York City High School Research Articles

Can Teacher Collaboration Buffer Against a Reliance on Exclusionary Discipline? An Exploratory Study of Collegial Social Network and Functional Community Theories in New York City High Schools

This study investigates the association between teachers’ perceptions of collaboration and the use of exclusionary discipline in New York City public high schools in 2017. We draw on the existing theories of collegial social networks and functional communities to explain how teachers work together to shape the school environment in which students experience discipline. Using multiple linear regression analysis, we found that teachers’ perception of collaboration within their work environment was associated with lower rates of exclusionary discipline. Our results suggest that administrators could utilize the lever of teacher collaboration when trying to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline within schools. Additionally, programs aimed at providing alternatives to exclusionary discipline may benefit from greater explicit inclusion of collaborative practices.

School-level self-reported versus objective measurements of body mass index in public high school students

Population-level surveillance of student weight status (particularly monitoring students with a body mass index (BMI) ≥95th percentile) remains of public health interest. However, there is mounting concern about objectively measuring student BMI in schools. Using data from the nation's largest school district, we determined how closely students' self-reported BMI approximates objectively-measured BMI, aggregated at the school level, to inform decision-making related to school BMI measurement practices. Using non-matched data from n = 82,543 students with objective height/weight data and n = 7676 with self-reported height/weight from 84 New York City high schools (88% non-white and 75% free or reduced-price meal-eligible enrollment), we compared school-level mean differences in height, weight, BMI, and proportion of students by weight status, between objective and self-reported measures. At the school-level, the self-reported measurement significantly underestimated weight (−1.38 kg; 95% CI: −1.999, −0.758) and BMI (−0.38 kg/m2; 95% CI: −0.574, −0.183) compared to the objective measurement. Based on the objective measurement, 12.1% of students were classified as having obesity and 6.3% as having severe obesity (per CDC definition); the self-report data yielded 2.5 (95% CI: −1.964, −0.174) and 1.4 (95% CI: −2.176, −0.595) percentage point underestimates in students with obesity and severe obesity, respectively. This translates to 13% of students with obesity and 21% of students with severe obesity being misclassified if using self-reported BMI. School-level high school students' self-reported data underestimate the prevalence of students with obesity and severe obesity and is particularly poor at identifying highest-risk students based on BMI percentile.

The Social Structure of School Resource Disparities: How Social Capital and Interorganizational Relationships Matter for Educational Equity

One potentially underestimated aspect of resource inequity in U.S. public schools is access to social capital in external organizational environments. This research examines partnerships among 211 New York City high schools and 918 partner organizations from 2001 to 2005 as sources of external school social capital providing resources that can strengthen organizational capacity to improve educational opportunities and outcomes. The findings, based on an innovative analysis combining content analysis, social network analysis, and multilevel modeling, demonstrate that four partnership characteristics are important in this context: (1) how long partnerships last versus how many there are, (2) partners concentrating resources in a particular area versus across diverse complementary areas, (3) partners being densely connected to other schools and partners rather than being central in the overall school–partner network, and (4) partners conveying instructional resources versus other kinds of resources. Hence, educational research and policy should more broadly conceptualize how schools’ external organizational environments matter for educational equity and the role particular kinds of partnerships can play.

An Action Research Study of Using Group-Based Remote Learning with ESL High School Students in English Language Arts

At the time of writing, New York City high schools had been working remotely for a year, with educators facing some great challenges. Working remotely marked a significant difference in the way we teach and the way our students learn. Classroom spaces were no longer room numbers on doors; they were virtual meeting room numbers on platforms like Teams or Google Classroom, and they were accessible from anywhere by Wi-Fi. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2020), school closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic affected over 1.5 billion students and families. The Covid-19 pandemic presented multiple challenges for teaching students with English as a second language in an online instructional environment, but also opportunities for collaboration, training, and communication for inclusive educators to strive to meet the needs of their students. This article addresses the following teacher-researcher questions: 1) What opportunities do I find most rewarding teaching in an online environment to students for whom English is a second language? 2) What do I find to be most challenging teaching English second language (ESL) students in the online context? 3) How can media play a part in online teaching and learning, and how do students respond to online learning with these mixed media platforms? 4) What recommendations can be offered to other inclusive educators who are teaching online? The researcher discusses the methodological approach used to conduct the research, using methods including surveys and field notes. Further research conducted was based on the researcher’s journal of field notes kept throughout teaching a unit titled “Beowulf.” An analysis of student assessment data is also provided to show progress, where applicable, for one class of English Second Language students.

