Approach

Classical Charter Schools

Classical Charter Schools serves kindergarten through 8th grade students in the South Bronx and is one of the three highest-performing charter school networks in New York City. Students attending Classical schools have outperformed State, City and District school students since its inception in 2006. Recently, 88% of Classical students passed the ELA exam and 90% passed the math exam compared to a 31% and 29% New York City district average pass rates, respectively. We funded a catalytic effort to create an open-source data technology system that can be shared with other school networks. The data tool, developed over a three-year period with our support, houses granular student-level academic, behavioral and attendance data in one place which allows teachers, coaches and deans to work together to identify conditions that might put a student at academic risk, thus allowing for early intervention. Our support helped Classical transition from measuring performance and tracking these data points in separate silos (academic, behavioral, demographic, attendance) to managing information and results across these areas.

Our partnership with a thought leader like Heckscher has pushed us to build out high-leverage, strategic data collection projects that provide our teachers and senior staff with a rich set of actionable information on student performance that they can then use to positively impact our students and their families for decades.
Lester Long
Founder & Executive Director, South Bronx Classical Charter School