City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, East Flatbush) last week presented a proclamation from the City Council to UncommonSchools’ Excellence Girls Academy for receiving a Blue Ribbon from the U.S. Department of Education.
The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes public and private elementary, middle, and high schools based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.
Excellence Girls Charter School is a K-8 school where 98 percent of the students are either African American or Hispanic and 78 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch. It is the only charter school in Brooklyn to ever win the coveted award, and one of 329 schools nationwide to be recognized this year with a Blue Ribbon.
“Excellence Girls was recognized for their consistently high levels of achievement, their progress in closing achievement gap, as well as the creative incorporation of female empowerment into their curriculum,” Mealy said, reading from the proclamation at a school assembly last Friday.
Founded in 2009, Excellence Girls is one of 22 public college-prep charter schools operated by Uncommon Schools in Brooklyn. Over 7,500 students attend an Uncommon School in Brooklyn. Uncommon alumni go on to graduate college at five times the rate of low-income students nationally.
Excellence Girls has 800 students in two locations, the K-4 Elementary Academy at 794 Monroe Street, with 450 students, and a 5-8 Middle Academy with 350 students at 1600 Park Place.
Excellence Girls has consistently outperformed surrounding districts with similar student populations on New York assessment exams. The elementary school ranked 15th in math out of 2,500 New York state elementary schools, with 94 percent scoring advanced or proficient.
More importantly, the school is full of stories of triumph, of young girls who have wrestled with adversity and have not only persevered but exceled because of the values they learn every day at Excellence Girls.
Young students who have come to the school shy, and academically behind their grade level, and struggling to fit in, have within months found their voice, caught up academically and grown into leaders. Families note that what their daughters are learning in school will help them grow into leaders of the world.
The school strives to create a community of empowered and kind young female leaders who are the architects of their own lives. Using a curriculum focused around the “fierce females” who have come before them, the mission of the school is to develop young women of confidence who are not only prepared for college, but also prepared to be thoughtful, kind, empowered citizens of the world, she said.
As early as Kindergarten, they are taught to be empathetic and supportive of their classmates, to speak out and share their opinions and to think not only about their own success, but the success of their classmates.
The school’s curriculum includes a focus on fierce females—women from various countries and ethnicities who have struggled and triumphed. They show the girls what they are capable of—despite whatever challenges they face now.
Nikki Bowen, principal of the Excellence Girls Elementary Academy, said there are both academic and social and emotional benefits to the very special curriculum at Excellence Girls.
One young girl, for instance, had been terribly mean to her younger sister because of her lighter skin, until she came to see how Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o broke barriers. The little girl said to her counselor: “I now see that I am beautiful the way I am.”
“The girls ultimately graduate with dozens of diverse female role models to look to for guidance throughout their lives,” Bowen said. “In life, we expect students to be contributing members of their community and society as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, and historians.”
The students attend the Excellence Girls elementary academy through 4th grade, then go on to the Excellence Girls middle academy, where they continue to be challenged and empowered.
“At Excellence Girls Middle Academy we are ensuring our girls have a rigorous academic experience in every class—from an exploratory approach to mathematics, to instilling a life-long love of literature to fostering critical thinking and discussion in our science and history classes, we work to ensure that our girls will write their own futures and have the options they deserve in college and beyond,” said Meredith Anderson, principal of Excellence Girls Middle Academy.
The majority of students will be the first in their family to attend college, Bowen said, so there is a clear effort to emphasize that all students can and will attend and graduate from college. Each classroom in the school is named after a college to serve as a constant reminder to students that to keep their sights on college.