Building science knowledge, identity, and interest using place-based learning with non-dominant urban undergraduate and high school students

During remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed and implemented a place-based, 5E mini-unit for New York City high school and community college Earth science students, most of whom identify as belonging to non-dominant groups. As well as supporting standard science skills such as graphing and interpreting data, we leveraged active learning and culturally responsive pedagogies such as reasoning by analogy, storytelling, virtual field trips, and sketching. These strategies were aimed at developing science content and skills, science identities, and science interest. The mini-unit was taught over 6 to 7.5 hours. Pre-and post-surveys for 107 students from three schools showed significant gains in learning (38% increase; p= <0.0001). Science identity measurements increased slightly although they stayed relatively low. Science interest measurements were higher with small increases. Teacher influence and science classroom experiences ranked as the most important influencers of science interest. For 33 community college students, no correlation was found between content learning, science identity, and science interest. In this group, females and White students had higher scores for all three measures. Between pre- and post-survey, science identity increased, particularly for Black students, while science interest decreased for all but White students. For all students, overall increases between pre- and post-survey suggest the pedagogical approaches used during remote synchronous learning were successful at helping students grow as scientists.

NYC Mayor promises mental telehealth support for HS students

All New York City high school students will have access to mental health support through telehealth programs, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Jan. 26, his first major effort to address growing concerns about student well‐being, Chalkbeat New York reported. “This year we're rolling out the biggest student mental health program in the country,” Adams said during his annual State of the City speech. “We will provide our high school students with everything from telehealth care to community‐based counseling, depending on their individual needs.” Many students experienced trauma during the pandemic, including the loss of loved ones and frayed social bonds during long periods of isolation. Mental health professionals have seen increases in anxiety, suicidal thoughts and behavior challenges; trends that have raised alarms. School districts across the country are increasingly leaning on telehealth, which may help ease some barriers to mental health care and could make students or families more likely to attend sessions. Still, telehealth requires access to devices, internet, and private space, which may be difficult to guarantee depending on whether students will be expected to access services from home. The city is still exploring how to deliver telehealth services, a spokesperson for the city's health department wrote in an email, offering no further comment about how the program will work.

“The Police State in Franklin K. Lane”: Desegregation, Student Resistance, and the Carceral Turn at a New York City High School

This essay seeks to understand the origins, development, and consequences of school policing and student discipline at Franklin K. Lane High School in New York City. During the fevered years of the late 1960s, perhaps no other school in the country saw more tension, violence, repression, and resistance. What took place there represented a kind of denouement in the city’s decades-long battles over race, class, policing, discipline, desegregation, community control, and student rights. In centering the happenings at Lane, this essay demonstrates how the logics and politics of school policing and student discipline were forged not only from the top down, by government officials at the highest levels, but also from the bottom up, in the complex interplay between the parents, student organizers, teachers, and administrators at the school. It also demonstrates how city officials leveraged individual school conflicts into broader carceral expansions that affected the entire public education system.

Christopher Dawson Comes to a New York City High School

Christopher Dawson Comes to a New York City High School

Arturo Schomburg's Place in an Antiracist Curriculum

In this paper, I argue the benefits of incorporating a study of the life and archival works of scholar Arturo Schomburg into the canon of an antiracist, culturally responsive and sustaining education curriculum. Scholars traditionally study Schomburg in the context of the Latin American independence movements or in relation to his involvement with the Harlem Renaissance. In this paper, I discuss Schomburg's life and show how two of his works, Excerpt from Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our Schools and Colleges and "A Negro Digs Up His Past," mirror the rhetoric used by antiracist educators and activists today. Finally, I describe the pedagogical merit in Schomburg's archival work as a basis for a culturally responsive and sustaining education unit of study in a New York City high school English class.

When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice

When Do Informational Interventions Work? Experimental Evidence from New York City High School Choice

Supporting Mental Health in School Settings: Findings from a Qualitative Evaluation

Objective: In this paper, we describe results from stakeholder interviews conducted to assess implementation and perceived outcomes of a project, implemented in 92 New York City middle and high schools, and focused on building the mental health-related skills of school personnel and promotion of healthier school environments. Methods: As part of a mixed-methods evaluation, we conducted 59 key stakeholder interviews with staff of participating community-based organizations and schools. Interview topics included mental health needs, project activities, engagement by school staff, strengths and challenges of the initiative, and perceived impact. Results: At the start of the project, interviewees reported difficulty comprehending the model and accepting its utility, given the direct service needs of students. Although concerns remained, we found positive impact, including increased awareness of mental health issues and their root causes, a greater sensitivity to students' social and emotional challenges, and improved capacity to manage behavioral issues in the classroom. Conclusions: Although targeted approaches are needed for high-risk youth, population-level approaches may increase mental health knowledge and skills and support transformation leading to healthier school environments.

