How do you turn around math scores? 

The staff at North Queens Community High School looked at their students’ low math exam scores and decided they needed to try something new. Studying cognitive psychology on persistence and self-efficacy led them to shift classroom practice, coupling strengths-based mindset coaching with a few key quantitative reasoning strategies. Their hunch that this would yield deeper engagement, which in turn, would result in higher exam scores paid off.

Over the course of four years, student passing rates on the statewide math Regents exams soared. 

When teachers decided to dedicate more class time for feedback and revisions it felt risky. What if taking time away from covering content initially led scores on the Regents exams to drop? What actually happened? Scores improved. In every content area. For 3 years in a row.

Perhaps more importantly, students who once avoided feedback now seek it out, undertaking revisions in order to develop crucial academic skills. 

There are many ways one might describe Bronx Arena High School. Competency-based. Asynchronous. Blended. Learner-centered. 

By design and in practice, the principles of positive youth development is the axis of Bronx Arena’s school model. What has emerged is a place where students feel a profound sense of belonging and connection; a place of possibility and of growing agency over one’s pathway to graduation and beyond; and a place in which a remarkable balance is struck between structure and flexibility, between autonomy and shared responsibility.