York City High School Research Articles

The exploration of New York City high school students' global literacy

Purpose – When facing greater demands in the international job market and the innovative development and use of technologies, the youth needs a new set of skills and attitudes to succeed in an increasing well‐educated global workforce. It is essential that educators prepare high school students' global literacy. In this paper, the authors survey high school students in New York City (NYC) to learn about their global literacy levels and to summarize results and interpret implications for educators.Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted a global literacy instrument to survey 2,157 high school students. They adopted an independent sample t‐test and an ANOVA to identify significant differences regarding demographic features on the Likert‐scale items, used cross‐tab analysis to present the profile of participants, and used the Pearson correlation coefficient to explore the degree of association between factors.Findings – From this global literacy scale, NYC high school students have relatively stron...

Household Transmission of 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Virus after a School‐Based Outbreak in New York City, April–May 2009

In April 2009, an outbreak due to infection with the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus (pH1N1) was investigated in a New York City high school. We surveyed household contacts of ill students to characterize the extent of transmission within households, identify contact groups at highest risk for illness, and assess the potential for preventing household transmission. Influenza-like illness (ILI) was reported by 79 of 702 household contacts (11.3% attack rate). Multivariate analysis showed that older age was protective: for each increasing year of age, the risk of ILI was reduced 5%. Additional protective factors included antiviral prophylaxis and having had a household discussion about influenza. Providing care for the index case patient and watching television with the index case patient were risk factors among parents and siblings, respectively. Fifty percent of cases occurred within 3 days of onset of illness in the student. These factors have implications for mitigating the impact of pH1N1 transmission.

Branching Out and Coming Back Together: Exploring the Undergraduate Experiences of Young Black Women

In January of 2010, Harvard Educational Review editor Chantal Francois sat down at a Manhattan diner with three young black women, two of whom were her former students at a New York City high school. Chantal invited the women to come together and share their experiences as freshmen at predominantly white institutions along the East Coast. While each of these young women drew largely from her own experiences transitioning into different college settings, each highlights themes from both Fordham's and Kynard's research—including the emotional stress that being confined by labels can cause and the importance of finding a cipher from which to draw strength. In this conversation, the women shed the layers they typically don in white educational settings, instead creating a space where they can be real, find comfort,and speak from the core. What's more, their stories echo the themes of talking black, talking back, fictive kinship, and complicity, which Iris Carter Ford's commentary describes as central to conversations about black women in America today. From Victoria, Imani, and Darleen, we hear firsthand accounts of the commitment to struggle and the communal strength that continue to exist in the sacred spaces carved out by young black women in American educational institutions.

A botanical macroscope.

In 2003 zoologists proposed a short, standardized DNA sequence from a uniform locality on the genome to serve as a DNA barcode to identify the species of tissue from almost all animals—reliably, quickly, and economically. In 2008 two New York City high school students, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss (1), used the accumulating barcode reference library to prove that about ¼ of fish items they purchased in Manhattan were inaccurately labeled. Their “Sushigate” investigation earned front page coverage in the New York Times and attention from top managers at major food retailers and caterers.

After the Bell Rings: Student Perceptions of After-School

Background/Context Research on after-school programs has traditionally focused on those programs serving students in younger grades but found positive correlations between student participation in enriching after-school activities and school engagement. For older students, particularly teenagers, there tends to be lower participation. Research has also shown that students learn at different rates and need different amounts of time with the same material. School-based after-school programs have been one policy intervention to address this need. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study sought to understand better why students in one New York City high school attended after-school sessions and what kept them coming. Who does not attend, and why not? Finally, was the time after school being used in a way that most benefited students? How might the insights of those students who did attend push educators to improve after-school programming, both in terms of the teaching and in terms of how we structure these sessions? Setting This study took place in a small public New York City high school with almost all students participating in the federal free and reduced lunch program. Research Design In this action research study conducted with her own students in her own classroom, the author sought to use student perceptions to make programmatic changes that ultimately benefited the students attending the program. Through surveys, exit slips, interviews, and journal entries, the author collected student opinions and perceptions of the school's after-school program and changed the structure of her after-school sessions to maximize both attendance and student outcomes. Data Collection and Analysis The data suggest that a loosely structured and flexible program with varied types of help and, most important, individual attention is an after-school model that appears to appeal to high school students, particularly in the upper grades. Teenagers need to feel that they get something out of attending. It is critical to have the support of school administrators who understand that attendance figures alone do not reflect “success.” Students reported frustration when they were unable to get help after school because the teacher or peer tutors were overextended. The author recommends that policy makers focus on the quality of service, instead of the quantity served, to create and maintain successful interventions for all students.

