SCI ACADEMY APPLAUDED BY SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU
Click here to watch the Senator's speech on the Senate floor.
CITY COUNCILMAN JON JOHNSON COMMENDS SCI ACACDEMY AT LIBRARY OPENING
Click here to watch the Councilman's speech.
SCI ACADEMY AWARDED $1 MILLION ON THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW
Sci Academy featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show as one of the nation's groundbreaking charter schools. Watch Mr. Marcovitz receive the gift!
A GOOD LOOK AT SCI ACADEMY
GOOD Magazine profiles Sci Academy as one charter school providing an ambitious college prep experience and trying to set a standard for the rest of the nation. Watch!
Sci Academy Lottery sheds light on evolution of school choice in New Orleans
April 22, 2011· Times Picayune| Andrew Vanacore
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Pamela Morrell sat nervously in the third row Thursday evening among the lines of blue chairs set up in the high school cafeteria at Sci Academy, a charter high school in eastern New Orleans.Her son, Charles, already has a spot at another school for the fall, when he'll be starting ninth grade. But Morrell didn't like what she saw during a visit there: "The first thing I want to see when I walk in a school is not a metal detector."
So she waited to hear whether Charles would get one of the 130 seats chosen in a random lottery, when nearly three times that many students applied.
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Charters give education in New Orleans a fresh start
November 21, 2010 · DallasNews.com | Holly K. Hacker
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When Hurricane Katrina struck five years ago, it displaced families and destroyed schools. And the storm unwittingly provided a chance to reinvent public education in a failing school district.
So was launched the nation's biggest charter school experiment.Today, 70 percent of New Orleans public school students attend a charter school. No other city comes close. (Dallas' rate is 10 percent and growing.) So educators, lawmakers and researchers are watching for results.
One early lesson: The relative freedom of charter schools – they're independently run and exempt from many state education laws – appears to have been key to an overall boost in student performance in New Orleans. But the charter school setup alone did not guarantee success. The best ones have strong leaders, capable teachers and a relentless focus on learning.
In other words, freedom in the right hands works.
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Sci Academy a bright spot in New Orleans school landscape
November 7, 2010 · The Times Picayune | Cindy Chang
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"The total distance is 63," Kayla DeSalle said, to the sound of approving finger-snaps -- a Sci Academy substitute for applause, used freely by students during class.
Another student, Alicia Lherisse, questioned Kayla's answer: If a person went from Metairie to eastern New Orleans to Metairie and then back to the East, wasn't that 21 times ... She trailed off as she realized her classmate was correct: 21 should be multiplied by three, not four.
The displacement is 21 miles, because the subject ended up in eastern New Orleans, not back at his home, a boy volunteered.
Principal Ben Marcovitz, who was observing the lesson, singled out Alicia for praise.
"I'm impressed with Alicia asking questions when she was confused," he said.
Pollack followed that with a shout-out for the whole class -- again, not about getting the right answer, but about the students' attitudes toward learning. He liked that they stuck to their opinions until they were convinced otherwise.
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Top school lacks basic facilities
September 24, 2010 · The Times Picayune | Diane Guevara
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Thank you so much for highlighting the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy on the front page of Wednesday's newspaper. The Sci Academy scholars watched the broadcast from the sanctuary of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, their kind and generous neighbor. In fact, this flagship community school is meeting in its second temporary location, in trailers, with no auditorium and only a partially functioning cafeteria.
This school deserves a permanent location, with permanent classrooms and a cafeteria. I applaud the principal and dedicated staff for being so successful in such difficult conditions. Imagine how much more they could accomplish if they had even the minimum facilities that any school should have.
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Oprah Winfrey Charity Gives $1 Million to Recovery School District Charter School
September 21, 2010 · ABC26 News
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Hundreds of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy students could barely contain themselves while watching a special screening of the Oprah Winfrey Show.
During a segment on exceptional charter schools, the school's principal Ben Marcovitz accepted a check for $1 million from Oprah's Angel Network.
The school, also known as Sci Academy, is one of six in the nation to receive the $1 million donation, which was announced during Winfrey's show on education reform. The donations recognize incredible efforts by schools, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to achieve academic excellence.
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N.O. school, a model for charters, gets $1 million from Oprah donation
September 20, 2010 · WWLTV.com | Lucy Bustamante
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The kids scream at the mention of their school on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and this was before they found out Oprah's Angel Network gave them $1 million.
The goal: to create more of them.
