. Eighth-grade science results sit at roughly two-thirds proficiency. Overall, the school's proficiency index places it in the top quartile among Bronx County charter and district schools, a meaningful position, though readers should note that this ranking reflects a relatively small peer cohort and that results vary noticeably by grade level and subject.

KIPP Freedom has undergone a curriculum shift toward science-of-reading approaches in elementary grades, introducing phonics-focused programs and teacher training in what the network calls LETRS, with systematic early screening. The school is part of a larger KIPP network effort to overhaul literacy instruction, completed by 2025. For families considering KIPP Freedom, this means the school operates under a reading framework that emphasizes decoding and phonological awareness in early grades, a shift in how reading instruction was done previously.

The school's enrollment has grown substantially in recent years. Growth has also brought a higher student-to-teacher ratio, a practical consideration for parents weighing classroom size and teacher attention. The charter is authorized to expand further in coming years, signaling stable long-term operation and continued demand from families in the neighborhood.

The Bronx itself is undergoing rapid growth in affordable housing development, with major projects planned and underway across the borough including waterfront mixed-income developments, retrofitted industrial sites, and traditional multifamily buildings. The area where KIPP Freedom sits, in the South Bronx near Jerome Avenue, sits amid this transformation. Housing values in the neighborhood have been rising, and transit is dense, with subway and bus routes providing access to schools and employment across the city. The borough's economic base anchors on health care and institutional employers, with Montefiore Medical Center the largest regional employer. Commercial life distributes across multiple neighborhood corridors and transit nodes rather than concentrating in a single downtown, creating a patchwork of walkable commercial streets and quieter residential blocks.

Prospective families may want to explore KIPP Freedom's specific literacy curriculum materials and teaching methods further with the school, and to understand how placement and advancement decisions work as students move between elementary and middle grades within the building. The grade-level variation in proficiency rates suggests that performance is uneven and that fit may depend on a student's grade level and academic starting point.

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Academic performance

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

New York Regents Exams

1 course reported · 2024-25

End-of-course exams required for a New York Regents diploma. Each row shows the cohort size and the share of students scoring at the proficient level or higher.

Course	Students tested	% proficient
Math	95	55.0%

Math

Grade 364%

School 64% · district not reported

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 652%

School 52% · district not reported

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 773%

School 73% · district not reported

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 24 pts above county median

Grade 80%

School 0% · district not reported

▼ 37 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 362%

School 62% · district not reported

▲ 10 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 644%

School 44% · district not reported

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 763%

School 63% · district not reported

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 870%

School 70% · district not reported

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

Science

Grade 866%

School 66% · district not reported

▲ 33 pts above state median · ▲ 38 pts above county 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

English language arts

Grade 4Lower-income76%Higher-income90%14 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income58%Higher-income81%23 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income71%Higher-income67%4 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income87%Higher-income90%3 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income71%Higher-income81%10 pp gap