Thank you for the helpful tip. Is there a definition for the period of time that a user is “brand new”?
No, because it’s a combination of time in the site, number of posts read, number of posts made, among other things
Thank you
This seems to be a “guilty prior to investigation” discussion based on the comments, which is not surprising based on the forum interaction rules, and the stigma that surrounds brand partnership schools. I toured Harrow New York and found the campus to be gorgeous and the staff to be very warm and experienced. My son has applied.
Best wishes to anyone seeking a school.
Perhaps a more realistic article than the flattery of the WSJ
A few articles have referenced “beaks” and “skew” as a special example of how the culture will be transported and adopted. Yet culture and traditions require both buy-in and connection to them to take root. And this particular language that Harrow New York plans to replicate is fine, but silly rather than substantial.
What actual value will it bring to the students? And what if they resist it? Does the school then abandon a goal of student cooperation and instead demand obedience? Over something silly? If the student body is culturally American, the whole try-hard thing will be a tough sell.
I get a “Stop trying to make fetch happen” reaction when I read about it. Which isn’t to say that it won’t succeed—I obviously have no idea—but rather to suggest that they may not be attracting the domestic families they are keen to attract?
Separate note: what other schools are in central and eastern Long Island? I don’t know much about the Ross School. Will this impact them or others? Is there a substantial local pool from which to draw students?
It won’t impact the Ross school as I don’t think they pull from the same pool. Ross parents are looking for a progressive education and would balk at the performative attempt to mirror an English boarding school.
Stoney Brook is a Christian School, so that probably won’t be affected either.
The one school I can see it drawing from is the Knox School. They are within a 1/2 hour of each other and would draw from the same pool of local parents. Harrow would be a viable alternative for international students looking at Knox based on it’s easy access to JFK and NYC, beautiful campus and crew/equestrian activities. Although the product is yet untested, the academic reputation will probably outshine Knox’s.
Interesting. Knox did not come up in what I thought was a thorough search for schools that offer robust rowing. Now I’m going to take a look just because I am curious.
Funny tangent: Knox Grammar is the Knox that we know. And guess what they are famous for? Their boaters!
I found this particularly troubling:
“Harrow New York will add to the school’s growing portfolio of campuses across the globe, with 12 Harrow-branded schools in 11 locations across Asia and two newly announced schools in the United Arab Emirates opening next year. Yet what may not be initially clear to prospective Harrow parents is that the schools outside the UK are owned by three separate companies.”
It sounds like the sub-par college exmissions stats that CoolTheoryBro references aren’t even particularly relevant since you don’t really know who’s managing the school–except that it’s definitely someone with no connection to the U.K. beyond a licensing deal.
On a practical note, for day-students geography alone means they won’t pull from the same pool. Most Ross day families I’m aware of are people who’ve moved out the South/Bridge/Easthampton full-time. No way they’re driving in/out of the Hamptons every day to get to where Harrow NY is.
Right. There is always a market for this type of school. Basically Fusion with boarding. I wonder if they will be adjacent to a rehab for the American students and weekly flights to international party cities for everyone else.
Love the boaters. Feel sad that Harrow is reduced to a money grab. Really look down on for profit education.
Look at Sipple’s LinkedIn profile. He says the exact opposite of who he is. He’s had maybe two courses in pedagogy and has no idea what constitutes a supportive school administrator, either of faculty or students. Notice that he does not stay anywhere for more than three years – in the last case, involuntarily. He’s never headed a school. These international schools have minimal parental and no managerial oversight above the headmaster level – a place for someone who couldn’t get tenure at a public school. The Swiss model is characterized by low salaries, high staff turnover, and six-figure tuition. EF does two out of three, and gets as outrageous with the tuition as Harrow NY – but then they’re both for-profit. Sipple seems to be transposing the model to a place that would have him. EF is also IB, an off-the-shelf curriculum that appeals to foreigners with prejudices about English vs. American education – but at least EF is not out in the sticks. Sipple lasted almost three years there. EF had some stinkers in his position, but he was by far the most passive and least competent – leading to speculation he was hired by the school head as a pliant, opinion-free yes-man.
One needs to be careful with these international schools. Teachers don’t need certification, and many staff are on visa, i.e., a built-in excuse for their leaving schools as a cover story. Cover stories in foreign countries aren’t readily researched. Such a system of nomads can produce an excellent teacher/administrator who pollinates each school with a breadth of experience or can be the last refuge of a scoundrel. Bottoms up, Matt.
Heard Harrow NY advertising on my local NPR station yesterday. Same spot where our “local” jr. boarding school with a high international population advertises. It will attract the same crowd. Wealthy Asian and South American parents who want to send their middle school kids away and have few choices of where to send them, domestic OOS parents going through nasty divorces and the local population of kids that have been kicked out of the other nearby private schools with a small sprinkling of average student althetes whose parents think middle school athletics make or break a 7th grader. Only they don’t have the sports program to attract the kids that might actually have good academics and no behavior issues, so it’s not looking good for the usual CC informed consumer.
That was traditionally Harrow’s reputation in the U.K. anyway. Smart London kids went to St Paul’s or Westminster…
If I was asked what school this was a satire of, Harrow would have been top of my list:
That was the market when this school was known as the La Salle Military Academy. Lots of kids of foreign military officers mixed with local kids that thought it would be funny to pull the fire alarm in their old school.
It’s very odd that NY State allowed Amity to open this “Harrow” when they weren’t able to open schools in Massachusetts. The whole for-profit element would give me pause, especially with the allegations of fraud:
The MA Attorney General said that, “Students who invested their time and hard-earned money into this school deserve the education they were promised by [the school], not [to be] handed over to an unlicensed foreign corporation with no history of teaching students in the United States."
In an interview with the national public radio show The Takeaway, [Healey expressed concerns] about Amity’s “track record,” specifically noting that “Amity was founded by an individual who was charged with fraud many, many years ago.” The [Associated Press reported] in October that Amity’s founding president, Ashok Chauhan, the father of the [two current chancellors], Aseem and Atul Chauhan, was charged with fraud in the 1990s in Germany, where he ran a group of companies, but was never extradited from India. A spokeswoman for Germany’s Interior Ministry, which includes the federal police, declined to comment when contacted by Inside Higher Ed, saying the ministry does not comment on individual cases.