Based on community observations and quantitative data, the
Brooklyn Prospect leadership team believes there is an important need for a new middle school in Community School District 15. In District 15, fourteen public schools currently offer education for students in grades 6-8; the highest performing middle school is MS 51, which, despite an entrance exam and only mediocre student achievement levels, consistently ranks as one of the most sought after middle schools in New York City, frequently turning away hundreds of applications. According to
insideschools.org, for example, 1700 students qualified for 325 seats in
2004. The average percentage of District 15 students passing the 8th grade ELA and Math exams is 44% and 50%, respectively. In the non-selective schools, the average percentages of students passing are 32% and 42%, respectively. An already overcrowded
school system has been put under further pressure by the current influx of
school-aged children into the district after Fourth Avenue was rezoned for residential development and other major residential developments appeared in downtown Brooklyn. Of the hundreds of local parents who signed our petition, many left comments on our website demonstrating their concern about a “shortage of quality schools in the neighborhood” and expressing their belief that the community “desperately needs additional middle schools [because] the current choice of good middle schools
is extremely limited [and] the school age population has grown
significantly.” (Source: Brooklyn parents Christopher Williams and Sara Starling left as comments on BPCS petition, June, 2007).
Over 15,000 visitors have come to our website and shown support for Brooklyn Prospect Charter School.
The BPCS leadership team, many of whom live in the neighborhoods that BPCS will serve, has become aware that, in addition to the issue of over-crowded schools, there is growing concern that the current schools in CSD 15 are not preparing students for higher education or for employment in an increasingly pluralistic and global economy. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills suggests that “a profound gap [exists] between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st Century communities and workplaces.” The Partnership argues that we are living in a different era that requires “new thinking in our approach to educating our youth.” In a recent poll of registered
voters, 80% of voters say the things students need to learn today are
“different than twenty years ago” and 60% of voters say our “schools are not keeping pace with changing educational needs” (Source: Partnership for 21st
Century Skills, www.21stcenturyskills.org)
BPCS will not only meet the basic need for more schools in
CSD 15, but will provide students with a challenging, inspiring and innovative curriculum that will improve their ability to be successful in college, in the workplace, and in the emerging global culture of the 21st Century. The BPCS team is committed to serving a diverse population that reflects the community of CSD 15, and the team is confident that significant performance gains will result from masterful, innovative, and collaborative teaching. By actively recruiting and rewarding high-quality teachers, by collaboratively developing and implementing innovative curricula, and by compassionately and inclusively differentiating instruction for all learners, BPCS will empower all students with the skills, knowledge, and habits-of-mind necessary to their future success.
The following is a list of programs supporting BPCS core commitments. Further details of each of these programs are listed in the Executive Summary narrative that follows and the appropriate portions of the application:
Core Commitment 1:
Commitment to Diversity
- Active recruitment of a student body reflective
of CSD 15
- International Baccalaureate (IB) program focus on global issues, community service and foreign language
- Assembly during community time featuring outside speakers who represent a diverse range of cultures and experiences
- Fair and transparent lottery
Core Commitment 2: Commitment to Teacher Quality
- IB off-campus training for teachers
- Summer on-campus training and
collaboration time for all teachers annually
- On-campus orientation for new teachers
- Training and on-going support for
teachers to develop curricula that reflects the goal of differentiated
instruction
- Performance based compensation
- Weekly collaboration meetings, 4 hours
per week, plus one additional professional development meeting per month
- Every teacher will be scheduled for at
least one planning period with his or her partner teacher (math/science, ELA/Social Studies)
- On-going recruitment of new faculty
Core Commitment 3: The Success of All Students
- Extended day tutoring
- Early identification of students below
grade level
- Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT) in the classroom with learning specialists
- English Language Learners (ELL)
instruction
- Differentiated instruction in every
classroom
- Advisory 30 minutes daily with a
curriculum of study skills and an emphasis on secondary literacy
- New students summer orientation week
dedicated to introducing study skills, organization, and the school culture
- Six-week Summer
Academy after the first year of operation for
students at risk of academic failure
- Data driven teaching strategies
implemented through professional development
Core Commitment 4: Academic Preparation
- IB emphasis on global citizenship, service learning, team work, interdisciplinary curriculum, and project based learning
- Schedule
structured to facilitate team teaching
- Community
time scheduled for student presentations of their work as well as outside speakers
- Teacher meeting times scheduled to facilitate collaboration
- Commitment
to foreign language
- Commitment
to arts as a core class
Commitment to
Diversity
Although the BPCS planning team recognizes its limited control
over the student population, the team is committed to creating an inclusive
environment and a globally focused academic program that appeals broadly to
families in the community. In this regard,
BPCS will be firmly committed to a fair and transparent lottery system. In addition, we will actively seek diversity
in our student body through comprehensive student recruiting efforts in each of
the twenty-two elementary schools, two charter schools (including PAVE Academy
new for 2008) and one k-8 school in CSD 15.
