The Shifting School Equation
There wasn’t room to discuss it yesterday, but we suspect the public/private school issue is on a number of people’s minds. Over the weekend, The Times ran an article about the number of people who bought their apartments in recent years with the assumption that they would send their kids to private school. Now that…
There wasn’t room to discuss it yesterday, but we suspect the public/private school issue is on a number of people’s minds. Over the weekend, The Times ran an article about the number of people who bought their apartments in recent years with the assumption that they would send their kids to private school. Now that the economic downturn has made that a more difficult proposition, they are left to confront the limitations of their own school district. In some cases, parents are even considering renting a cheap apartment within a good school district just to get access—after all, it would be cheaper than the $30,000+ tuition in Manhattan. (It’s more like $25,000 here in Brooklyn.) Question for the renters and those in the market to buy in Brooklyn: Has the school issue shifted your real estate plans since the downturn began?
The Sudden Charm of Public School [NY Times]
Photo by Steve and Sara
“I live in Brooklyn Heights, zoned for PS8. Lots of parental involvement and money. But roughly a third of the kids don’t test at grade level and — being honest — it’s because a third of the kids come from the projects.”
nope.
PS 58 in Carroll Gardens- Same scenario. High grades and school rating.
I don’t have kids but just had to throw that in there.
thanks Archi – good info. Would you take 139 in the SOAR program over 217 outside of the gifted program?
fsrq–My daughter went to PS130 in Chinatown. It is a Title I school with over 90 percent of students coming from free-lunch-eligible families (maybe less now because the nabe is gentrifying). It has some of the highest test scores in NYC.
Yes, most of these kids are Chinese-American–but that adds to the burden of the school in that many of them are English language learners and most of the parents do not have a working knowledge of English.
The parents’ assn. cannot begin to raise the kind of bucks that the whiter schools in District 2 can generate, but the principal is the very best. I believe in every way that the most important element in a public school in NYC is a great principal.
BedStuy, nobody said ‘stupid’. Talk about a “gross mistatement”. Honestly, your idea about “kids not grasping as quickly” is far more insulting. These kids surely grasp as quickly, but to keep denying that kids who don’t have the benefit of preschool, or early education, or a stay-at-home parent, or a dedicated nanny, or a great daycare, or a two parent home, or a an english-speaking household or any combination of the above are BEHIND when they start school and STAY BEHIND throughout school is not helpful to these kids. You can draw a line all the way to the drop-out rates.
The two universal predictors in how a child does in school are:
1. if the mother of the child is a college graduate, and
2. the number of books in a home.
I don’t think this the profile of the majority of parents in the projects.
Also, PS8 has 1-6 on your list. Still, a third tests below grade level. Not acceptable. I think PS8 is a good school. I’m just replying to the idea of moving kids of “wealthy parents” into poor performing schools and “working your ass off” is not really all that helpful to teachers.
Rob nailed it. The overwhelming evidence from ps 11 is that parent involvement and strong leadership can lead to a school that improves rapidly. in the 2 years that our child has been at 11 we have seen the mood of the school improve dramatically- and it wasn’t bad when we first went. I’m not talking about test scores, I’m talking about general vibe and sense of focus. I have seen the virtual Y improve and the after school enrichment program expand dramatically with great results.
I’m not writing this simply to toot ps 11’s horn but to verify what Rob had to point out- and point out that it doesn’t have to take years and years for a school to improve.
I can see that my involvement in the classroom, as well as that of other parents has a powerfully positive effect. Spending time in the class allows me to know my child’s friends, and observe her interactions with them.
To piggyback on the idea of going to a local school- in pre-K we didn’t get a spot at 20 or 11 so went to 282 in PS. it was a good school and a great class with a great teacher. But it was a hike and that made it difficult for our daughter to see friends afterschool. It’s made a profound difference to go to a school that is walkable.
People get very concerned about “good” school districts & zones with their little ones, but it matters less as they get older. If your kid starts pre-k or kindergarten in a school and later you move within the city the kid can continue there through 5th grade and can go to middle school in that district.
For middle school, you may find you’re better off sending the kid to a school outside the district and by then kids can handle going to Manhattan which opens up more options.
High schools mostly take kids city wide, so where you live matters only as far as commuting feasibility. In the boro, there’s Brooklyn tech and maybe a couple of other good schools, but otherwise the best HS options for Brooklynites are in Manhattan.
Unfortunately safety is a really important consideration in deciding whether you can send your kid to the neighborhood school. When we lived in Clinton Hill, we were zoned for PS56, and I heard too many first-person stories of kids getting beat up to even think about it.
We were really lucky and I got my daughter into a gifted program at an elementary school in District 2 in Chinatown where she thrived. Better yet, she was eligible for District 2 middle schools.
This morning I got a call from a friend who lives in Crown Heights and is zoned for a shitty, dangerous elementary school. Her 5-yr-old got into PS9 in Prospect Heights (improving) and PS11 in Clinton Hill (improved). She’s still waiting to hear from Brooklyn New School which is in District 15. I told her that although if it were my kid I’d really want to pick PS11, I’d have to think about the middle school nightmare that is District 13 and consider Brooklyn New School if her kid won the lottery. This kid is FIVE YEARS OLD! It’s the shame of the city that there aren’t better public schools in NYC for ALL STUDENTS.
BTW, my daughter graduated 5th grade in a class of 32. I had many discussions with the principal of her elementary school about class size. The principal feels very strongly that she does not want to exclude students that want to attend her school and she would have to do so if she cut class size. She would rather have a great teacher with 50 kids than a shitty teacher with 10 kids.
i think the overcrowded kindergarten problem will disappear around 2012-2013. kids who start before then will be like sardines, and kids that start after then (housing bust +5 years) will be hearing crickets. baby boom officially over. another benefit will be that private schools will “reassess” their high tuitions once demand plummets.
How can a school like PS8 turn-around overnight? How can a school like 321 be at the top year over year – what “parent involvement” can possibly result in such successes, when nearby other school children suffer with below grade level achievement?
The answer is – it has little to do with parental involvement at the school and ALLOT to do with parental involvement in the HOME.
People may resent the “rich” who live within these neighborhoods (most really are FAR FAR from rich in private jet, beach home definition), but the truth is that on the whole certain child rearing is preparing children far better for academic achievement than others.
Sorry but in the better public schools and virtually all the private schools – huge percentage of kids come into kindergarten understanding the alphabet, numbers, with large vocabularies and other not so easily definable skills that make their academic success almost ‘easy’ vs other kids who have no training in any of the fundamentals of learning.
It isnt parent involvement in the school that causes academic success, it is parental involvement at home that does it – and the in-school involvement is just a ‘symptom’ of their overall emphasis on education.