Freire Schools Mission

Freire Schools empowers students to build the future. We provide a rigorous education in a safe, creative, and supportive environment that enables and inspires all children to achieve.

ABOUT US

Freire Schools is committed to ensuring that every single student who walks through our doors can succeed and grow. We provide students in underserved communities a college-prep learning experience with a focus on individual freedom, critical thinking, and problem-solving in an environment that emphasizes the values of community, teamwork, and a commitment to peace. We are four distinct schools in two different cities, each guided by the same values of equity, diversity, love, and critical thinking.

Freire students are confident, dynamic, and collaborative individuals who are engaged in their communities and are excited to apply the skills and knowledge they acquire at Freire Schools to create new possibilities for our future. Of Freire Schools’ 2,000 students, 94% are Black or Latinx, and almost all students qualify as economically disadvantaged.

Our 223 Class of 2024 graduates were accepted to 155 colleges and universities and earned over $22.5M in college scholarships and aid. Ensuring equity in education is at the core of Freire Schools’ work. We strive to provide the individually tailored resources, supports, and experiences that each individual student needs to achieve at the highest level. Our average student to faculty ratio is 16:1.

OUR HISTORY

The Freire family first came into being in 1999 with the opening of Freire High School in Philadelphia, PA. Within a few years, Freire became one of the highest-performing high schools in Philadelphia.
1997: After years of strife and underperformance in Pennsylvania schools, state legislature passes the “Charter School Law,” creating a new class of independent public schools with the freedom to innovate on behalf of their students in exchange for accountability for school performance.
1998: Freire Schools’ founders develop a vision for a public charter school that would offer any and every student in Philadelphia the opportunity to attend college and thrive there.
1999: Freire Charter School opens with 100 students in grade 8.
1999: University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Kelly Davenport witnesses a Freire student threatening her classmates with a knife. In the wake of this incident, Kelly surveys Freire students about their hopes, dreams and the school environment they want to build. Their responses are clear: “No fighting.” “I have to feel safe in order to learn.” “We need to treat each other with respect.” “I know we can love each other.” These needs expressed by Freire High School’s founding class of students become the foundation for Freire Schools’ approach and commitment to peace. Soon after, Kelly is asked to become Head of School.
2000: Freire Schools pioneers an innovative model for responding to student and family trauma, partnering with Temple University, West Chester University, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania to offer counseling and therapy services to students and families at no cost to them.
2003: Freire High School’s founding class of students graduate from 12th grade.
2007: Freire Schools receives the first of several multi-year grants from the U.S. Department of Education, supporting student achievement through STEAM-based learning.
2008: Freire Schools students host their first Take Back the City community event to share personal stories and develop empathic understanding, focused on a powerful prompt: “If you really knew me, this is what you’d know.” Every year since, Freire students take a two-day break from classes to listen to each other’s stories.
2010: After a decade of leadership, Kelly remains frustrated by the barriers to opportunity Freire students face. Inspired by this frustration, Kelly founds the Freire Foundation, a nonprofit education philanthropy fund, to support Freire Schools and accelerate educational change.
2010: LiveConnections, a leading provider of arts education, hosts Freire 10th graders at its first Bridge Session, pairing professional artists with faculty and students. This event begins a lasting partnership between Freire Schools and LiveConnections, tying community-based field work in art, cultural history, and technology to in-school learning.
2011: Freire High School becomes the first charter school in Pennsylvania to receive a national Title I Distinguished School Award for our success in closing the achievement gap.
2012: Freire Charter Middle School opens, expanding the Freire family to include students in grades 5-8. Play On, Philly! is identified as a lead arts partner, adding orchestral music to Freire Middle School’s after school programming.
2014: Awarded a competitive grant for arts-integrated programming from an anonymous source, Freire Schools begins a partnership with Mural Arts.
2014: The Freire Foundation partners with the Delaware Department of Education, the Longwood Foundation, and then-Governor Jack Markell to explore and create Wilmington’s first public college-prep, non-selective high school in decades.
2015: Freire Charter School Wilmington opens with 220 students in grades 8 and 9. The partnership and support of the Longwood Foundation, the Welfare Foundation, and the US Department of Education is central to our start-up success.
2015: The Freire Schools Network Office (originally known as Build the Future), a separate nonprofit entity, is created to support and guide the Freire campuses, advance the network’s mission, and thoughtfully plan the network’s future, enabling teachers and school staff to stay focused on their critical work with students and families.
2015: TECH Freire Charter School is one of only five schools out of 39 total applicants to be granted a new charter by the School District of Philadelphia— the first new charters granted in Philadelphia in seven years.
2016: TECH Freire, a high school integrating technology and entrepreneurship into Freire Schools’ rigorous liberal arts curriculum, opens its doors to 300 students in a newly renovated former Packard automobile showroom in North Philadelphia. The Philadelphia School Partnership and the US Department of Education were vital partners in this new school venture.
2018: Freire launches Freire Forward, our network-wide initiative that helps Freire students connect their classroom learning to hands-on experiences and begin to establish a vision and framework for their future. Students partner with businesses across their home cities.
2019: TECH Freire and Freire Wilmington graduate their inaugural classes of seniors.
2019-2020: Freire Schools celebrated our 20th Anniversary — and the visionaries who founded our network, the staff and our Boards who execute our mission with fidelity and love, our partners who open a world of possibility to our students, and our amazing students.
2020: When the countless acts of racist violence prompted a national reckoning on racism in America, Freire Schools used this inflection point to begin interrogating the presence of racism in our work and our schools and made a Commitment to Antiracist Action. In the years since, we have invested heavily into developing our staff to ensure our work is rooted in equity and staff are committed to creating an educational program in which Freire Schools students and staff are unencumbered by institutional racism, held to high standards, and supported and uplifted every step of the way.
2021-22: While the impacts of the pandemic were palpable and widespread in our school community, it was a joy welcoming students back to our buildings in fall 2021: Every day, we are working to reunite as a community, restore connections with students, raise the academic bar even higher than before.
2023: In 2023, The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University revealed that Freire Schools produces high performing charter schools whose academic growth in reading and math place us as the highest performing charter management organization (CMO) in PA and among the highest in the country. Our schools are what CREDO calls “gap-busting” charter schools for our ability to close the achievement gap.
2024: Freire Charter High School was recognized by Philadelphia Magazine as one of the top 20 schools in Philadelphia, standing out among 46 District schools and 29 charter schools!