We will strive to create a student body that reflects the community
school district with regard to ethnicity, socio-economics, English Language
Learners and Special Education students.
BPCS’s ongoing goal is to create a population whose statistical
demographics model CSD 15; to this end, benchmark numbers for recruitment will
be established every year by the Executive Director and approved by the Board
of Trustees.
Bringing together a diverse faculty presents challenges as
well, but BPCS’s planning team believes that the school’s mission-driven focus
on teacher recruitment and retention strategies will result in a faculty that
is an appropriate reflection of the community. BPCS believes also that the
International Baccalaureate program’s focus on global issues and foreign
language learning will both enhance the experience of our students and draw
talented teachers from a variety of backgrounds. Co-curricular programs will furthermore allow
students to welcome into the community guests and speakers who represent a wide
range of cultures and experiences.
Commitment to
Teacher Quality
Brooklyn
Prospect Charter
School’s planning team
ardently believes that teacher quality makes the most significant contribution
to student learning and to the creation of a school culture that supports and
values intellectual risk-taking and creative, independent thought. They are supported in this belief by The
Center for Public Education, which argues that a population of quality teachers
has the potential to close the gap in academic achievement between students
from traditionally poor, non-white, and/or urban backgrounds and their
peers. Good teachers, they suggest, have
a substantial effect on student achievement, especially when assigned to work
with disadvantaged students. The Center
points to the following studies:
- Teacher quality more heavily influenced
differences in student performance than did race, class, or school of the
student; disadvantaged students benefited more from good teachers than
did advantaged students (Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004).
- Achievement gains from having an effective teacher
could be almost three times as large for African American students than
for white students, even when comparing students with the same prior
school achievement (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).
- The effects of teacher quality accumulate
over the years. Fifth-grade math students in Tennessee who had three consecutive
highly effective teachers scored between 52 and 54 percentile points ahead
of students who had three consecutive teachers who were least effective,
even though both groups had the same achievement rates prior to entering
second grade. A similar study in Texas showed a difference of 34 percentile
points in reading and 49 percentile points in math (Sanders & Rivers,
1996; Jordan, Mendro, & Weerasinghe, 1997).
BPCS’s primary
educational agenda is to provide students with highly qualified teachers. We believe that interaction with skilled educational
professionals in a school culture that values intellectual achievement will
help all students make significant academic gains. Teachers will be required to collaboratively
participate in approximately twenty hours of professional development per month,
focused largely on methods to differentiate instruction based on assessment
data so that classroom time can be used effectively for every student.
BPCS recognizes the extent of the competition for New York City's most
coveted educators and is committed to recruiting and training the best and
brightest teachers. Using creative and
aggressive recruiting strategies, BPCS will employ faculty members who have
demonstrated a high level of individual competency and a commitment to the
profession. BPCS will target recruitment
efforts on those teachers who have demonstrated measurable success in raising
student achievement, those who combine scholarly mastery of their subject matter
with knowledge of how children learn, and those who have been recognized by their
peers as professionals in their field, as some examples of traits used to
identify potential faculty members. Successful
recruitment will depend on a commitment to year-round recruiting efforts, the
use of both traditional and internet resources, and the cultivation of
relationships with the nation’s top universities and local and national
graduate programs in education. Teachers will be drawn to BPCS by the
promise of a collaborative school community that will value their hard work,
their erudition and their professionalism; by the opportunity to build solid moral and intellectual relationships with
students through the advisory program; by the advantage of exciting
opportunities for continued professional development; and by the appeal of
attractive, flexible, performance-based compensation packages.
