“Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School is known throughout Chicago and the United States as a vibrant, powerful, effective learning community, a school that succeeds where others have failed.”

William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago,
College of Education

"An excellent example of liberating education can be seen in the efforts of students and teachers at Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in West Town, Chicago. Here, the staff use critical pedagogy in their collective work with the Puerto Rican community. They try to help students acquire a sense of humanity and purpose after an often brutal and dehumanizing colonization within the United States, where the material conditions for their labor are controlled and their dreams, desires, hopes and visions are often ideologically subjugated. Teachers at Pedro Albizu Campos are committed to equality and social justice and demonstrate an unyielding dedication to the empowerment of the Puerto Rican people."
Excerpt from 'Life in Schools' by Peter McLaren

“The Unity for Social Analysis class, or ‘Unity’, as this town hall meeting style class is commonly known, is one of the most obvious Puerto Rican spaces at PACHS.  This is a class in which Puerto Rican students and teachers talk about issues affecting the school and neighborhood, resolve conflicts, and plan activities…Unity also serves to engage Puerto Rican students and teachers in the political life of the Puerto Rican community.”

Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, excerpt from Nationalist Ideologies, Neighborhood Based Activism, & Educational Spaces in Chicago             

 “The experiences of the PACHS students I interviewed revealed the ways in which the high school was important to them. Interestingly, the students emphasized the importance of the high school in terms of its sanctuary-like attributes.  These sanctuary-like attributes included multiple definitions of caring relations between students and their teachers, the importance of a familial-like school environment, the importance of having a safe school, and allowing students a space in which they are encouraged to affirm their racial/ethnic pride.”

René Anthrop-González, excerpt from This School is my Sanctuary: The Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Alternative High School