- Students from PS 132 in Morrisania posed in front of a mural they made of the neighborhood. The school is one of five in the area that teaches using an acclaimed, arts-based curriculum.
Five Morrisania charter schools are among 15 in the city that have been honored for using a curriculum that improves student performance through hands-on teaching and the arts.
PS 132, also known as the Garrett A. Morgan School, and 14 other city schools were lauded for using a teaching method that focuses heavily on music, theater, visual art, dance, cooking and games to help raise learning levels among students, many of whom have had little prior exposure to the arts.
The Carl C. Icahn Charter School on Brook Ave., the Carl C. Icahn Charter School #4 on E. 174th St., the School for Inquiry and Social Justice on Morrison Ave. and JHS 22x are the other Morrisania schools that use the arts-intensive method.
A New York University study concluded a specialized curriculum called Active Learning Leads to Literacy helps raise test scores and strengthens students’ literacy and reasoning skills regardless of socio-economic levels. About 35,000 thousand students are enrolled in schools that use the arts-based program nationwide.
The arts-intensive method devised by the non-profit Learning through An Expanded Arts Program (LeAP) is funded with grants from private foundations and the federal government.
Among other findings, NYU researchers found:
- K-2 students in schools that stress the arts curriculum outperformed their peers almost 90 percent of the time in many of the literacy skills tested.
- Although 50 percent of kindergarten students in the selected schools started the year below grade level in 2011, 81 percent ended the year testing above grade level.
- Over 40 percent of the 6th through 8th grade English Language Learners who scored a level 1 on the state’s English language test improved to levels 2 or 3, compared with only 26 percent of students from other schools.
To learn more about LeAP, visit the organization’s website at www.leapnyc.org.
About Post Author