Because BPCS is committed to the continued professional
development of its faculty, new teachers will participate in two weeks of
on-campus training in the summer as well as a week of off-campus training in
the implementation of the International Baccalaureate program. Teachers will be expected to collaborate on a
regular basis and will be scheduled for at least one planning period per week
with their partner teachers (math/science,
ELA/Social Studies, Foreign Language/Art).
Teachers will furthermore have weekly meetings which are specifically designated as time to
collaborate in the development of
differentiated instruction for individual students. An
additional meeting of the entire faculty will also be called once per month. With
what we are confident will be a talented faculty, we expect that a mentor
teacher program will be developed as the school and the faculty grows.
All
new teachers will be required to attend three weeks of summer professional
development. Returning teachers will be
required to participate in one day of new teacher orientation and one week of
summer professional development.
Week 1 IB Training second week in July 2009 all new teachers
Attend the three-day MYP Conference in
Princeton NJ
Thursday and Friday retreat
Topics
Include:
Applying IB to the
BPCS curriculum
BPCS school
culture and educational philosophy
Define the
“Brooklyn Prospect way of teaching”
Week 2 Faculty Orientation August 17th-21st
2009
Topics Include:
Academic expectations for students
of BPCS
Conduct expectations for students
and faculty
Discipline procedures
Collaborative Culture
Advisory, study skills, and
secondary literacy
Differentiated instruction, CTT and
Special Ed
ELL
Writing
School-wide teaching philosophy and
IB
Establishing School Culture
Week 3 Faculty planning time August 24th -28th
2009
All faculty are expected to be on
site planning with their co-teachers.
The Executive Director will review
faculty responsibilities for student orientation.
Commitment to the
Success of All Students
The BPCS planning team contends that academic excellence
begins with high-quality teachers but that it also requires an innovative
curriculum and substantial student support services to help all students
achieve to the best of their ability. While
providing academic experiences with high-quality educators is our primary mode
for making progress with all students, BPCS has additional programs and
practices such as after school tutoring, Summer Academy,
and differentiated instruction to support at risk students. Details of these programs are available in
Attachment 23. A unique feature of BPCS
that supports a broad range of students is our Advisory Program.
Modeled after independent school advisory as well as the
advising program at Baccalaureate School for Global Education (a public IB school in
Queens) and at the Bronx
Lab School
(a public district high school), the BPCS advisory program will empower faculty
to identify and intervene with students at risk of academic failure. Our school schedule sets aside thirty minutes
per day for students to meet with their advisory group, ensuring that all
students have the daily opportunity to work closely with a faculty member in a
small group setting.
Just as teacher-student relationships are crucial for
learning in the classroom, the relationships between the advisor and the
student are central to the advisory program.
Because advisors will spend time with students in a variety of settings
and because a major aspect of their role will be identifying and intervening to
help students at risk of academic failure, faculty will be supported in their
role as advisors by professional development training in the use of the “Facets
of Success” counseling materials developed by Dr. Robert Ziffer of the
University of Pennsylvania. The “Facets”
program aids advisors in identifying potential risk factors in students by
encouraging the development of honest supportive relationships between advisors
and students. A multiple part survey
designed to be filled out in an interview style session between the advisor and
student helps to facilitate a discussion of the student’s conception of self in
three keys areas linked to academic achievement: learning skills, states of
mind, and supports. The survey asks
students to evaluate ninety-five positively-phrased statements that cluster
around specific topics. In the learning
skills survey, statements reveal patterns in students’ memory skills,
comprehension, self-expression, and organization. In the state of mind survey, statements
reveal trends in students’ thoughts, attention patterns, and emotions. In the supports survey, statements reveal
students’ feelings of safety, the quality of their relationships and the skill
development support they encounter. The
completed survey allows advisors and students a launching point for discussions
fostering meta-cognitive awareness in all students and in addressing areas that
may impede a student’s academic progress.
