P.S. 160 New York, New York School Solution The elevated D line wends its way through Brooklyn towards Coney Island. About halfway through the borough, in a neighborhood of small shops and two- and three-story walk-up apartments, its trains stop near P.S.160, the William T. Sampson School. The traditional red-brick public elementary school has labored to educate the children of indigent immigrants for nearly 100 years. First it taught Europeans, then Central and South Americans.Today, a majority of Sampson's 730 students are Asian. Many of their parents work long hours for poverty-level pay in the Chinatown restaurants of lower Manhattan. Yet P.S.160 is a vibrant, productive place. Displays of student writing line hallways. Charts with long lists of books that students have read hang in every classroom. Students and teachers are engaged. And reading scores are up sharply: Only 34 percent of the school's 4th graders met New York State's English language arts standards in 1999 and only 3 percent exceeded the standards; four years later, 51 percent of the school's students met the standards and 23 percent exceeded them. Principal Isaac Fink and his staff point to the America's Choice School Design for P.S.160's rising scores. They selected the America's Choice design because it aligns instruction to standards and because it features an extended daily "literacy block." Both features were on display recently in Kathleen Puma's 4th-grade class. "Who can remind us what the difference is between the main idea of a story and supporting detail?" the second-year teacher asked 27 students sitting cross-legged before her on an indoor-outdoor carpet. As students volunteered answers, Puma, seated, used a red magic marker to write them on a wipe board that was propped up on a low easel. She was doing a lesson at the beginning of a carefully choreographed daily session that leads students through two and-a-half hours a day of reading, writing, phonics instruction, independent reading, journal writing, student presentations, and other literacy-building activities that are at the heart of the America's Choice design. A short time later, the lesson completed, Puma's students were at their desks, reading silently from stories they had taken out of Ziploc "book bags" that Puma assembles for every student from a wide range of readings in the well-stocked library in every America's Choice classroom. Teachers tailor each student's reading list to his or her reading ability and retest at least three times a year to ensure that they are constantly reading books at the right level. As Puma's students work their way through such titles as Listening to Crickets and Let's Discover Outer Space, they take notes in journals about the books' themes. New York State's 4th-grade reading standards hang along the back of the room. At P.S.160 -- and at every America's Choice school -- two America's Choice-trained teachers serve as "literacy coaches" to ensure that the America's Choice reading, writing and skills block is implemented effectively schoolwide. "Now, thanks to our coaches, everyone sees a purpose to what they're doing in literacy," says Principal Fink. Back to Results