As the 2018-2019 school year came to an end last June, incoming families at East Village Community School (EVCS), a progressive Pre-K to 5th grade elementary school in New York City’s unzoned District 1 where state test scores place it at #5 in the District, received the following email from Principal Bradley Goodman (excerpted below):… Continue reading The Surprising Integration Sceptics Of NYC (It’s Not Who You Think!)
On Monday, September 23, the Community Education Council of Brooklyn’s School District #16 (Bedford-Stuyvesant) voted to ask New York City to get rid of all Gifted & Talented programs as advised by the Student Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG). There was the by now familiar rhetoric of how District #16’s schools are not racially or socio-economically… Continue reading Follow the Money and See Where It Goes: NYC Schools Edition.
This is a guest post by Daniel Bromberg, a senior at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Originally from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Daniel is passionate about economic justice and equitable education practices. He welcomes any comments or questions and can be reached at dsb283@cornell.edu. I grew up in South Brooklyn and attended public… Continue reading Equity Now, Not Later: A South Brooklyn Student on the Need for Urgency Around College Readiness.
New York City public middle school placement decisions were distributed to students just before Spring Break 2019. For months leading up to the big day, parents had been hearing about how this would be the season of true equality in school admissions. But did that, in fact, happen? The headlines trumpeted: Two NYC districts embarked… Continue reading True Equality Means Everyone Is Equally Unhappy
Last week, I received the following email from a parent: I‘m being told by the parent coordinator at our zoned school (PS 11Q) that general ed school choice is not real, and my child will be attending the zoned school no matter what I ranked. The PS 11Q parent coordinator did not schedule any open… Continue reading The Sorting Hat: How NYC’s Kindergarten Admission Really Works
News broke last Tuesday, March 12th, that some rich parents, including actors Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) and Lori Loughlin (Full House), paid from $15,000 to $500,000 to fraudulently arrange their children’s acceptances into colleges ranging from Yale to University of Southern California. The usual suspects made the appropriate shocked noises. Like when Major Strasser learned… Continue reading Say Goodbye To Hollywood: How Much For a ‘Good’ NYC Public School?
Last month District 15 in Brooklyn announced the elimination of all screening processes for admission to middle school. (Yes, even the performing arts one).) Instead of taking into consideration grades, test scores and more, Park Slope’s 11 middle schools will assign seats by lottery, with 52 percent of slots in every school set aside for… Continue reading Who Will (And Won’t) Benefit From Unscreened NYC Schools
After announcing his plans to change admissions to New York City’s Specialized High Schools, and after expressing confusion as to why any family would opt for a screened school (despite his own daughter doing so in San Francisco), and after calling a mother “racist “ who objected to District 3 middle-schools setting aside 25% of… Continue reading Why Our NYC School Chancellor Is Absolutely Right About Gifted & Talented Programs… And Why He Is Absolutely Wrong
The mother below wishes to remain anonymous: My son was denied entrance by our local zoned public school. Here is my story. In November 2017, I visited my zoned school, The Manhattan Beach School (PS 195). We had been displaced by Hurricane Sandy. Our home was a ticking time bomb and we had to move… Continue reading NYC Mom Deliberately Blackballed From Zoned School!
Most of the eighth-grade students in Jeff Walton’s band class at Uncommon Schools Ocean Hill Collegiate hadn’t picked up an instrument before seventh grade. But you’d never know it from the sounds emanating from Walton’s band room one morning as students were rehearsing for their Spring Concert, a program of songs from New Orleans. Standing… Continue reading “I Am Always Amazed How Fast They Can Learn”: Uncommon Schools’ Music Immersion Program
