The Beacon School
Encyclopedia
The Beacon School is a formerly alternative assessment
, now "performance-based assessment" public high school
on the Upper West Side
of Manhattan
, near Lincoln Center and Columbus Circle
. The initial founding of Beacon in 1993 was intended as an alternative to the Regents Exam-based testing system in favor of portfolio-based assessment. The school's purpose was also purportedly to keep class sizes down and total student population at, or just above, one thousand students. The total population, for example, was once listed in a 1998 high school selection guide as "less than 600 students", though now has 1,157 students.
Over time, Beacon was forced to accept certain aspects of the Regents-based testing curriculum, and to abandon its portfolio-assessment system as the sole method of graduation
, which it had been up until mid-1999. Beacon now utilizes, in its own words, "traditional testing ... [but] our students' progress is largely assessed through performance-based projects, completed individually and in groups. To graduate, students must present their best work to panels of teachers."
, 9th grade electives and English
. However, some band letters are cross-stream and even cross-grade level, leading to a diverse class with multiple age groups and grade levels. At the start of the 2009 school year the stream system was disbanded, and freshmen now have the same band organization as the other students. The reason for this change is unknown.
The band system is intended to instill a sense of stability in first-year students
who have just emerged from junior high school, where most, if not all, classes contain the members of a single grade level and do not switch around from class to class. As a Beacon student advances in grade level, s/he is gradually given more opportunity to choose classes of his or her choice in the subject area of the band in question, rather than relying on his or her stream to do the selecting. This is both a preparatory measure for the university
system of class selection, where students are permitted to select all their classes themselves on an individual basis, as well as a means of allowing students the ability to find what interests them among the course offerings.
Beacon also offers several Advanced Placement courses for those that have shown merit for them. These courses can count for up to six college credit hours
at any university, depending on the subject(s) taken. AP courses are available currently in the math, language, and science departments. The history department is notable for its stand against offering such courses, preferring to offer challenging, but heterogeneously grouped classes in the twelfth grade.
Though the yearly schedule is officially broken up into two semesters
, these are not standard United States
college
semesters; rather, after one is over, students return to their previous classes with the same teachers for the second semester if it is a yearlong class or if they are freshmen or sophomores. Electives such as art or drama change each semester as long as the student has chosen to take one different than the one they were previously taking. In junior year, there are science courses, such as immunology, that last only one semester. The student has the opportunity to take another science the next semester. Chemistry is a year-long course, known as Advanced Chemistry, and is taken as a precursor to AP Chemistry.
hours is a strictly enforced graduation requirement, and can be fulfilled however a student likes, as long as s/he clears the work with a community service leader in writing before beginning it. The community service program is led by a faculty advisor but taught by a group of dedicated 11th and 12th graders called "The Community Service Leadership Team". This group of students plan lessons and activities to get lowerclassmen excited about community service placements across the city at non-profits such as the Added Value Farm in Redhook, Brooklyn and Community Voices Heard in East Harlem.
Beacon states:
stage crew, book
club, a biking club, a rock climbing
club, a dance
club, a Live Poets Society, art club, music performance, a photo
club, a Senior Committee (populated by seniors who are responsible for helping with plans for graduation and the annual senior trip), and a Model United Nations
club that has won awards at every conference it attended over the past few years, including several at the UNA-USA Conference, hosting students from around the world. The Beacon School has a very strong debate
team. In the past two years, Beacon has consistently won multiple levels of the state tournament. On March 2010, Beacon gained its first bid to the Tournament of Champions
and won the Lexington Winter Invitational. Another prominent club within the school is SMAC (Student Movement Against Cancer) where students unite in an effort to find a cure for cancer by raising funds for research. There is currently no student government or council, and SOS and other activists club have largely been disbanded.
Politically, the school hangs largely left of center, both in its student body and faculty outlook. There is a long tradition of organizing and attending protests; a number of faculty as well as students participate in these events.
In 2007 the school made front page news after David Andreatta confirmed that the school took illegal trips to the communist island of Cuba
. At the end of the school year the teacher involved, Nathan Turner, resigned. In 2005, then Lt. Governor Paterson sent his daughter on one such trip. Alumni reaction to the trips and the political nature is mixed, with some alumni continuing to be involved in liberal activism, while others have expressed frustration with the liberal leanings of their teachers and peers.
Educational travel has become, in more recent years, an important part of the educational culture. Class trip destinations include India, Cuba, Spain, England, Ireland, Venezuela, France, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa, and New Orleans. However, the school no longer sanctions trips to New Orleans for undisclosed reasons.
