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I would not recommend Lehman, I would recommend Cardinal Spellman. It is an excellent catholic school with a rigorous program, and they have a good amount of the graduating classes entering IVY League schools. (I am biased!)
Recently NY1 News scholar athlete of the week was a Lehman HS student. I notice a lot of these scholar athlete's of the week are from so called bad schools, and these students usually receive academic and athletic scholarships to Ivy's and other top universities.
I also notice that a majority of these students are immigrants, and usually come from homes where English is not the primary language. They can be students of any racial group, and come from any continent on our planet. However it seems that they can get the best out of any school, in any neighborhood, or in any boro.
Recently NY1 News scholar athlete of the week was a Lehman HS student. I notice a lot of these scholar athlete's of the week are from so called bad schools, and these students usually receive academic and athletic scholarships to Ivy's and other top universities.
I also notice that a majority of these students are immigrants, and usually come from homes where English is not the primary language. They can be students of any racial group, and come from any continent on our planet. However it seems that they can get the best out of any school, in any neighborhood, or in any boro.
You got that one right, DAS !
The reality is that despite popular misconceptions there really aren't that many "bad schools" in NYC,including The Bronx.The term "bad school" is actually a big misnomer.
School ratings and rankings are usually a result of statistics dealing with %'s of students graduating,% of students getting a certain score on state tests,% getting into Ivy League or something like that.In NYC,these kinds of scorecards indicate little or nothing about the schools themselves.
I teach in a school in The Bronx and since about 60% of our students either test quite low,never graduate from High School , wind up in prison or pregnant at 15 or 16 it is not a highly rated school to say the least.The other 40% though ? Wow,it's amazing ! Most of them do very well and score very well .A high percentage of that 40% get into the city's best specialized High Schools ,go on to graduate from college and many to graduate from top colleges including Ivy League.
The real shock is that just as the students can be broken down into either relatively high achievers or almost total non achievers, those two groups can be broken down into immigrant and non immigrant .The overwhelming majority of non achievers are 3rd and 4th generation or more Americans.The overwhelming majority of the high achievers are immigrant children or from 2nd generation immigrant families.
Race,ethnicity and color have nothing to do with it.Black kids whose families have been here for a long time tend to do poorly while black kids who are immigrants or whose parents are immigrants tend to do well.Hispanic kids whose families have been here for generations tend to do poorly while Hispanic kids whose parents are immigrants tend to do well.The Asian kids,almost all of whom are from immigrant families, almost all tend to do well.Same with the very small % of white kids in my school ,as they are all immigrant kids and most do well.
This indicates that there is nothing actually wrong with the school.The high achievers don't have a higher innate intelligence.They are not taught differently by different teachers.The differences are outside of the school.It's attitude , parenting and home life that is different.
There are lots and lots of really bad parents and lots and lots of kids with really bad attitudes and their failures have everything to do with that and little to do with the schools themselves.If it were the schools or the teachers, none of the the kids would perform well or test well or go to Stuyvesant or Bronx Science or Harvard or Yale or even NYU.
While I agree with your statement, the issue is really about whether you want your kids to be relentlessly exposed to a whopping 60% of the school population of total non-achievers/bad attitudes/negative/druggies/dysfunction/gang etc. While I don't doubt 20% of the students in inner city Detroit public High Schools are high achievers, does that make it a good school or a school of choice when 80% of the students are just hanging out or worse? Nope.
And for that reason I cannot recommend Lehman, although I also knew high achievers that attended that school, and in fact because it was a public school had access to special/advanced programs that my catholic school did not. However, while my school had 10% total underachievers, and 90% kids who actually wanted to be there and learn, places like Lehman had well over 60% of the population that were total underachievers and had a much greater negative impact on the school and the kids wanting to learn. I can't in good faith recommend Lehman or just about any other public school in the borough (with little exception).
There are a few good catholic schools. All Hollows. Cardinal Hayes.
Also there have to be a few more public high schools no one has mentioned. It's hard to keep up to date unless you work in the system, especially since the last few years there have been many changes and you have to factor in the rise of charter schools as well...
Good schools in the bronx are plagued by bad schools nearby, bad housing projects nearby, 2/5 trains (who both pass through bad neighborhoods). Look into moving into another area and dont even try to risk it. This is coming form a Bronx Native and "South Bronx High" graduate.
I've heard great things about Frederick Douglass Academy H.S. - a public high school with wonderful reviews. Check out greatschools.org.
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