Spatial and temporal variations in traffic-related particulate matter at New York City high schools

Relatively little is known about exposures to traffic-related particulate matter at schools located in dense urban areas. The purpose of this study was to examine the influences of diesel traffic proximity and intensity on ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and black carbon (BC), an indicator of diesel exhaust particles, at New York City (NYC) high schools. Outdoor PM 2.5 and BC were monitored continuously for 4–6 weeks at each of 3 NYC schools and 1 suburban school located 40 km upwind of the city. Traffic count data were obtained using an automated traffic counter or video camera. BC concentrations were 2–3 fold higher at urban schools compared with the suburban school, and among the 3 urban schools, BC concentrations were higher at schools located adjacent to highways. PM 2.5 concentrations were significantly higher at urban schools than at the suburban school, but concentrations did not vary significantly among urban schools. Both hourly average counts of trucks and buses and meteorological factors such as wind direction, wind speed, and humidity were significantly associated with hourly average ambient BC and PM 2.5 concentrations in multivariate regression models. An increase of 443 trucks/buses per hour was associated with a 0.62 μg/m 3 increase in hourly average BC at an NYC school located adjacent to a major interstate highway. Car traffic counts were not associated with BC. The results suggest that local diesel vehicle traffic may be important sources of airborne fine particles in dense urban areas and consequently may contribute to local variations in PM 2.5 concentrations. In urban areas with higher levels of diesel traffic, local, neighborhood-scale monitoring of pollutants such as BC, which compared to PM 2.5, is a more specific indicator of diesel exhaust particles, may more accurately represent population exposures.

Mission matters: The cost of small high schools revisited

With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. We use data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. We find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission—comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally sized comprehensive schools. We also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes.

Small Schools, Large Districts: Small-School Reform and New York City's Students

Background/Context High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new “small” schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students “left behind” in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts. Research Design Using 10 years (1993–2003) of data on New York City high schools, we examine the potential systemic effects of small schools that have been identified by critics and researchers. We describe whether small schools, as compared with larger schools, serve an easier-to-educate student body, receive more resources, use those resources differently, and have better outcomes. Further, we examine whether there have been changes in segregation and resource equity across the decade contemporaneous with small-school reform efforts. Findings/Results We find that, although small schools do have higher per-pupil expenditures, lower pupil-teacher ratios, and a smaller share of special education students than larger schools, their students are disproportionately limited English proficient and poor, and their incoming students have lower test scores. Thus, the evidence is mixed with respect to claims that small schools serve an easier-to-educate student body. Systemwide, we find that segregation is relatively stable, and although there have been some changes in the distribution of resources, they are relatively modest. Conclusions/Recommendations If small schools do eventually promote higher achievement (considering their student mix and other factors that differentiate them from larger schools), many more will be needed to house the 91.5% of the students still attending large schools. Otherwise, strategies that work for the vast majority of students who do not attend small schools will need to be identified and implemented.

“Our Leaders Are Us”: Youth Activism in Social Movements Project

In this article, we describe the development and implementation of a project, “Our Leaders Are Us: Youth Activism in Social Movements”, that we undertook with New York City high school students exploring events leading up to and following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown. As part of a 50th anniversary celebration of the Brown decision, we designed a series of three workshops that sought to extend urban students’ knowledge of Brown, segregation, and activism and to examine the roles of young people in critical civil rights campaigns. In addition, we discussed with students the ways in which young people can be involved in contemporary social movements and the strategies they can use to effect what they perceive to be needed changes in their lives. Along with the researchers’ extensive field notes, the participating students completed questionnaires throughout the project so that their understanding of Brown and related issues could be documented. Using our findings, we suggest ways that educators can develop and implement similar programs for use in schools.

Children of a new world: society, culture, and globalization

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Children in Society, Culture, and the WorldPart I: Children in SocietyIntroduction to Part I 1 Immigration and Education in the United States 2 The IQ: A Cultural and Historical Framework 3 Creating New Identities: Youth and Ethnicity in New York City High Schools in the 1930s and 1940sPart II: Children in CultureIntroduction to Part II 4 Making and Remaking an Event: The Leopold and Loeb Case in American Culture5 A Sign of Family Disorder? Changing Representations of Parental Kidnapping6 Bringing It Home: Children, Technology, and Family in the Post-World War II WorldPart III: Children of a New Global WorldIntroduction to Part III 7 Children and Globalization 8 Children in Global Migrations 9 Children of a New World Index About the Author

Illuminating Chaucer through Poetry, Manuscript Illuminations, and a Critical Rap Album

Drawing connections between Chaucer, Eminem, and social issues, New York City high school teacher Tom Liam Lynch helped students become familiar with The Canterbury Tales. Students wrote poems of rhymed couplets about today’s social and political issues, created illuminated manuscripts, and recorded a rap CD. A book and album were published for wider distribution.

