Improvements at Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill Schools

Gotham Gazette has a story today looking at how public schools in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are believed to have improved dramatically in recent years, and parents who once sent their kids to schools outside of the district are now forging documents to get their kids into it. The story’s focus is mostly on P.S. 11, and the article attributes the school’s improvements and increasing desirability to gentrification that has resulted in creative-class parents who have more time to be involved with their kids’ education. The new wave of parents helped force out the school’s unpopular principal, according to the article, and then raised money and put in volunteer hours. One parent who had a kid at the school had this to say: “It’s totally a class issue, because the parents who stay at home can be more engaged. For schools in neighborhoods where there’s not a lot of resources, it’s not gonna be one in two parents who can come in and help out.” According to Dr. Jennifer Stillman, a researcher who looks at schools in gentrifying neighborhoods, improvements are predicated on a snowball effect of early adopters to a school system then attracting other parents: “Stillman’s research found that the successful integration – racial, economic, and cultural – of this new parent group into the existing schools and is key to a school managing the kind of ‘turnaround’ many parents seek. ‘There is a key moment in a school that successfully integrates, where the early majority decides to stay,’ Stillman said.”
Parental Involvement is Formula for Success in Brooklyn Schools [Gotham Gazette]
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