Uncommon Schools
non-profit organization in the USA
Uncommon Schools (Uncommon) is a non-profit charter public school managed and operated in the United States that starts and manages urban schools for low-income students. Uncommon Schools starts and manages 53 urban charter public schools. Uncommon Schools are in five regions: Boston MA, Camden NJ, Newark NJ, New York City, and Rochester NY.
History
The organization first supported the creation of North Star Academy Charter School of Newark, which opened in 1997. North Star was co-founded by Norman Atkins and James Verrilli. In 2005, Uncommon formalized its mission as a charter management organization with the goal of starting and managing schools that create college prep opportunities for low-income children. In 2006, uncommon schools created Rochester prep in Rochester, NY opposed to their other schools that are in popular cities in modern times.In 2009, the founders of Uncommon, along with those of Achievement First and KIPP created Teacher U at Hunter College.
Results
In New York City, Uncommon Schools have performed well on recent standardized tests. Kings Collegiate Middle School received a B rating on their 2011-2012 NYC DOE Progress Report, and Brownsville Collegiate Charter received an A overall rating. At Williamsburg Collegiate, 100% of fifth graders passed the 2009 state Math exam.
On September 9, 2010, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recognized Uncommon Schools’ North Star Academy as a 2010 National Blue Ribbon School.
The public source identifies “Uncommon Schools” as non-profit organization in the USA. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Uncommon, Schools and non-profit.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7882874. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2005, 2006 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Uncommon Schools” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.