Our Core Values

Care for Community

We celebrate our diverse and varied scholars, staff and families. We seek to foster connections for our young people to feel empowered to make positive changes in their community while also helping each other learn and succeed in school.

  • Our scholars reflect the diversity of Queens and our community:

    • 65% Latinx

    • 18% Asian/Pacific Islander

    • 15% Black/African-American

    • 2% White

    • 88% Free/Reduced Lunch

  • On average, about 25% of our middle school scholars enter CQA in fifth grade as an English Language Learner (ELL), but achieve proficiency and exit ELL status after three years at CQA. This is more than three times the pace of traditional New York City public schools.

  • We tailor our program to our highly diverse scholars and families, more than 70% of whom speak a language other than English at home.

  • Scholars receive more than twice the English Language Arts time as traditional public schools, extensive tutoring and homework help.

  • Our highly engaged parents have helped us achieve a 95% parent conference attendance.

Quality of Character

We believe that education is equal parts knowledge and character, and the traits of compassion, empathy, resilience and self-awareness are at the root of humanity.

  • We seek to nurture the whole child by offering advisory to explore social-emotional learning and daily enrichment (physical education, arts, and dance).

  • To encourage positive school behavior, CQA’s “firm but fair” system has produced zero expulsions/out-of-school suspensions and an average 97% scholar attendance rate.

  • We offer scholars opportunities to nurture empathy and advocacy for self and community.

  • We emphasize the importance of respect, responsibility, perseverance, honesty, and integrity.

Achievement through Academics

We believe that learning, and scholarship of the highest level, is critical to life and personal success.

  • Our college-preparatory focus helps CQA scholars take ownership over their learning and education during the critical middle school years.

  • To support our scholars, we offer more time in school — the CQA school day is 2.5 hours longer than traditional NYC public schools.

  • Each year, our middle school scholars have outperformed their city, state and district peers on the New York State Mathematics and English Language Arts exams.*

* 2024 will be the first year our oldest elementary scholars will be eligible to take a state assessment exam.