Central Park East
Secondary School New York City
Board of Education

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Central Park East Secondary School offers 450 public school students in grades 7 through 12 the intellectually rigorous and creative education normally associated with elite private schools. Although most of the students are from low-income families and many have a history of average or below-average academic achievement, only 5 percent drop out during their high school years, and more than 90 percent of Central Park East's graduates go on to college directly.

Across the United States, urban high schools have been the most resistant to school reforms. Central Park East is a dramatic exception. Classes are small, averaging 20 students, and the day is organized into two-hour periods, allowing teachers and students enough time to engage in concentrated work in specific areas. Students take two main subject groups—mathematics and science, and social studies and the humanities. Besides interdisciplinary college-preparatory courses, the school offers career-oriented apprenticeships. It has established high standards and clear expectations for its students.

Student performance is regularly assessed through a process in which students explain their work and hear it criticized. To graduate, they must present seven academic projects in specified subjects over two years and defend them before committees of students, teachers, and other adults, much as a Ph.D. candidate defends a thesis.

No selection criteria, tests, or interviews are required to attend the school, which is supported by public education funds. Costs per student are the same as at other public high schools. Faculty and administrators continually re-examine the school's standards. Three committees advise on school policy: an elected staff board, a parent group, and the student council. Faculty serve as the governing body for most decisions affecting the daily life of the school, and all faculty members are held accountable for maintaining school standards.

Central Park East opened in 1985 as an expansion of an earlier successful effort to create innovative elementary schools in East Harlem, a low-income minority area in New York City. Central Park East is presently spearheading an effort to create 12 similar schools in the city by transforming two failing comprehensive high schools in Manhattan and the Bronx into a network of small schools. Six of the new schools opened in the fall of 1993 and six will open in the fall of 1994.