Background
Urban Advantage is a New York City science education initiative that partners eight renowned science-rich cultural institutions with the New York City Department of Education and public middle schools to promote scientific discovery and learning. Urban Advantage aims to enhance the capacity of the City’s middle schools to engage students in challenging science education and promote the achievement of science goals and standards. In addition to the American Museum of Natural History which administered the initiative, the participating institutions include the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York Botanical Garden, New York Hall of Science, Queens Botanical Garden, Staten Island Zoo, Wildlife Conservation Society-Bronx Zoo, and New York Aquarium.
About the Project
NCREST was asked to document highlights of the Urban Advantage initiative with a focus on ten demonstration sites, schools that showed evidence of exemplary or full implementation of the program. The documentation contributed to the development of a process to share knowledge among the partnering organizations, the schools, and science-rich institutions and education stakeholders in other cities.
To implement this project, NCREST undertook the following activities:
- Observed and documented major professional development and organizational events offered through Urban Advantage.
- Visited selected demonstration schools to capture images of practice related to the four goals of the Urban Advantage Initiative.
- Drafted a series of four folios describing aspects of the initiative.
Selected Publications
For more information, contact Elisabeth Barnett at Barnett@tc.columbia.edu or Jacqueline Ancess at ancess@tc.columbia.edu.