"It was truly amazing and very emotional for me actually, seeing all the scholars because they just work so hard every day," said Margo Lukens, the curriculum director for the school. "It's really great seeing them recognized at a national level."
Oprah featured the 200 students at the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, or Sci Academy as they call it, as an example of a charter school that works.
"The charter movement is just so strong and so fast and urgent here, and we really can make a difference really quickly and show the rest of the country some things that are really working," Lukens said.
The proof? Principal Benjamin Marcovitz says most of the freshman that arrived reading at a 4th grade level caught up to their grade or higher a year later.
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Groundbreaking Charter Schools
September 20, 2010 · Oprah.com
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About the School:
Sci Academy opened in 2008 with 90 ninth-graders entering a rigorous and inspiring environment focused on preparing them for promising futures and professional careers.
The Mission:
Sci Academy strives to prepare all interested students for college success and equip them with the passion and skills to begin innovative and world-changing pursuits.
Academic Results:
More than half of the ninth-graders who entered Sci Academy's inaugural class had failed state promotional Printed from Oprah.com on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 © 2010 Harpo Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. tests, and more than 70 percent read well below the ninth-grade level. The school's principal, Ben Marcovitz, says many of these students had missed a full year of schooling because of Hurricane Katrina and were many grades behind.
By designing a program that both addresses their deficits and accelerates them beyond the average, the freshman class later scored a 76 percent on the state test, making it the third most successful high school in New Orleans.
"It is possible to take a kid coming out of eighth grade who is four or five years behind grade level and get them ready for college in their ninth through 12th years, and that's what we're doing here," Ben says.
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A Flood of Money Slow to Fix New Orleans Schools
August 30, 2010 · The Washington Independent | Sarah Laskow
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Across the city, however, more than 7,000 public school students, almost one out of every five, are still learning in “modular classrooms” — essentially, trailers. The New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, known as SciAcademy, has been in modular classrooms since 2008, its first year of operation, for instance. SciAcademy is one of the success stories of the post-Katrina education system: In its first two years, it has taken struggling high school students, some of whom were reading at a third-grade level, and brought them up to age-appropriate levels of achievement. This month, the school’s staff was preparing for the students’ arrival, rehearsing their plan for the first day and practicing responses to dicey situations, when the news came that they would have to pack up the entire school and move to a new, but still temporary, site.
“The capacity to find a facility is not tied to school performance,” says Ben Marcovitz, the school’s principal. “I understand that, but I really wish there was a clearer path.”
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Five years after Katrina, New Orleans still caught between storms
August 29, 2010 · Los Angeles Times | Kim Murphy and Richard Fausset
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More tangible results can be found on campuses like the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, an accumulation of trailers joined by wooden boardwalks on a vacant lot.
The school in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods — 92% of its 240 students come from lowincome families — yet in the two years since it opened in 2008 it has outperformed most other local schools.
The school was the brainchild of Principal Ben Marcovitz, 31, who earned his master of education degree at Harvard University before being drawn to New Orleans after Katrina. Like many others in the city, he believes that long-term solutions to New Orleans' most intractable problems start in the classroom.
Schools like this one have blossomed on what Williamson, the nonprofit group CEO, touts as the city's new "frontier for entrepreneurship."
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New Orleans Schools Seize Post-Katrina Momentum
August 24, 2010 · Education Week | Erik W. Robelen
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One new school that appears to be thriving is the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy. Although its students on average enter as freshman four to five grade levels behind, it’s now one of the city’s highest-performing public high schools.
Dubbed Sci Academy, the charter has an intense culture focused on preparing students for college. “We have a mission of college success for every kid who walks in our door,” said the school’s founder and principal, Benjamin Marcovitz.
Its faculty includes people like Kaycee L. Eckhardt, who grew up in Louisiana and is now starting her third year at the school. She had been teaching and living in Japan for several years when Katrina struck, and recalls asking herself: “What can I do for New Orleans? I don’t know how to build a house. … One thing I can do is teach. I’ll try it for a year.”
Ms. Eckhardt said she spent her first year working in several schools run by the RSD. “I was transferred twice before October,” she said.
Her teaching experience that year was frustrating, she said, but she found a kindred educational spirit in Mr. Marcovitz, and joined Sci Academy for its launch in 2008.
“I was drawn to the vision of the school,” Ms. Eckhardt said. “We all start with the belief that if you give students consistency and have high expectations for them, and treat them with respect, that they can do anything they want.”
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