The program materials also advise students and advisors about potential
steps to help students and their teachers overcome students’ identified weaknesses. Records of the surveys will allow advisors
and teachers to track students’ progress throughout their year(s) at BPCS and
will prepare both advisors and teachers to provide more useful formative
feedback.
The BPCS advisory
groups will also be an opportunity for faculty to work individually with
students to develop their literacy skills.
In a setting that allows for
personalized attention, advisors will
coach students in their progress as readers and writers. Differentiating reading instruction to
developmentally appropriate levels, advisors will encourage student growth in phoneme
awareness, vocabulary knowledge, decoding practices, and reading comprehension
strategies such as monitoring comprehension, making inferences, generating
questions, and summarizing main ideas. Providing
time for independent student reading, a process which fosters the development
of reading motivation and background knowledge, the advisory’s secondary
literacy program will provide students with access to a library of books from Random House's
catalogue (a pledged donation from the CEO of Random House). Students will also be encouraged to generate
their own written reactions to the texts they encounter, as reading and writing
are mutually supportive activities. The
BPCS leaders believe that giving students time in school specifically devoted
to reading a variety of challenging texts and writing in response to their
construction of meaning in the texts will build both comprehension and critical
thinking skills. The leadership of BPCS
will select a literacy curriculum similar to those proposed by the National
Institute for Literacy, for example, the Corrective
Reading approach, which “studies generally show that when
implemented consistently (at least 4 days a week) by well-trained teachers, the
growth rate in reading increases to two or three grade equivalents in one year”
or the Strategic Reading approach,
which has also demonstrated a significant impact on at-risk students’ scores on
the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test for students in the Baltimore and
Philadelphia school systems (National Institute for Literacy website).
Commitment to Academic
Preparation
In order to plan and support student learning most
successfully, BPCS will implement a curriculum based on the International
Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme and will devote significant time, energy
and resources to building connective relationships between students and faculty
through the advisory program. We will ensure that our curriculum is aligned
with the standards defined by New
York State
regarding content and assessment, and the sequence of the BPCS curriculum will
prepare our students to be successful on the city-and state-wide
assessments.
International Baccalaureate at BPCS:
The International Baccalaureate (IB) is the world’s premier
secondary and primary academic program.
While American curriculum has vacillated between “progressive” and
“back-to-basics” approaches, IB has steadily refined and improved their
approach to teaching and learning for the past 40 years. American educators, including New York City
Department of Education, have recognized the tremendous positive impact of the
IB program, leading to annual double digit growth of IB programs in public
schools over the past decade. (Source: IBO website www.ibo.org) IB is seeing tremendous growth among schools
who want a broad range of students to strive for world class standards. Although the empirical research on MYP is
still limited, there is significant anecdotal
evidence that IB is an effective program for a broad range of
students. Jay Matthews, one of America’s most
recognized education reporters, documented IB’s virtues in his 2005 book, Supertest, How International Baccalaureate
Can Strengthen Our Schools.
The International Baccalaureate will provide a world
recognized credential while supporting the Brooklyn Prospect
Charter School
mission. The International Baccalaureate
has two programs that will be used at Brooklyn Prospect: the Middle Years
Programme (MYP) and the Diploma Programme (DP).
The International Baccalaureate Organization designed the MYP
to meet the educational requirements of students aged between 11 and 16 years
(grades 6-10). The MYP’s global focus
and interdisciplinary approach is ideal for a student body with a broad range
of academic and personal backgrounds such as the one at BPCS, and the project-based
program and service learning components of the program will positively
contribute to the creation of a distinct school culture at BPCS. The MYP relies on holistic learning that
explicitly emphasizes the links between the disciplines, provides a global view
of situations and cultivates multicultural awareness. The curriculum is concerned with developing
students’ skills, knowledge and attitudes as they learn about their own and
others’ social and national cultures.