“I Don't Want My Ends to Just Meet; I Want My Ends Overlappin”: Personal Aspiration and the Rejection of Progressive Rap

This study uses genre analysis, which combines ethnography and the exploration of textual forms and norms (Swales, 1990), to explore responses to different genres of rap. The participants were working-class adolescent Blacks and Latinos enrolled in a New York City high school arts class in hip-hop production and poetry. Their teachers, active rap artists, favored “conscious rap,” an overtly politically progressive style. Their students, by contrast, preferred the more commercially successful style called hard-core rap, and they rejected the political message and norms entailed by the teachers' style. Whereas it is commonly assumed that hard-core rap is apolitical, this study, following Bynoe (2004) finds that hard-core rap in fact supports a strong capitalist ideology. The students find this ideology attractive because it supports their dreams and expectations of a successful and prosperous adulthood. By contrast, conscious rap paints them as victims whose only hope is a massive and unrealistic social change.

Debate as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

It is 2002, nearly a year after 9/11. A New York City high school receives a package emblazoned with the words ‘‘WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.’’ The police are summoned, the building evacuated, and the sender of the package frantically called. Inside the package, investigators find ... evidence. Debate evidence. The school had received a package of documents for New York Urban Debate League students, who were preparing to debate the national interscholastic debate topic for that year, ‘‘Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should establish a foreign policy significantly limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction.’’ Was the package dangerous? It did not contain a bomb. Yet suspicions about the box’s contents and those involved in the transaction lingered. This episode is a representative anecdote for the ‘‘global war on terror,’’ where lines separating friend and foe are persistently blurred, forcing combatants and bystanders alike to perform their allegiances in word and deed. A hyper-politicization of speech contours contemporary public discourse, policing the line between the sayable and unsayable and sorting people into neat categories such as ‘‘with us or with the terrorists.’’ We have seen this before. In another indefinite war of ideology, debate was similarly suspected of being a weapon of mass destruction capable of jeopardizing homeland security. As the Soviets tested their atom bomb in August of 1949, Americans worried that nuclear secrets had been passed to the USSR from communist sympathizers within the US government. Fear of being ‘‘sold out’’ by ‘‘fifth columnists’’ at home increased penalties for dissent, placing blame at the feet of anyone who dared undermine American security by sowing division.

Strategy-proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match

The design of the New York City (NYC) high school match involved trade-offs among efficiency, stability, and strategy-proofness that raise new theoretical questions. We analyze a model with indifferences—ties—in school preferences. Simulations with field data and the theory favor breaking indifferences the same way at every school—single tiebreaking—in a student-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism. Any inefficiency associated with a realized tiebreaking cannot be removed without harming student incentives. Finally, we empirically document the extent of potential efficiency loss associated with strategy-proofness and stability, and direct attention to some open questions. (JEL C78, D82, I21)

New Stakes and Standards, Same Ol' Spending? Evidence from New York City High Schools

In 1996, New York State began requiring all graduating high school students (starting with the Class of 1999) to pass rigorous end-of-course exams in five subjects. This study explores whether high school resources have been reallocated in the wake of these new standards and whether reallocation patterns differ among high- and low-graduation-rate schools. Using a six-year panel of school-level data, we model resources as a function of school and student characteristics, school graduation rates, and school fixed effects. Regression analyses reveal increases in direct services spending, while the percentage of more experienced and educated teachers fell. We find little evidence, though, of differential patterns related to graduation rates, with the exception of teacher licensure and nonpersonnel expenditures. The findings suggest that schools may have limited ability to redeploy nonteacher resources in the short term. While other funds may be reallocated, these represent a small share of total school resources.

Striving toward Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Surveillance: The View from New York City

Striving toward Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Surveillance: The View from New York City

Teaching to the Test: How No Child Left Behind Impacts Language Policy, Curriculum, and Instruction for English Language Learners

In the wake of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, standardized tests have become increasingly high-stakes. Yet English language learners (ELLs) typically score far below native English speakers, creating pressure to “teach to the test.” This article shares findings from an intensive year long study in 10 New York City high schools, detailing how high-stakes tests become defacto language policy in schools. Most schools and individual educators have increased the amount of English instruction ELLs receive; however, some have instead increased native language instruction as a test preparation strategy. Curriculum and instruction focuses on test content and strategies, and English as a second language classes have become more like English language arts classes for native English speakers. In bilingual classes, tests are found to promote monolingual instruction with test translations guiding decisions about language allocation.

