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Partnership Schools

Partnership Schools is a network of eleven Catholic Pre-K through 8th grade schools serving predominantly children in Harlem and the South Bronx. Enrollment has grown from 1,969 students to almost 3,600 students today. Seventy-two percent of their elementary school students were accepted to top-tier selective high schools.

At a time when nationwide math achievement for students in grades 3 through 8 in public schools declined significantly compared to pre-pandemic norms, New York Partnership returning 3rd grade students average National Percentile Rank (NPR) jumped nearly 7 percentile points, and average NPR among returning 5th and 7th graders climbed nearly 5 percentage points. Similarly, returning Partnership students in grades 3, 5, 7, and 8 continue to beat pre-pandemic national averages in reading.

Heckscher helps us provide an excellent, life-changing education to the students we serve in New York City. Thanks to their support, we continue to shape the young, bright minds in our care, setting them on a path to success in high school, college, and life.
Jill Kafka
Executive Director, Partnership Schools

Our support enabled the implementation of its academic model at a failing elementary school it took over, St. Charles Borromeo, and enabled it to work with Teach Like a Champion (another Heckscher grantee) to implement its Reading Reconsidered curriculum, which systematically builds foundational general knowledge across literature, history, and science. We have provided general operating funds and supported a strategic partnership with Teach like a Champion to provide remote learning professional development to all Partnership Schools teachers.

Importantly, in New York and elsewhere where politicians shut down in-person schooling during the pandemic despite the overwhelming evidence that in-person education could be done safely and that the impact of remote schooling would be catastrophic on poor children, Partnership Schools continued to offer in-person learning.

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