The program furthermore emphasizes the acquisition of both written and
oral communication skills, which are fundamental to learning, as they support
inquiry and understanding and promote student reflection and expression. Finally, the MYP presents knowledge as an
integrated whole. When teachers of the
same group of students work together planning the curriculum, teachers are
empowered both to draw explicit connections between disciplines and to promote
student awareness of the interrelatedness of subject content and their
lives. All MYP subjects provide a
curricular framework with delineated aims and objectives which teachers will
use to provide both formative and summative student feedback. Teachers will design their curricula to help
students fulfill those objectives, will assess student progress using clearly
defined and explicitly shared discipline- and assignment-specific criteria, and
will rely on their professional expertise in making qualitative judgments.
Other New York
State public IB schools
have demonstrated that the MYP approach can be closely aligned with NYS
learning standards. The Baccalaureate School
for Global Education (a public IB school in Queens),
uses MYP and achieves outstanding student performance on the NYS tests. The MYP does not dictate content. It guides the approach while leaving specific
content choices to the individual school.
BPCS will make curricular choices to give its student the best
opportunity for success on the NYS tests.
The
MYP and NYS standards both hold students to high expectations and are closely
aligned in their language. For example,
the NYS Mathematics communication strand requires students to “organize and
consolidate their mathematical thinking through communication.” The MYP Mathematics communication objective
reads: “At the end of the course, students should be able to communicate
mathematical facts, ideas, methods, results and conclusions using: appropriate
language and symbols; and a variety of media and technologies.” The NYS standards for English Language Arts
are parallel to the MYP standards for language development as well. NYS 8th
grade standard 3 reads: “Students will read, write, listen, and speak for critical analysis and evaluation.” The MYP Language A standard reads: “By the
end of year 3, students will be able to: communicate information clearly
and explore challenging ideas and issues for a variety of purposes and specific
audiences, using forms appropriate for the purpose and features appropriate to
the form (e.g. focused questions).” Brooklyn
Prospect’s MYP program clearly will be closely aligned with the expectations
laid out in the NYS standards.
Brooklyn Prospect will begin curriculum development during
the planning year 2008-09. This process
will include visiting several public New York
State middle schools that use IB
and/or MYP, including BSGE, Northside-Blodgett
Middle School in Corning,
NY, and Albany Preparatory
Charter School. From these schools, Brooklyn Prospect will
acquire “off-the-shelf” curriculum materials, including textbooks and subject
programs, to use as a foundation for developing curriculum. Throughout the planning year, the Academic
planners, led by the Executive Director, will meet to create unit objectives,
areas of interaction and sample lesson plans.
During the planning year, the Academic Planning team will complete a
thorough 6th grade curriculum and the advisory program curriculum
and intends to make significant progress towards developing a 7 – 12
curriculum. For new grades, every
teacher will either submit a “home-grown” curriculum plan for review by a
mentor teacher by the end of the faculty planning week (August 24th-29th)
or use a commercial curricular program.
On-going curricular development will take place during our professional
development meetings and during teacher planning sessions.
In order to implement the MYP effectively for its
population, BPCS will require students to attend a week-long program prior to matriculation that will focus on student
organization and study skills and will help orient students to the program.
BPCS will also offer Collaborative Team Teaching in the classroom
with learning specialists, English
Language Learning instruction, extended
day tutoring for students having academic difficulties, and, after the first year of operation, a six-week Summer Academy
for students at risk of academic failure.
Given the broad framework of MYP, we believe completion of
the Middle Years Programme is achievable for every student. Successful completion of the MYP would
prepare each student for entrance into the Diploma Programme, but fulfilling
all of the requirements for the Diploma Programme in every subject may not be
appropriate for every student. The MYP
is accessible to a broad range of students, yet the Diploma Programme will
require students to be grouped by ability and interest during 11th and 12th
grade. The full IB Diploma Programme encourages students to pose challenging
questions, think meta-cognitively about their learning, “develop a strong sense
of their own identity and culture and develop the ability to communicate with
and understand people from other countries and cultures” (www.ibo.org). Students must research a topic of
individual interest and write an extended essay answering their own
question. Students must complete
coursework for the interdisciplinary Theory of Knowledge course, which is “designed
to provide coherence by exploring the nature of knowledge across disciplines,
encouraging an appreciation of other cultural perspectives” (www.ibo.org).
