Middle School: My beach read is MYSCHOOLS
/By Joyce Szuflita
It is never too early to do a little middle school digging. Why not do it with a sand pail and shovel? There are lots of ways that you can get ahead of the information you need in the fall.
First, go to the MYSCHOOLS directory and explore.
#1 The easiest way to browse. You don’t need an account to go into MYSCHOOLS and search the directory. You can browse schools by name or number, but that can be confusing because there are schools in different boroughs that have the same number, and when you search in MYSCHOOLS middle schools can be listed as MS, M.S., JHS, I.S., etc. Using the DBN (District/Borough/Number) is very easy and there is NEVER confusion; on MYSCHOOLS, the Quality Snapshots, or Insideschools.org.
Lets say you are looking for MS 51 in Brooklyn. It is in District 15. If a school is in Brooklyn (Kings County) the code is K (not B!) The number needs to have 3 digits so 51 is 051. The DBN is 15K051.
NEST+M would be 01M539 (District 1, Manhattan, 539)
Put in the code and wahla!
#2 Find some interesting basic data. You can put in your address and MYSCHOOLS will show you schools that are a mile from your house, but I prefer not to put in an address and search using the filters; by district, by admissions method, by size, etc. It will show you contact info, start time, activities and admissions information. Super interesting. It will also show you the top 3 most frequently attended high schools. This is NOT an indication of a “feeder” school (attending this schools DOES NOT confer some magic fairy dust that gives you a better chance of getting into a coveted high school - that is NOT a thing.) It tells you what that particular population of parents and students like and what they try for. For example I am looking at a local district school that lists Brooklyn Tech as its first “most frequently attended HS”. When I dig further, I find that 7% of 8th graders from this school attend Tech. They come from neighborhoods where there is a long history test prep. Just for grins I looked up two citywide “gifted programs”. In one 13% went to Tech (listed first) and 13% to LaGuardia (listed second). Those kids where screened by academic and arts metrics to attend that middle school, so they were a very self selected population. I contend that the school wasn’t the reason that those kids attended those HS. It was their parents desire to have their students attend a screened program. I looked at another successful middle school where SHSAT test prep is not the norm in the community. Those kids are going to very good high schools, but not Tech, possibly because the Specialized HS don’t have a reputation of being a welcoming place for kids of color.
To find more nuanced information, look at the “Performance” section and follow the link that says, “See the school Quality Snapshot”. If you keep the MYSCHOOLS tab open and you keep the School Quality Snapshot tab open, you can toggle between them. Putting the DBN in the search box will immediately take you to the school that you want without confusion. Sometimes, a school like NEST+M will contain several school levels - you want to be able to pick PS, or MS, or HS - whichever you are searching for.
The Quality Snapshot is the Reader’s Digest version of the Quality Reports that have the full school survey and demographic stats. The Snapshot gives demographic breakdowns of population by race and gender. On the “Instruction and Performance” tab it gives the 5 most frequently attended HS and the percentages of students attending. You will see that often few than 50% of the student body is accounted for - those kids are going to a variety of schools, and most of them aren’t listed. It also gives a little bit of survey information, but this is when you want to go to Inside Schools.
Inside Schools gives you a photo slideshow, and a deeper dive into the stats. While their narative reviews are sadly often out of date, the data isn’t and it is often easier to read then from the Quality Snapshots. Then…the schools’ own websites which list staff information, partnerships. They may give a sense of PTA activities and may even have last year’s virtual open house in their admissions tab.
