School Overview

Beacon High School offers an inquiry-based program with technology and arts infused throughout the curriculum. We emphasize a challenging, well-rounded liberal arts education based on the principle of shared exploration and problem-solving. In assessments for graduation, students present performance-based projects to panels of teachers. Beacon offers extensive opportunities to participate in clubs, sports, community service, and international travel.
 
Technology and the arts play a central role in our curriculum, studied as separate disciplines and integrated into projects of other subjects. Most disciplines provide opportunities for advanced studies, including AP courses in Mathematics, Science, and Language, as well as Honors courses in the Arts. Beyond the academic program, Beacon gives students extensive opportunities to participate actively in clubs, sports teams, community service, and international travel. In 2015, Beacon moved into a magnificent, state-of-the-art building on West 44th Street near 10th Avenue in New York. Staff helped design the look and outfitting of the space, including classrooms, science laboratories, art, photography, and film studios, an art gallery, dance studio, two new theaters, a full gym, exercise rooms, and a music suite.

The Beacon School provides students with an exceptional well-rounded educational experience designed to promote independent and critical thinking, communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills.   Inquiry and critical thinking are at the center of teaching and learning.  Students are encouraged to question, take responsibility for their own learning, and actively engage in the work of the classroom and the community.  We expect our students to be curious, intellectually agile, open-minded, kind, and empathetic. Student skill development and content mastery at Beacon are assessed through discipline-appropriate performance assessment tasks.  These tasks allow for the demonstration of a full picture of what students know and can do through problem-solving, creative expression, research, writing, and presentation in a variety of media.

Beacon is a founding member of the New York Performance Standards Consortium and adheres to its practices of staff collaboration, inquiry-based education, performance-based assessment, and student civic engagement.  Beacon offers thoughtful, challenging, and deep coursework in mathematics, the physical and natural sciences, language, literature, writing, history, and the social sciences—all with various pathways to achieve a depth of study and academic mastery.  As central to its program, the Beacon School also offers robust opportunities for students to examine themselves and the world through the visual and performing arts— allowing them to fully engage in the creative process, make meaning, inspire, and achieve excellence. 

Beacon maintains a wide range of extra-curricular activities for students to develop their interests and pursue their passions in athletics, politics. civil rights and activism, social, racial and environmental justice, the arts, and diverse cultural, academic, and recreational endeavors.  These programs connect students to the wider world and advance values of teamwork, cooperation, collaboration, hard work, shared responsibility, and humility.  Together with its advisory system and caring staff, these programs provide the lynchpin for Beacon’s humanistic approach to building a joyful community.

Beacon is fully committed to adolescent development as full healthy human beings. The school actively promotes the social and emotional and physical well-being of its community and provides the necessary academic and social supports and services so that all students can learn and flourish in the Beacon program.