Finally, students must participate in the school’s Creativity, Action,
Service program, which fosters students’ “awareness and appreciation of life
outside the academic arena” through athletic, artistic and civic activity (www.ibo.org). Students may qualify for a full IB
Diploma (6 subjects) or qualify in one or more subjects, depending on the
student’s motivation and commitment.
BPCS recognizes that although the IB program may not be appropriate for
every student, every student should strive and will be encouraged to qualify in
at least one subject.
One major difference between MYP and the Diploma Programme
is the lack of standardized testing. The MYP demands an interdisciplinary
philosophy, ongoing professional development and curricular focus but does not
require comprehensive summative standardized assessment. The state and Terra Nova will be the
standardized test of record for BPCS. Students in MYP must complete a personal
project and in-class assessments that are reviewed by IBO; however, BPCS will
have flexibility to make curricular choices so that a broad range of students
will successfully complete MYP.
School Community
The Brooklyn
Prospect Charter
School planning team has
been influenced by Dr. Deborah Stipek and Professor Carol Dweck in their desire
and plan to promote a school culture that supports and values intellectual
risk-taking and creative, independent thought.
Dr. Stipek suggests that the following factors most heavily influence
student motivation: the need for autonomy or self-determination, competency,
interpersonal connection, purpose, interest, and novelty. Professor Dweck has shown that cultivating an
understanding of malleable intelligence can positively influence both student
approaches to learning and student achievement.
Brooklyn Prospect Charter
School faculty will
concentrate on promoting self- motivated students and on fostering views of
intelligence that promote student achievement.
An important
component of establishing school culture rests in the faculty modeling an
environment of intellectual engagement, caring, and respect. Through their daily interaction with
the students, the faculty will facilitate building a positive
academically-oriented school culture. As
a small school with small classes and few students overall, every student will
be known to every community member.
Data-Driven Instruction and Assessment
Upon entering Brooklyn
Prospect Charter
School hallways and
classrooms a visitor should be able to sense that this school is
different. Students will be engaged in
academic pursuits in collaborative settings.
In every classroom, observers will witness highly skilled teachers
working closely with individual students.
When asked about their studies, students will speak passionately about
their knowledge and its usefulness in their world. This qualitative evidence of student
achievement will be supported by the results of our accountability plan. Quantitative results will be used to diagnose
student ability level and to measure school wide student progress and
achievement. The long term academic
focus of the school will be on college preparation and completion of the IB
program.
Brooklyn
Prospect Charter
School will have the
following student achievement goals:
- Brooklyn Prospect Charter
School students will
meet or exceed the New York State Board of Regents student performance
standards for public schools. As measured by state assessments given in
grade eight, 75% of students who have been enrolled at Brooklyn Prospect Charter
School for at least two years will achieve proficiency or exceed standards
(i.e., Levels 3 or 4, respectively).
- All
students will demonstrate yearly progress toward those larger goals with
consistent yearly gains by same student cohorts as measured by the
standardized assessment administered in the Brooklyn Prospect
Charter School,
beginning in grade 6.
- As a
collective group (all students taking the state assessments), Brooklyn
Prospect Charter School will outperform the mean rate of achieving
proficiency or exceeding standards of other non-exam school middle schools
in CSD 15.
- All
students will complete the International Baccalaureate Middle Years
Program (MYP) requirements
While we will strive for a pass rate higher than 75% on
the 8th grade state exams, 75% pass rate would make BPCS one of the
top two highest performing middle schools in District 15, and much, much higher
performing than any of the 8 non-selective middle schools.
In looking beyond the basic standards required by the New
York State Board of Regents, Brooklyn
Prospect Charter
School will focus on developing
in our students the following additional skills and competencies: creativity,
critical thinking, expression, innovation, inquiry, problem solving, reflection
and teamwork. Most importantly, we will strive to motivate our
students to become life-long learners who live healthy, fulfilled lives.
We will implement a fully integrated curriculum that not only measures academic
achievement but also considers the development of the whole person, in a
community where academic
skills and habits of mind transcend the classroom and become part of the
culture.
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