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.