, softball
, track
, wrestling
boys and girls bowling
, boys and girls basketball
, boys and girls Ultimate
, boys and girls soccer, girls cross country
, and the fencing
team form an integral part of the culture at Beacon. The boys' baseball team won the B Division PSAL
championship in 2002 and 2003. Despite its size, these sports programs have been some of the most competitive in the city, most notably with the school's soccer program. The boys' and girls' soccer teams are consistently ranked amongst the highest in the State, and in 2010, both the boys' and girls' teams won the PSAL A Division Championship, making Beacon the first school in the history of the PSAL to win both the boys' and girls' championships in the same year. Because the school does not have a practice space of its own, the school uses many of the city's public access facilities.
Alternative assessment
In the education industry, alternative assessment or portfolio assessment is in direct contrast to what is known as performance evaluation, traditional assessment, standardized assessment or summative assessment...
, now "performance-based assessment" public high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
on the Upper West Side
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, near Lincoln Center and Columbus Circle
Columbus Circle
Columbus Circle, named for Christopher Columbus, is a major landmark and point of attraction in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South , and Central Park West, at the southwest corner of Central Park. It is the point from...
. The initial founding of Beacon in 1993 was intended as an alternative to the Regents Exam-based testing system in favor of portfolio-based assessment. The school's purpose was also purportedly to keep class sizes down and total student population at, or just above, one thousand students. The total population, for example, was once listed in a 1998 high school selection guide as "less than 600 students", though now has 1,157 students.
Over time, Beacon was forced to accept certain aspects of the Regents-based testing curriculum, and to abandon its portfolio-assessment system as the sole method of graduation
Graduation
Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony that is sometimes associated, where students become Graduates. Before the graduation, candidates are referred to as Graduands. The date of graduation is often called degree day. The graduation itself is also...
, which it had been up until mid-1999. Beacon now utilizes, in its own words, "traditional testing ... [but] our students' progress is largely assessed through performance-based projects, completed individually and in groups. To graduate, students must present their best work to panels of teachers."
System of classes
The class schedule at the Beacon School is organized in bands, designated by letters A through H. In the first through third years a specific grade is usually organized into streams. A stream consists of about 25 to 30 students who travel to at least two classes together. With the system as it is, the classes for each band letter in a stream are often the same for each member of the stream, providing continuity in core subjects such as HistoryHistory
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, 9th grade electives and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. However, some band letters are cross-stream and even cross-grade level, leading to a diverse class with multiple age groups and grade levels. At the start of the 2009 school year the stream system was disbanded, and freshmen now have the same band organization as the other students. The reason for this change is unknown.
The band system is intended to instill a sense of stability in first-year students
Freshman
A freshman or fresher is a first-year student in secondary school, high school, or college. The term first year can also be used as a noun, to describe the students themselves A freshman (US) or fresher (UK, India) (or sometimes fish, freshie, fresher; slang plural frosh or freshmeat) is a...
who have just emerged from junior high school, where most, if not all, classes contain the members of a single grade level and do not switch around from class to class. As a Beacon student advances in grade level, s/he is gradually given more opportunity to choose classes of his or her choice in the subject area of the band in question, rather than relying on his or her stream to do the selecting. This is both a preparatory measure for the university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
system of class selection, where students are permitted to select all their classes themselves on an individual basis, as well as a means of allowing students the ability to find what interests them among the course offerings.
Beacon also offers several Advanced Placement courses for those that have shown merit for them. These courses can count for up to six college credit hours
Credit (education)
A course credit is a unit that gives weighting to the value, level or time requirements of an academic course taken at a school or other educational institution.- United States :...
at any university, depending on the subject(s) taken. AP courses are available currently in the math, language, and science departments. The history department is notable for its stand against offering such courses, preferring to offer challenging, but heterogeneously grouped classes in the twelfth grade.
In-school requirements
Beacon's in-school requirements have been significantly more stringent than those of comparable New York City public high schools since well before its forced acceptance of the Regents Exam system. There are still critics who complain that Beacon's acceptance of that system hindered, not helped, its overall college-preparatory initiatives. Regents Exams are standardized tests that do not tailor themselves to the particular academic performance strategies and attitudes of each student the way portfolio-based systems do.Though the yearly schedule is officially broken up into two semesters
Academic term
An academic term is a division of an academic year, the time during which a school, college or university holds classes. These divisions may be called terms...
, these are not standard United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
semesters; rather, after one is over, students return to their previous classes with the same teachers for the second semester if it is a yearlong class or if they are freshmen or sophomores. Electives such as art or drama change each semester as long as the student has chosen to take one different than the one they were previously taking. In junior year, there are science courses, such as immunology, that last only one semester. The student has the opportunity to take another science the next semester. Chemistry is a year-long course, known as Advanced Chemistry, and is taken as a precursor to AP Chemistry.
Internships and community service
The school does not require its students to do internships, but internship opportunities are available for those that want to pursue them. A minimum of 50 hours of community serviceCommunity service
Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....
hours is a strictly enforced graduation requirement, and can be fulfilled however a student likes, as long as s/he clears the work with a community service leader in writing before beginning it. The community service program is led by a faculty advisor but taught by a group of dedicated 11th and 12th graders called "The Community Service Leadership Team". This group of students plan lessons and activities to get lowerclassmen excited about community service placements across the city at non-profits such as the Added Value Farm in Redhook, Brooklyn and Community Voices Heard in East Harlem.