OUR COMMITMENT TO ANTIRACISM & EQUITY

In June 2020, Freire Schools made a Commitment to Antiracist Action. We were prompted to action by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the loss of too many other Black lives – and by the significant impact this violence has on our students and their own views of themselves as learners and citizens.

In response, over the past four years, Freire Schools has invested significant time and resources into developing our staff to be antiracist educators. While the work we have done to advance antiracism at Freire Schools and beyond has looked different from year to year, our vision is steadfast – we endeavor every day to create an educational program in which Freire Schools students and staff are unencumbered by institutional racism, meet high standards, and are supported and uplifted every step of the way.

Equity at Freire Schools: Fall 2024 Update
Our Commitment to Antiracist Action: 2023-24 Update
Our Commitment to Antiracist Action: Year Two Update – September 2021
Statement Against Violence Toward Individuals of Asian & Pacific Islander Descent – March 2021
Vision Statement for Antiracist Work in 2020-21
Our Commitment to Anti-Racist Action – June 2020
Statement Against Racist Violence – May 2020

THE FREIRE DRAGON & FLAME

In the years since Freire High School’s founding students first chose a dragon as their mascot, the dragon has come to represent Freire Schools’ most deeply-held values and ideals. A dragon is powerful, bold, and free—it knows what it wants and pursues that goal without reservation. In particular, the dragon’s fire breath has come to define the essence of Freire Schools’ mission. When Freire Schools teachers and students remind each other to “breathe fire,” we are reminding ourselves that each of us holds power and possibility beyond what we could dare to dream. We breathe fire by working every day to surprise ourselves with how much we can achieve.

A dragon exists between the real and the fantastic—part lizard, part dinosaur, part impossibly powerful dream. At Freire Schools, we take dreams that may seem impossible and bring them to life in a very real way for our students. The Freire dragon in our individual school logos and the Freire Schools flame represents the eternal fire of our passion for a better world, and the courage to unapologetically pursue that future.

Freire Schools Core Values

Equity

Inequity in educational resources is among the most serious civil rights issues of our time. Freire Schools fights daily to ensure equity in education. From high quality content to diverse learning experiences to exceptional teachers, we strive to provide each of our students with the individually tailored resources and supports that they need in order to achieve at the highest level.

Diversity

Freire Schools places a high value on the wide range of backgrounds, lived experiences, and ways of thinking that each of us bring to the table. We prioritize student and staff voice. We embrace and celebrate our differences, because we know they make us stronger as a community and as individuals.

Love

Freire Schools takes a proactive approach to creating a strong community culture built on mutual respect, openness, and honesty, where every individual is seen and valued. We insist that every member of our community be accepted at face value, without judgment, and be supported in inhabiting their fullest self. Our connections create our community. As a Freire Family, our shared struggles, joy, challenges, and successes give us strength.

Critical Thinking

It is essential that our students are active participants in their own learning, connecting knowledge gained in the classroom to action in their communities and their world. The Freire Schools academic model goes beyond passive lecture and memorization. Instead, we teach students to conduct independent inquiry, ask probing questions, synthesize diverse and complex materials, consider bias and individual perspective, and develop informed conclusions.

Our Commitment

Kids are at the center of all that we do, and we believe that they have unlimited potential. Deeper learning is at the core of our educational practice, and we are successful when everyone in our community is growing. We are committed to applying these principles at every level of Freire Schools’ operation, ensuring that:

Our schools are safe and welcoming.
Our decision-making is informed by our history, the most respected research in the field, and our desire to do what’s best for our kids.
We are developing an actively anti-racist school network.
We are all connected and everyone has a voice – our students, parents, staff, board, and community.
We uphold our mission and honor the educational values of Paulo Freire.
We identify, develop, and retain talented teachers and leaders from diverse backgrounds.
We are intentional and strategic in how we use our public funds, and we maximize our resources to go beyond a basic education to one that is inspired and inspiring.
We are ethical, legally compliant, and fiscally sound in all that we do.
Learning extends past the classroom walls, and we seek partners who share our values and help our students succeed.
We are a voice for and example of high-quality urban education for economically disadvantaged students.