Reaching Kinesthetic Learners Over Distance

Erickson, a New York City high school student, and I were working on his algebra homework over Zoom, specifically parabolas. We broke down the motion of a basketball and compared it to a parabola. He happened to have a small hoop on the back of his door and when he tried the motion himself, it was clear something clicked. You see, Erickson is a kinesthetic learner. During the pandemic, it has been challenging to design interactive materials and lessons for different types of learners. Distance learning disproportionality favors visual learners, followed by aural; however, reaching our kinesthetic learners has been a challenge.

“The Rise of the Phoenix”: Empowering Learners to Create Their Own Learning Cultures and Transform Their School

An account of a persistently failing New York City high school’s rapid transformation. Urban Assembly School for Green Careers had a 39% graduation rate in 2013 and ranked in the bottom 1% of high schools citywide. As a transformation strategy, the school employed an innovative educational design known as Learning Cultures, which distributes responsibility for learning to learners. After the first year of implementation the graduation rate rose by 11%. After two years of implementation the school received a “well developed” rating on its external quality review. After 4 years the graduation rate doubled. This report describes the school design and provides an account of educational outcomes.

Culturally Responsive Restorative Discipline

Increasingly, district leaders are turning to a community-based alternative to suspension called restorative practices (RP’s). While they correlate with lower suspension rates, Black, Latinx, and Native students continue to be more frequently and harshly disciplined than their White peers (Office of Civil Rights, 2014). The Kirwan Institute (2015) found that Black students comprised 18% of the total United States K-12 public school population, but comprised 35% of the total number of students suspended. The current study uses data from a year-long ethnographic multi-case study of three New York City high schools using RP’s to improve school culture and reduce suspension rates. My analysis uncovers the mechanisms by which these practices, presumably democratic and egalitarian, reproduce traditional forces of power unless the staff facilitating them already happen to have a strong relationship with the students involved. Findings lead to recommendations for how staff can be more equitable and culturally responsive in their implementation of restorative practices.

Sexual health and Risk-Taking behaviors among New York city high school students: variation by sexual orientation and gender identity status

Few sexual health studies have examined subgroup differences in youth risk behaviors that sufficiently account for sexual orientation and gender identity. This study used 2017 New York City Youth Risk Behavior Survey data (N = 10,191), a stratified cluster-sampled survey, to examine descriptive differences in the prevalence of risky sexual behaviors, such as failing to use contraception and engaging in sexual activity while intoxicated, among others. Weighted logistic regression analyses revealed that LGBTQ youth were more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors than non-LGBTQ youth, placing them at increased risk of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Results suggest the need for prevention and intervention programs, and more fundamentally, basic health education and care for these adolescents whose risk for sexual and reproductive health concerns outweighs their non-LGBTQ peers.

Closing the Gap to Postsecondary Success: A High School and University Partnership

Low-income students, many of whom reside in urban environments, often lack the support they need to prepare for postsecondary education, identify the best fit schools, apply for financial aid, enroll and persist in their studies, and, ultimately, graduate with a degree. Since 2014, a university school counseling department and a New York City high school collaborated to provide targeted and focused college readiness, awareness, and engagement activities to each and every student in the senior class through the direct involvement of school counseling preservice graduate students. The project’s primary goals focused on student outcomes related to an improved graduation rate and postsecondary participation rate, with varying degrees of success. Participants in the high school–university partnership realized the value and importance of engaging students much earlier in career and college planning process.

