At DREAM, we serve students with a wide range of backgrounds and needs. 99% are students of color, while 88% qualify for free or reduced lunch. 29% of students have identified special needs, significantly larger than the 20% average for other New York City schools, and 46% of our alumni are the first in their families to go to college.

When the pandemic hit New York City in 2020, it was clear that DREAM’s students and families would be among the populations hardest hit by its effects, including the toll it would take on in-classroom learning and student achievement. But since then, DREAM’s “All Kids Can. This Kid Can.” maxim has truly played out—in the 2021-22 school year, DREAM students outperformed the vast majority of their charter, New York City, and New York State peers, making significant progress on the multi-year journey to address pandemic learning loss.

• For the most vulnerable student populations, DREAM’s proficiency rates were significantly higher than those of NYC and NYS peers. This includes Black and Hispanic students, students with IEPs, and English language learners.
• In Grades K-2, DREAM students outperformed 95% of schools in the Charter School Growth Fund’s national portfolio of over 150 charter organizations.
• In Grades 3-8, DREAM students made gains that outpaced their peers in NYC and NYS public schools, as well as charter schools statewide. Students in grades 6-8 performed exceptionally well, increasing their percent proficiency from 2021 by +13% in ELA and +26% in Math.

DREAM’s Grow the Whole Child model, bolstered by our extended-day, extended-year structure, allowed us to devise the DREAM-specific strategies that drove these results, including our co-teaching model, our commitment to family engagement, and our critical decision to return to in-person learning in the fall of 2020. You can view the entire report and learn more about this significant data by clicking the button below.