Opportunity Charter School

A success-driven middle and secondary school in New York City, Opportunity Charter School operates on a belief in the potential of each student. The school's educational team consists of content teachers as well as behavior specialists, learning support staff, social workers, and other service providers who all collaborate to meet students' unique needs. In addition, Opportunity Charter School partners with the Children's Aid Society to provide social support as well as medical, dental, and vision care to students.

Opportunity Charter School combines targeted behavior support with rigorous academic standards. The school's curriculum prepares students to sit for the Regents Examinations, a New York state standardized test, while instilling an ability to think critically about academic subjects. For this reason, the school has embraced the recent districtwide shift toward common core standards, a method of education that emphasizes higher thinking.

Under the new common core curriculum, Opportunity students and teachers concentrate on interpreting information. Students then express these interpretations both verbally and in writing, which encourages the type of academic thinking that prepares them for college-level study, if desired. As a corollary, the school has also recently introduced coursework in argumentation, which begins at the seventh-grade level and requires students to form opinions on issues and to argue those opinions in the face of opposition.