Beacon states:
Every tenth grader (15-16 year old) at the Beacon School takes the Community Service class in either the Fall or Spring semester. We try to provide internships that are educational for students and at the same time meaningful for the community. Beacon students reflect on their experience in written journals and in a weekly classroom seminar.
Beacon students are expected to work five hours per week over a semester (about 4 months) in a site that they select" but they may complete the hours through the course of 1 year. They may negotiate any work schedule that is convenient to themselves and their community service site. A total of 50 hours is required for passing credit in the course. Students who complete 75 hours are eligible for "honors" credit.
Students in Community Service meet weekly in a seminar to reflect on their community service work and to explore related social issues. Some students are responsible for writing a weekly guided journal entry that is submitted to their community service seminar teacher.
Culture
The Beacon School offers many extracurricular activities such as after school theater and studioStudio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
stage crew, book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
club, a biking club, a rock climbing
Rock climbing
Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...
club, a dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
club, a Live Poets Society, art club, music performance, a photo
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
club, a Senior Committee (populated by seniors who are responsible for helping with plans for graduation and the annual senior trip), and a Model United Nations
Model United Nations
Model United Nations is an academic simulation of the United Nations that aims to educate participants about current events, topics in international relations, diplomacy and the United Nations agenda....
club that has won awards at every conference it attended over the past few years, including several at the UNA-USA Conference, hosting students from around the world. The Beacon School has a very strong debate
Debate
Debate or debating is a method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is a technique of persuasion...
team. In the past two years, Beacon has consistently won multiple levels of the state tournament. On March 2010, Beacon gained its first bid to the Tournament of Champions
Tournament of Champions (debate)
The Tournament of Champions is a high school debate tournament held annually at the University of Kentucky on the first weekend of May. It is the most prestigious tournament on the "national circuit," representing some of the most competitively successful debaters from the nation's most prestigious...
and won the Lexington Winter Invitational. Another prominent club within the school is SMAC (Student Movement Against Cancer) where students unite in an effort to find a cure for cancer by raising funds for research. There is currently no student government or council, and SOS and other activists club have largely been disbanded.
Politically, the school hangs largely left of center, both in its student body and faculty outlook. There is a long tradition of organizing and attending protests; a number of faculty as well as students participate in these events.
In 2007 the school made front page news after David Andreatta confirmed that the school took illegal trips to the communist island of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. At the end of the school year the teacher involved, Nathan Turner, resigned. In 2005, then Lt. Governor Paterson sent his daughter on one such trip. Alumni reaction to the trips and the political nature is mixed, with some alumni continuing to be involved in liberal activism, while others have expressed frustration with the liberal leanings of their teachers and peers.
Educational travel has become, in more recent years, an important part of the educational culture. Class trip destinations include India, Cuba, Spain, England, Ireland, Venezuela, France, Sweden, Costa Rica, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa, and New Orleans. However, the school no longer sanctions trips to New Orleans for undisclosed reasons.
Sports
The Beacon School offers a wide array of athletic teams for its students. Sports like tennisTennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
, softball
Softball
Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...
, track
Track and field
Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...
, wrestling
Wrestling
Wrestling is a form of grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. A wrestling bout is a physical competition, between two competitors or sparring partners, who attempt to gain and maintain a superior position...
boys and girls bowling
Bowling
Bowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...
, boys and girls basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
, boys and girls Ultimate
Ultimate (sport)
Ultimate is a sport played with a 175 gram flying disc. The object of the game is to score points by passing the disc to a player in the opposing end zone, similar to an end zone in American football or rugby...
, boys and girls soccer, girls cross country
Cross country running
Cross country running is a sport in which people run a race on open-air courses over natural terrain. The course, typically long, may include surfaces of grass and earth, pass through woodlands and open country, and include hills, flat ground and sometimes gravel road...
, and the fencing
Fencing
Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
team form an integral part of the culture at Beacon. The boys' baseball team won the B Division PSAL
PSAL
The Public Schools Athletic League, known by the acronym PSAL, is an organization that promotes student athletics in the public schools of New York City. It was founded in 1903 to provide and maintain a sports program for students enrolled in New York City public schools. The PSAL serves both boys...
championship in 2002 and 2003. Despite its size, these sports programs have been some of the most competitive in the city, most notably with the school's soccer program. The boys' and girls' soccer teams are consistently ranked amongst the highest in the State, and in 2010, both the boys' and girls' teams won the PSAL A Division Championship, making Beacon the first school in the history of the PSAL to win both the boys' and girls' championships in the same year. Because the school does not have a practice space of its own, the school uses many of the city's public access facilities.