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Hail a cab this weekend, and your in-ride entertainment may come courtesy of New York City public school students.

Starting today, 12,000 taxis will be featuring this video of students at Fort Greene’s Urban Assembly Academy of Arts and Letters interviewing musician Wyclef Jean. The interview was set up by AOL Music, which is helping run a 12-week journalism apprenticeship program at the school in partnership with the non-profit Citizen Schools.

The full text of the students’ interview is here. Jean told the students about his childhood at P.S. 191 after moving to Brooklyn from Haiti with his family:

Bryonna: Do you remember what you were doing when you were 11 and 12?

Wyclef Jean: Yeah, I was getting a whooping by my moms! Eleven and 12 years old in Brooklyn, I was in [Public School] 191, and I was just trying to figure out how to speak English, ’cause I couldn’t even speak English yet. So I was talking with the accent, very slow, trying to figure it out. I wasn’t bilingual at the time, and there was a class that would teach you English. So, that’s what I was doing at 11 and 12. (more…)

Last week, I wrote about a test prep program at New Design High School that aimed to boost Regents exam scores through original hip-hop songs.

So did it work? According to the school’s unofficial results on the three exams the program prepared students to take this year, the answer is a qualified yes.

Scores jumped on the English and U.S. history exams. Nearly twice the number of special education students passed the American history test, and the number of current or former English language learners who passed the exam nearly tripled. But students didn’t fare so well on their Global History exams, which are typically taken in tenth grade.

Using the songs alone is not enough, said Philip Courtney, the head of Urban Arts, the nonprofit that developed the hip-hop program, called FreshPrep. Courtney said the results point to a need for better teacher training about how to integrate the competitive games that are part of the program, not just the music. Teachers who worked all parts of the hip-hop program into their test prep posted the best results, he said, giving as an example Laura Rubin, whose American history class I visited. Nearly three-quarters of Rubin’s students passed the U.S. History Regents exam.

Urban Arts is revamping the program before rolling it out in six new schools next year. This summer, the group will test out a hip-hop curriculum to help students prepare for the Integrated Algebra exam.

New Design High School social studies teacher Tad Donozo, right, helps coach 11th grade U.S. history students for next week

It was exactly a week before juniors at New Design High School would sit for their American History Regents exam, but you might not know it from the hip-hop beats emanating from a stereo at the front of the class.

But you’d know by listening to the song’s lyrics, which discussed essay-writing strategy.

And after the song ended, one student kept going. ”Don’t just describe — analyze,” he rapped. “Write what you mean, discuss the theme.”

The class was in the midst of reviewing the U.S. History Regents curriculum using a pilot program called Fresh Prep, which wrote its own hip-hop songs to help students remember facts, concepts and test-taking strategies.

The program’s creators are trying to prove that music and arts can help boost student test scores in core subjects like history and English. They’ve already seen some success: When they ran the program on a smaller scale last year, the vast majority of students passed their exams.

Listen to one of Fresh Prep’s U.S. History Regents songs, “Turn of the Century.” You can listen to all of the program’s songs on its website.
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