Category: history
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Hecht-Calandra Governor’s Bill Jacket
Research on the passing of Hecht-Calandra in 1971. This includes supporting documents from various agencies and stakeholders.
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Segregation Has Been the Story of New York City’s Schools for 50 Years
It’s important to understand the political climate before the NY State legislature decided to pass Hecht-Calandra in 1971. The New York Times does a great job filing in that context. In 2016, a proposal to send some Upper West Side children — who were zoned for a high-performing, mostly white, wealthy elementary school near their…
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Stuyvesant Alumni President: Calling NYC Schools ‘Segregated’ Makes Me ‘Feel Like I’m a Bad Person’
“How is this possible, that people are saying we’re segregated, we’re Jim Crow,” Kim told the Times. “These words are too harsh. It makes me feel like I’m a bad person.” This is a striking and revelatory assessment of what’s happening. New York City officials admitted long ago to having a segregated public school system, and…
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How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools
The anniversary of de Rivera’s battle comes amid another controversy about diversity at Stuyvesant. The school accepts students based entirely on an entrance exam, and the result is that few black and Latino students are admitted. (Only ten black students were admitted to Stuyvesant’s incoming class last year.) Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed…
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Lawmakers, teachers union push to change elite high schools’ admission process, boost diversity
State lawmakers, city officials and the teachers union have teamed in a fresh push to increase diversity at the city’s elite public high schools by overhauling their admissions process. Critics say the current state-mandated system relying on test scores from a single exam — which is used at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and five…
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Special Classes Help Gifted in Ghettos
OUTSIDE, there is a burned‐out tenement, a symbol of a devastated inner‐city neighborhood. Inside, a teacher is working on algebra problems with a class of gifted children, preparing them for entrance to specialized high schools. Of the 16,800 pupils in District 7, 400 are in special progress classes. The district is about 68 percent Hispanic,…
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Gifted Grade Schoolers To Get Special Instruction
This is where NYC’s infamous Gifted & Talented program all started. The city school system will get its first program for teaching gifted elementary ‐school children this fall, following a vote to set up the program by’ the central Board of Education last night. A grant of $60,000 from the Vincent Astor Foundation will finance…