The top reported proficiency rate is 49% in Math. The lowest is 32% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Brooklyn Rise Charter School
Brooklyn Rise Charter School serves kindergarten through fifth grade in a small school of about three hundred students located in Downtown Brooklyn. The school operates as a charter with a distinctive two-teacher-per-classroom model designed to serve students across a wide range of academic and language needs. A substantial majority of its enrollment qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is predominantly Hispanic, with smaller Asian and Black populations and very few white students.
The school's testing results in math and English language arts place it below the midpoint of proficiency among charter and public schools in Kings County. Across grades three through five, math proficiency rates fall in a range from the low forties to roughly the midpoint, while ELA proficiency tracks similarly. Science proficiency, tested only in grade five, is notably lower. These results suggest that students are making progress on the state standards, but that a meaningful share require additional support to reach proficiency. The school participates regularly in state testing; participation rates are consistently in the high nineties, indicating full engagement with assessment.
The school's core pedagogical commitment is inclusion. Rather than separating students by ability or language status, Brooklyn Rise places all learners in mixed classrooms with two full-time teachers per class. The school maintains a dedicated Inclusive Learning Department with special education coordinators, language specialists, a behavior specialist, and social workers embedded in the school. A lottery preference exists for families whose home language is not English, meaning the school intentionally serves a high proportion of multilingual learners. This design choice reflects a particular educational philosophy about equity and belonging, and it shapes daily classroom life. For families drawn to inclusion-based pedagogy and smaller class sizes with co-teaching, this is a meaningful fit. For families seeking a school organized around tracking or more traditional departmentalized instruction, it is not.
A major structural change is underway. In 2024 the school won charter renewal through 2029 and approval to expand from grades K-5 to K-8, raising its enrollment capacity substantially over time. This means a family enrolling a child in kindergarten now has the option to remain through eighth grade without seeking a middle school transfer. Simultaneously, the school is relocating. It opened in Sunset Park, moved to its current Downtown Brooklyn address in 2022 due to co-location tensions with the district, and is now building a new permanent facility in Sunset Park with a completion target in early 2027. Parents will experience a significant shift in location and commute; the planned return to Sunset Park has drawn community opposition, which parents may want to investigate further with the school and in the neighborhood.
Downtown Brooklyn, where the school currently sits, is highly walkable with dense transit access and active street life. The ZIP code shows home values well above state and national medians, and rents have risen year over year. The neighborhood itself is undergoing rapid residential growth and development, with substantial new housing completing and in pipeline. This is a neighborhood in transition with considerable gentrification pressure, and families should consider whether the commute and community character align with their needs as the school prepares to leave.
State testing data for grades K-2 was not available, as those grades are not assessed under New York's testing regime. The school does not report special education enrollment or English learner enrollment counts, so the precise scale of the school's inclusion population remains opaque. A parent may want to ask the school directly about these figures and about classroom composition to understand the day-to-day peer environment. Information on teacher qualifications, staff retention, or student attendance was not available. The school is a charter, not a traditional public school, so it operates under a board-approved charter agreement rather than direct district governance; parents should be familiar with the charter renewal process and the school's accountability structure if this is a novel consideration.
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