Accuracy

Accuracy Elizabeth Poreba (bio) This poem suggests that accuracy is not sufficient—maybe not even necessary?—when telling certain kinds of truth. That is an abstract way of saying that I often find myself stymied when trying to convey something meaningful to a person who keeps slowing me down to check out on the particulars. When I told him about the buffaloleft dead on the plains, the killing of buffaloso that there would be no more Indians,about the carcasses left to beasts and weather,bones piled so high you could walk and not touch groundand about the haulers who sold the bones to burnfor refining sugar or carving into buttons,all about the wasteful cunning of it,the bones sticking in my throat as I spoke—he asked Bison or buffalo?his mind a granite impossibleto inscribe, an impervious surface,like one of those graffiti-proof subway carsgliding steely into the station. [End Page 123] Elizabeth Poreba Elizabeth Poreba is a retired New York City high school English teacher and longtime resident of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her poems have appeared in several journals, including Commonweal and JFSR. Wipf and Stock has published two collections of her work, Vexed and Self Help, A Guide for the Retiring. elizabethporeba14@gmail.com Copyright © 2019 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.

Between the Global and the Local: Human Rights Discourse and Engagement in Two New York City High Schools

While there has been a rise in human rights education at the global level, little attention has been paid to how it is integrated into schools in the United States. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected in two diverse high schools across an academic year, S. Garnett Russell investigates the extent to which human rights education influences students' knowledge and attitudes about human rights and how students engage with and translate global human rights into the local context. Although the majority of students in the study showed a superficial understanding or sense of distance around global human rights issues, Russell finds that students were better able to “vernacularize” universal notions of rights into their own local context, particularly around issues linked to police brutality and racial discrimination. Findings from the study point to the importance of human rights education, particularly for marginalized students.

DNA Barcoding of Online Herbal Supplements: Crowd-sourcing Pharmacovigilance in High School.

Herbal medicinal products (HMPs) have grown increasingly popular in the United States, many of them with imported raw materials and sold online. Yet due to the lack of regulation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), manufacturers of the products can substitute or add in other herbs that are not advertised on the label. In this study, as part of the Urban Barcode Research Program (UBRP), an education initiative to engage New York City high school students in science, we aimed to taxonomically authenticate single-ingredient online-sold HMPs containing non-native plants through DNA barcoding of the internal transcribed spacer 2 region (ITS2) and matK. We were able to successfully barcode 20 HMPs, but four of these did not match the expected species. It was concluded that the four HMPs advertising astragalus, epazote, ginseng, and chanca piedra were contaminated/ substituted because their ITS2 and matK DNA sequences did not match the expected taxonomy in GenBank, a government database. Our study highlights the importance of herbal pharmacovigilance in the absence of strict government regulation of herbal supplements and motivates crowd-sourced DNA barcoding to enable American consumers make informed choices and be more empowered to safeguard their health.

Effective nationwide school-based participatory extramural program on adolescent body mass index, health knowledge and behaviors

BackgroundAdolescent obesity is a major public health concern. Open to all high school students regardless of weight status, HealthCorps is a nationwide program offering a comprehensive high school-based participatory educational program to indirectly address obesity. We tested a hypothesis that the HealthCorps program would decrease BMI z-scores among overweight or obese students, and reduce obesity rates, and evaluated its effects on health knowledge and behaviors.MethodsHealthCorps aimed to improve student knowledge and behaviors regarding nutrition quality, physical activity, sleep, breakfast intake, and mental resilience. Participating students received through HealthCorps coordinators weekly or bi-weekly classroom lessons either for a semester or a year in addition to various during- and after-school health-promoting activities and mentorship. Self-reported height and weight were collected along with questionnaires assessing knowledge and behaviors during 2013-2014 academic year among 14 HealthCorps-participating New York City high schools. This quasi experimental two-arm pre-post trial included 611 HealthCorps and 221 comparison arm students for the analytic sample. Sex-specific analyses stratified by weight status were adjusted for age and Hispanic ethnicity with clustering effects of schools and students taken into account.ResultsHealthCorps female overweight/obese and obese student had a significant decrease in BMI z-scores (post-pre delta BMI z-score = −0.16 (95%CI = (−0.26, −0.05), p = 0.004 for the former; and = −0.23 (−0.44, −0.03), p = 0.028, for the latter) whereas comparison female counterparts did not. The HealthCorps students, but not the comparison students, had a significant increase for all knowledge domains except for the breakfast realm, and reported a greater number of significant behavior changes including fruit and vegetable intake and physical activities.ConclusionsThe HealthCorps program was associated with reduced BMI z-score in overweight/obese and obese female adolescents, with enhanced health knowledge and behavior for both sexes. With its wide reach, this may be a promising program to help combat adolescent obesity in schools.Trial registrationThis study is registered as a clinical trial at the ClinicalTrials.gov registry with trial number NCT02277496 on September 10, 2014 (Retrospectively registered).