Winning Formula: Brooklyn Lab Charter School

Brooklyn Lab's middle school is singled out in recognition of its success in integrating technology into the classroom

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(L-R): Erin Mote, Brooklyn Lab; Mario Cardona, White House Domestic Policy Council; Daniel Rabuzzi, MOUSE; Saskia Levy Thompson, Carnegie Corporation; Ben Esner, Center for K12 STEM Education, NYU Tandon School of Engineering; and Joseph South, USDOE.

Congratulations to Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools! On September 14, the Carnegie Corporation grantee was named one of ten winners in a national competition to reimagine the American high school. The contest sponsor, XQ: The Super School Project, is providing $10 million in support for each winner, which will assist Brooklyn Lab with expansion plans that the Corporation seeded in 2015.

A day earlier, Brooklyn Lab’s existing middle school was singled out for a visit by the U.S. Department of Education in recognition of its success integrating technology into the classroom. Brooklyn Lab, which has been planning two new high schools as part of the Corporation’s Opportunity by Design initiative, is known for its innovative approach to meeting the needs of a diverse student population, including customized student learning plans, and lots of opportunities for learning both inside and out of the school building. This fall, Brooklyn Lab celebrated the opening of a second middle school in Downtown Brooklyn, and it will launch two new high schools in 2017 with $3 million in Corporation support.

During a panel discussion, Joseph South, the director of educational technology for the USDOE, talked about how Brooklyn Lab’s work advances the White House’s ConnectEd initiative by using technology in service of teaching and learning. Saskia Levy Thompson, the Corporation’s program director for next generation high schools, said technology is important, but the overall goal is to “throw the cookie cutters away” by designing schools that meet the individual needs of students one community at a time. 

Read more about the White House visit on DNAInfo, Chalkbeat, and EdSurge. The Hechinger Report provides coverage of the XQ announcement.


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