| The New American Academy PS 770 | |
| Type: | Public school |
| Head Name: | Head |
| Head: | Jessica Saratovsky |
| Address: | 60 East 94th Street |
| City: | Crown Heights, Brooklyn |
| State: | New York |
| Country: | United States |
The New American Academy is a Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York public school, PS 770, which opened in the fall of 2010.[1] [2]
The school opened to kindergarten and first grade and will gradually grow with the students each year to include fifth grade.[3] [4] The school was founded by and is led by Shimon Waronker, who has a bachelor's degree from Rabbinical College of America and a master's degree from Touro College.[5] [6] The New American Academy puts sixty children in a single, large classroom.[7] The New American Academy has four teachers with sixty students (for a 15:1 ratio) in one classroom.[5] Waronker modeled The New American Academy after Phillips Exeter Academy's methods.[8] The New York City Department of Education withdrew a proposal to expand The New American Academy with a middle school after less than ten percent of The New American Academy's first class of third-graders passed state examinations in the spring of 2013 before a vote by the Panel for Educational Policy on October 30, 2013. Just two students out a class of twenty-two students passed the 2013 spring New York state math and reading tests.[7] As of November 4, 2013, more than half of The New American Academy's first class (the class of 2010–2011) of forty first-graders were no longer enrolled or failed to be promoted to the fourth grade, city statistics show.[7]