The Mental Health Impact of 9/11 on Inner-City High School Students 20 Miles North of Ground Zero

Purpose To determine the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after 9/11 in a sample of New York City high school students and associations among personal exposure, loss of psychosocial resources, prior mental health treatment, and PTSD. Methods A total of 1214 students (grades 9 through 12) attending a large community high school in Bronx County, 20 miles north of “Ground Zero,” completed a 45-item questionnaire during gym class on one day eight months after 9/11. Students were primarily Hispanic (62%) and African American (29%) and lived in the surrounding neighborhood. The questionnaire included the PCL-T, a 17-item PTSD checklist supplied by the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The PCL-T was scored following the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD requiring endorsement of at least one repeating symptom, two hyperarousal symptoms, and three avoidance symptoms. Bivariate analysis comparing PTSD with personal exposure, loss of psychosocial resources, and mental health variables was done and multiple logistic regression was used to identify significant associations. Results There were 7.4 % of students with the PTSD symptom cluster. Bivariate analysis showed a trend for females to have higher rates of PTSD (males [6%] vs. females [9%], p = .06] with no overall ethnic differences. Five of the six personal exposure variables, and both of the loss of psychosocial resources and mental health variables were significantly associated with PTSD symptom cluster. Multiple logistic regression analysis found one personal exposure variable (having financial difficulties after 9/11, odds ratio [OR] = 5.27; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.9–9.7); both the loss of psychosocial resources variables (currently feeling less safe, OR = 3.58; 95% CI 1.9–6.8) and currently feeling less protected by the government, (OR = 4.04; 95% CI 2.1–7.7); and one mental health variable (use of psychotropic medication before 9/11, OR = 3.95; 95% CI 1.2–13.0) were significantly associated with PTSD symptom cluster. Conclusions We found a rate of PTSD in Bronx students after 9/11 that was much higher than other large studies of PTSD in adolescents done before 9/11. Adolescents living in inner cities with high poverty and violence rates may be at high risk for PTSD after a terrorist attack. Students who still felt vulnerable and less safe eight months later and those with prior mental health treatment were four times more likely to have PTSD than those without such characteristics, highlighting the influence of personality and mental health on development of PTSD after a traumatic event.

The Last Page

Signs and portents abounded that Good Friday in New Orleans as our group of New York City high school students, parents, and teachers rolled in to spend the spring break doing "relief" work. Lawns and green median strips sprouted campaign posters for the upcoming primary. Houses displayed signs for the twenty-two would-be mayors and numerous City Council wannabes. At times, they overwhelmed the lush magnolias, honeysuckle, and azaleas flowering even as the city struggled for new life. That anyone would want to be mayor of a soon-to-be-bankrupt city should have been a sign of hope. But it was the other signs during this Passover week that reminded us why we were there. Each house searched by rescue crews carried an X with a circle around it. In the triangles were notations: the date of the search, the initials of the crew, and the number of casualties, if any. Most of the time there was a zero, but sometimes a number stood as a memorial.

The New York City High School Match

We assisted the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) in designing a mechanism to match over 90,000 entering students to public high schools each year. This paper makes a very preliminary report on the design process and the first year of operation, in academic year 2003–2004, for students entering high school in fall 2004. In the first year, only about 3,000 students had to be assigned to a school for which they had not indicated a preference, which is only 10 percent of the number of such assignments the previous year. New York City has the largest public school system in the country, with over a million students. In 1969 the system was decentralized into over 30 community school districts. In the 1990s, the city began to take more centralized control (Mark Schneider et al., 2000), and in 2002, a newly reorganized NYCDOE began to reform many aspects of the school system. In May 2003, Jeremy Lack, then the NYCDOE Director of Strategic Planning, contacted one of us for advice on designing a new high-school matching process. The NYCDOE was aware of the matching process for American physicians, the National Resident Matching Program (Roth, 1984; Roth and E. Peranson, 1999). They wanted to know if it could be appropriately adapted to the city’s schools. The three authors of the present paper (and, at several crucial junctures, also Tayfun Sonmez) advised (and often convinced) Lack, his colleagues (particularly Elizabeth Sciabarra and Neil Dorosin), and the DOE’s software vendor, about the design of the match. I. The Prior (2002–2003) New York City Matching Procedure