Customer Reviews

Public Middle Schools: New York City's Best

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Clara Hemphill's well-informed guide to NYC's best public middle schools is wise and funny and reassuring to parents like myself who, as 6th grade looms, find ourselves just barely over the trauma of securing a suitable public elementary school for our children. Clara explores the many and varied middle school programs available throughout the city's public school districts, noting the safety, academic quality, admissions criterion, and idiosyncratic charm of each. A firm supporter of public education, she even includes information on how parents can work to found a new school when the one in their neighborhood is found lacking. Clara's invaluable guide celebrates the uniquely rich cultural diversity of the city's best public middle schools. With the help of her book, the challenge of finding the right school for your child can be not only less daunting, but an affirmation of why you chose to raise children in NYC in the first place.

Hemphill's book on public middle schools does not cover every good school in New York City, but it provides the best available compendium of what's out there and what makes individual schools distinctive. Reading it is a lot like having a long conversation with the most knowledgeable and fair-minded parent you know. When you're done, you understand what the choices really are, what big issues are challenging NYC middle schools today, and how to spot the hype that so often surrounds the most popular schools. She talked to hundreds of parents whose children actually attend schools of all sizes and all educational philosophies in all kinds of neighborhoods. Their voices ring through.

This book is entirely subjective. As an educator in N.Y.C for many years, there are excellent outstanding schools that are totally missing from the author's accounts and terrible schools that she rates highly. It is totally unreliable for parents.