New Middle School Coming to Fort Greene
According to The Local, Fort Greene will get a new 300-seat middle school starting in the Fall of 2010. The Fort Greene Preparatory Academy, as it will be called, will be located at 100 Clermont Avenue where PS 46 currently is. The academics will be structured around Socratic seminars and the arts. The goal of…
According to The Local, Fort Greene will get a new 300-seat middle school starting in the Fall of 2010. The Fort Greene Preparatory Academy, as it will be called, will be located at 100 Clermont Avenue where PS 46 currently is. The academics will be structured around Socratic seminars and the arts. The goal of the school is to be driven by student inquiry, said Paula Lettiere, the intended principal. We’re seeking to move away from traditional curriculum. This sounds like a pretty conscious effort to provide an alternative to the PS 20 approach that has turned off so many of the families that have moved to the neighborhood in recent years.
New Middle School Coming in 2010 [Local/NYT]
Photo by silk cut
You see what I mean about the Heights parents?
They become incensed.
My post was not ridiculous, you’re ridiculous.
And arrogant.
Minard, while socioeconomic status (“Uncle Kiff donated a gym to Williams” – ha!) certainly has something to do with this debate, it isn’t the only determinant. There are lots of different learning styles, but if you don’t have the basics down, nothing matters.
Those DOE report cards, by the way, are a crock of s**t. My high school was evaluated a few years ago by an elementary school principal from England, who looked at reams of numerical data and test scores and never once left the principal’s office.
Minard, your post is ridiculous. Leave your ranting to architecture.
Again, this will be a Dept. of Education middle school and there will be published test scores for every grade. And a measure of the success of the school will be how well it succeeds in getting its kids into good high schools.
Sorry for the blank.
I am the mother of an upcoming 8th grader. We toured 113 and liked it, although my daughter was wary of being the only Chinese kid in the school. Because she went to an elementary school in District 2, we had other choices and she is going to middle school in Manhattan.
I think there is room for a range of schools as long as the principal and staff keep their eye on the prize, which is of course education. My daughter’s school is less structured than 113 and has had great success educating the wide range of students there (Lower East Side project kids, kids from wealthy Battery Park City/Tribeca families, kids from recent immigrant families from China).
I agree with sixyears that you definitely need a great principal and staff to succeed with a less structured format. Although I think the Dept. of Ed. has gone way overboard in relying on test scores, they do separate the wheat from the chaff and catch the schools where education is not taking place.
Well, I do agree with what you added to my remark @11:57, sixyears, but I also agree even more with what you said @11:54 and with what Montrose says above.
schools like these are terrific for the elites who disdain standarized tests and whose children can get into the best schools in the country because grandpa donated a library to Brown and uncle kiff donated a gym to Williams. Alas for the children of poor parents who must show, through test after test after test that they measure up, these school curriculums can do a huge diservice. A good example of this is PS8 in Brooklyn Heights where the principal, a St. Ann’s alum, is trying to use very progressive methods. The results are mixed. The kids from affluent Heights families do OK but the kids from poor Farragut Houses families don’t know how to read. That is why the School received a “D” two years ago and an “F” last year. You cannot broach this problem with Heights parents who will chew your ear off about how “unfair” the test is (didn’t everyone have to take the same test?) and how ridiculous to use peer groups from places like Chinatown, where the little kids study like little demons and are really really smart. Fortunately for the country all those little immigrant childred will hopefully keep us from falling too far behind in science and technology.
Rob, I couldn’t agree with you more.
I’d also add that teaching the writing and speaking of standard English should also be stressed, and no feel good, but ultimately patronizing, nonsense about Ebonics, most bilingual ed, and meeting the kids where they are should be allowed in the building. When you apply to college, when you apply and interview for a job, hell, when you are stopped by cops in the street, it’s bad enough people already have preconceived notions are who and what you are, so knock their socks off by being able to speak decently, and write well in standard English. Education is the key to life success. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be a PhD, but it does mean being able to get a job with chances of advancement, and not being steered and pigeonholed into a life of poverty.
“Maybe 113 has had “great success with its students” because its curriculum is traditional and very structured?”
For some, no doubt. I’m skeptical of one size fits all solutions to any educational problem. Clearly some students need traditional education. Others (a minority) succeed with inquiry learning. Some do well in elementary school but not in high school. Others blossom in college or later in life because they don’t fit into DOE bureaucrats’ little boxes.