A successful district school in Brooklyn should serve as a reminder that education reform isn't all about charters.
Too often, folks like me in the "education reform" camp look solely to charter schools for examples of "what works" in education. But if one peruses the website SchoolGrades.org*—a site launched by the Manhattan Institute (where I work) that uses a common benchmark to assess all public elementary and middle schools across the U.S.—one will find many good old-fashioned district schools among America's best.
For example, P.S. 172, the Beacon School of Excellence, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn: 86 percent of its 600 pre-K-5th grade students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch; yet according to SchoolGrades.org, it's one of the top 10 schools in New York state.
Last year, 38 percent of New York City kids were considered proficient in English and 36 percent in math on the state's challenging Common Core–aligned exams. For P.S. 172 students, the proficiency rates were an astonishing 89 percent in English and 98 percent in math.
Even more astonishing, P.S. 172 serves a largely high-needs student population. While 86 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, 78 percent of students meet the more severe low-income threshold for free lunch. Thirty-one percent of students require special-education services, and 27 percent are English Language Learners. Seventy-seven percent of students are Hispanic. The vast majority of students are immigrants who speak another language at home.
P.S. 172's principal, Jack Spatola, himself an immigrant from Sicily, speaks several languages. "I turned 14 on the boat," he tells me. Spatola has been principal of P.S. 172 for 31 years, making him one of the longest-serving principals in New York. Much of his senior staff and teachers have been with the school for over a decade. The school's strong and stable leadership seems to create camaraderie, resulting in low rates of teacher turnover.
What's the secret of P.S. 172's success? In a word: meticulousness. During a two-hour interview and school tour, Spatola must have used the word "meticulous" a dozen times. School staffing is "meticulously planned." Teacher selection and development are "meticulous." Teachers and school administrators keep "meticulous" notes on each student's progress. Teachers should have "meticulous knowledge of material and pedagogy so that they can best reach each individual student," Spatola explains.
One unique aspect of P.S. 172 is the meticulous way Spatola stretches school funding and plans teachers' work schedules to create collaborative team-teaching environments in classrooms. Every classroom I visited contained at least three, often four, adults: usually a lead teacher, a math or reading coach or special-education specialist, and one or two paraprofessionals.
In one third-grade classroom, students were engaged in guided reading (students read books slightly above their reading level, with teachers' help). Students were in three groups, according to their reading ability. And P.S. 172's assistant principal, Erika Gundersen, was sprawled on the carpet, working with one girl whose reading aptitude was far above grade-level.
P.S. 172 achieves astonishing results with its significant population of high-needs students. Last year, 85 percent of special-education students scored proficient on state English tests and 98 percent scored proficient in math. An amazing 97 percent of ELL students scored proficient on state English exams.
How does it achieve these miraculous results? Again: meticulousness. Collaborative team-teaching takes place three periods a day in general education classes and during all five periods of the school day in the school's Integrated Co-Teaching classes. (In those classes about 60 percent of students are general education and 40 percent are special needs.) Most teachers at P.S. 172 are certified both in special education and in general education, which allows greater staffing flexibility. Spatola believes that teachers should be "pushed in" to classrooms rather than have students "pulled out" for special services.
P.S. 172 also integrates special-needs children into general-education classes. In one first-grade class, I saw a special-education teacher huddled next to a girl with obvious disabilities who had recently emigrated from Central America and had never attended school before. "She has a double whammy: a learning challenge and a language challenge," Spatola explains. "But we've got a strong IEP [Individual Education Plan] mapped out for her."
Teachers and staff at P.S. 172 also map out less formal "education plans" for each general-education student. The school frequently assesses where children are and the progress it hopes they'll make. There's no sophisticated student-tracking software at P.S. 172; each teacher keeps an old-fashioned notepad journal on each student to track progress. Weekly 80-minute grade-level meetings are held for all teachers, coaches and specialists, at which the progress of each student is reviewed.
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The school works closely with parents, immediately informing them if their children are failing to meet goals and offering suggestions of how they can help. Starting in October, teachers are identifying struggling children in grades 3–5 and inviting them to attend special classes on Saturday mornings.
P.S. 172 uses the publicly available free curriculum offered by New York State via its EngageNY website, which is based on Eureka Math and Core Knowledge Language Arts. But like everything else at P.S. 172, the curricula are meticulously modified to meet students' needs. Each month, one of P.S. 172's weekly grade-level meetings is devoted to tweaking the curriculum and reviewing a database of detailed and rigorous lesson plans for every lesson in every subject in every grade. In addition, Spatola finds money in the budget for teachers to spend a few days each summer revising the curriculum after discussing what worked best and what needs improvement.
The amazing work being done at P.S. 172, the Beacon School of Excellence, should serve as a reminder to education reformers that beacons of excellence exist among both district and charter schools.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report
*This essay describes School Grades, a project that Manhattan Institute instituted in 2015 and ended at the end of 2019, as the development of websites from other organizations, particularly Great Schools, specifically dedicated to national school data have appeared.
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Charles Sahm is the director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News and World Report