Bay Ridge Bests Park Slope for Raising Children

A new report ranks Bay Ridge as the best Brooklyn neighborhood in which to raise children, said The New York Daily News. Bay Ridge scored high, coming in fourth citywide, because of its high rate of home ownership, good schools, and parents with stable jobs. Park Slope, meanwhile, was ranked 15th citywide because of its mixed community of poor residents living side by side with wealthy ones, according to the paper. The group that authored the report, the Citizens’ Committee for Children, evaluated neighborhoods based on four factors: Economic, Health, Youth and Housing. Bay Ridge scored high on key youth factors such as the percentage of high school dropouts, employment, birth rate, and arrest rate among teens. Click here for more info about the report findings (the full report costs $50).  Unfortunately, recent improvements in education may be mostly a factor of more wealthy people moving into Brooklyn, and applicable mostly to them, if we read the Committee’s comments correctly. “For example, while the city has seen improvements in education trends in recent years, such as increased reading and math scores, higher graduation rates, and fewer dropouts, the results are not as positive among racial/ethnic groups and across neighborhood school districts,” the group said. Do you agree with the report’s findings? Where would you rather live?
Report: Bay Ridge Best Nabe to Bring up Children [NY Daily News]