Category: 1971

  • Hecht-Calandra Governor’s Bill Jacket

    Research on the passing of Hecht-Calandra in 1971. This includes supporting documents from various agencies and stakeholders.

  • New Entry Policy at 4 Special Schools Is Urged

    A special committee appointed by School Chancellor Harvey B. Scribner has recommended that the city’s four specialized high schools abandon their traditional policy of basing regular admissions solely on competitive entrance examinations. The 26‐member, broad‐based committee said admissions to these schools “should be based on multiple criteria that are objective and equitable in nature.” It…

  • Legislature Retains Admission Tests for City’s Four Specialized High Schools

    Archive of the original NYTimes news article from 1971 Without debate, the Senate and the Assembly gave final legislative approval today to a bill designed to limit the New York City Board of Education’s power to alter the city’s four specialized high schools. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/26/archives/legislature-retains-admission-tests-for-citys-four-specialized-high.html

  • Challenge To the Concept of Elite

    This was enough to convince many of the schools’ supporters that a lowering of standards was in the making. Such fears were aggravated by the fact that, for several years, some gifted and highly motivated disadvantaged youngsters — most of them black and Puerto Rican who might not have done sufficiently well in the standard…

  • Petrifying the High Schools?

    But to say that these schools should be preserved must not mean that they are a petrified preserve, immune to review and reform. Neither their admissions process nor their curriculum is sacrosanct. Enactment of the bill by the State Senate would be a flagrant violation of educational home rule. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/21/archives/petrifying-the-high-schools.html

  • ASSEMBLY VOTES HIGH SCHOOL CURB

    This is one of the original New York Times articles reporting on the passage of the Hecht-Calandra law. New York City Democrats split into emotionally charged camps to day as the Assembly passed a bill designed to limit the Board of Education’s power to alter the city’s four specialized high schools. The measure passed, 107…

  • Scribner to Name Unit to Study Special‐School Entrance Tests

    School Chancellor Harvey B. Scribner announced last night that he would soon appoint a broad‐based committee to examine all the admission policies and procedures of the city’s four specialized academic high schools. The high schools, all of which require a special entrance examination, are Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and the Nigh School of Music…

  • Bronx High School of Science Accused of Bias in Admissions

    A Manhattan community school board charged yesterday that an admissions policy based on entrance examinations made the Bronx High School of Science the most segregated school in the city. Members of the board, of District 3 on the West Side, said they would meet with lawyers on Monday to plan legal action aimed at nullifying…