Who We Are
At Freire Schools, we believe that strong communities are built together, and that when students, families, educators, and partners work toward a shared purpose, extraordinary things happen.
Mission
Freire Schools empowers students to build the future. We provide a rigorous college and career preparatory education in a safe, creative, and supportive environment that enables and inspires all children to achieve.
Vision
At Freire Schools, we have always believed that students rise to high expectations when they are known, challenged, and supported. That belief continues to guide everything we do and serves as the foundation of our Network Vision. It is organized around four essential components:
College Preparatory Learning
Amid rapid societal change, we empower every student to master the essentials — reading, writing, mathematics, science — and to excel in critical thinking and problem-solving at the highest level.
Academic excellence remains the foundation of our work. Across our schools, we are strengthening literacy instruction, deepening mathematical reasoning, and ensuring students engage in rigorous scientific inquiry. We are building upon the variety of AP and dual enrollment courses offered at our high schools. We are providing a robust system of interventions to meet students where they are and accelerate their growth. We are also investing in professional development that sharpens instructional practice and increases consistency across campuses. We believe that intellectual rigor builds confidence, agency, and opportunity — and, thus, we are rededicating ourselves to Freire's long-held college prep mission.
Professional Prep
We will immerse every student in a vibrant ecosystem of career exploration — giving them firsthand insight into the full spectrum of possibilities and the skills and experiences they need to navigate and shape the future of work.
When students are inspired, supported, and connected to real-world possibilities, they thrive. We are building an intentional continuum of career exposure and exploration opportunities for grades 5-12. Students engage in industry visits, mentorship opportunities, guest speaker series, job shadowing, and paid, hands-on Experienceships that connect classroom knowledge to real-world application. We are challenging our approach to career exploration and counseling, ensuring students understand not only which careers exist, but how to access them — and that they are building the professional skills that will be transferable to the careers that don’t yet exist. Our students will make vital connections and develop their professional networks, and our post-graduation planning will ensure that every single student has clarity about their life after Freire.
Culture of Belonging
At its heart, Freire has always been more than a school; it is a community of belonging where everyone — students, families, and staff — comes to feel known, needed, and nurtured.
We are intentionally cultivating vibrant school communities where joy, connection, and engagement are central to the student experience. Through peer mediation, advisory structures, access to free mental health supports, and diverse after school clubs, athletics, performances, showcases, and schoolwide celebrations, students find spaces to express themselves and build meaningful relationships. When students feel connected, they take intellectual risks, participate more fully, and develop the confidence to lead.
Thriving with AI
We prepare students for a world of AI by teaching human skills that matter most—critical thinking, sustained attention, judgment, agency, empathy, and the confidence to think for themselves—so they see technology as a partner that amplifies their thinking, not a replacement for it.
Artificial intelligence is transforming education, the workforce, and daily life. We believe our community must be prepared not just to keep pace with change, but to engage with the unknown thoughtfully and confidently. We are investing in our educators’ capacity to evaluate and navigate emerging technologies with discernment. Students are developing the habits of mind—critical thinking, creative problem solving, and rigorous research—that remain valuable regardless of what the future holds. We are also intentional about cultivating depth: teaching attention, stamina and designing multi-step challenges that encourage productive struggle and slow thinking, because the ability to sit with complexity is itself a vital skill. And we will continue to prioritize the development of the deeply human skills that technology cannot replace. Our aim is clear: students who are confident thinkers, ethical decision makers, and adaptable leaders in a rapidly evolving world.
Our Impact
Recognized by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) as a “gap-busting” network, Freire Schools consistently delivers exceptional results for students, helping close achievement gaps and expand access to opportunity. Our students graduate confident, capable, and ready to take on what’s next.
By the Numbers
Network-wide data as of 2026.
Message from the CEO
I’ve spent enough time in schools to know that the moments that change a student’s life rarely happen on a test or a report card.
They happen when a teacher notices something in a student before the student sees it in themselves. When a shy ninth grader finds their voice. When a junior walks into a professional workplace for the first time and realizes, I belong here. When a senior opens a college acceptance letter and suddenly sees a future that once felt out of reach.
Those moments are hard to measure.
They’re also the reason we’re here.
Our schools take their name from Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who believed that education is never neutral. It either expands what’s possible for a person, or quietly limits it. That conviction shapes everything we do. At Freire Schools, education isn’t something that happens to students. It’s something they step into, question, and make their own.
That’s why we’ve built schools where students are known as individuals, challenged to think critically, and supported by adults who refuse to let them settle for less than their potential.
Our schools are rooted in Philadelphia and Wilmington: cities with deep histories, extraordinary young people, and real challenges that we don’t look past. The families who trust us with their children aren’t looking for a school that will simply get their child through. They’re looking for a school that sees their child fully. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to, every day.
When young people know they’re valued, they’re more willing to take risks, ask questions, and imagine bigger futures for themselves. Our students intern alongside professionals before they graduate, take college courses while still in high school, and travel to places that expand their sense of what the world holds. They’re learning to use AI not as a shortcut, but as a tool for thinking and creating. They’re building the kind of confidence that transfers into classrooms, careers, and communities.
It’s teachers who stay after school because they know one more conversation can make a difference. It’s families who trust us with their children and remind us every day that education is a partnership. It’s students who show up with resilience, curiosity, and the willingness to keep growing, even when the path isn’t easy.
I’m grateful for every person who makes this community what it is.
When our graduates walk across the stage, they leave knowing they can walk into a college classroom, a boardroom, a lab, a construction site, or a community meeting with the confidence that they belong there.
That’s what we’re building at Freire. Those moments, the ones that can’t be measured on a report card, are happening right now in our schools.
I invite you to come see them.
Paul Ramirez
Chief Executive Officer, Freire Schools