Urban Academy
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Performance Assessment

The New York Performance Standards Consortium

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.

How It Works

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", which show up in the form of projects — such as papers, exhibits, presentations, and experiments. Students must demonstrate proficiency in these five academic areas:

Proficiency Creative Arts
Proficiency Literature
Proficiency Mathematics
Proficiency Science
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In addition to demonstrating proficiency in these areas, Urban Academy students earn their diplomas by:

  1. passing courses
  2. showing continual progress in the areas of community service
  3. contribution to the Urban Academy community
  4. class participation
  5. active and independent reading
  6. competency in library research and computer use

For longer description of our proficiencies, see Graduation Requirements.