Urban Academy is a member of the New York Performance Standards Consortium (which is often called just the Consortium), a group of 38 schools across the state that are required to give only the English Language Arts (ELA) Regents exam -- not all five exams.

Consortium schools have demonstrated that our way of assessing students -- Performance Based Assessment Tasks (PBATs)-- meets and exceeds the standards set by the Regents.  At Urban, we call our PBATs "proficiencies", and here is how they work:

Skills developed in courses result in projects, papers, exhibits, presentations, and experiments through which students accumulate proficiency in five academic areas:

Literature                                          Social Studies                                       Creative Arts
Mathematics                                     Science                                                 

Urban Academy students earn their diplomas by demonstrating proficiency in these areas, passing courses, and showing continual progress in the areas of community service, contribution to the Urban Academy community, class participation, and active and independent reading. Competency in library research and computer use is also required.

For a longer description of our proficiencies, check out the graduation requirements.