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Tag: nytimes

  • 2 Ideals at Issue

    Many teachers and principals are convinced that there should be ability grouping for the good of the most able and the least able students. But often these same educators are uneasy over the racial isolation that often results. This has put some programs for bright students on shaky ground.

    Classes for gifted children are being abolished, for example, at P.S. 152, down the block from Brooklyn College, because even though the school’s enrollment is becoming increasingly black and Puerto Rican, the gifted classes are disproportionately white.

    “There is no doubt that our classes for the intellectually gifted would have been totally segregated at that school if we had continued them,” said Dr. Ralph T. Brande, the superintendent of Community School District 22. Nonetheless, most of the district’s schools continue to have classes for the intellectually gifted.

    “District 22 is one of the last bastons of the middle‐class — both black and white —in the city,” Dr. Brande explained in an interview. “We have to do something to keep them in the schools. Will they flee the public schools and the city if they lose the classes for the intellectually gifted and the special progress classes at the junior highs?

    “I know the word ‘elitist’ is associated with these programs, but the problem that concerns me is whether we can still develop these children if we throw them in with everyene else.”

    At least one of the decentralized. districts, District 3, which reaches from Columbus Circle into ,Ilarlem on the city’s West Sides has answered the question;by banning all classes for the intellectually. gifted and operating entirely on what it says is a heterogeneous basis.

    “The families in our district are either poor or well off and everyone knows there is a correlation between economic background and how kids do in school” says Joseph Elias, the distriet superintendent. “Until we iriade the change, if You were. white you go into the ‘smart’ class and if you were not ‘,White you got into the ‘dumb’ class, Getting their children into the classes for the gifted was a way for parents to avoid having to spend $3,000 or $4,000 a year for a private school.”

    犀利士 l” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/22/archives/2-ideals-at-issue.html

  • 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 two experimental “early ‐learner” classes, in Brooklyn and Manhattan, for especially bright children aged from 4 to 6 years.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/16/archives/gifted-grade-schoolers-to-get-special-instruction.html

    And 2 years later…

    The two existing experimental classrooms for 4‐to‐6‐year‐old pupils are situated in Public School 116 at 210 East 33d Street in Manhattan and P.S. 114 at 1077 Remsen Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

    Students are selected from all boroughs on the basis of interviews, recommendations and tests and, according to Dr. Ehrlich, represent the top one‐half of 1 per cent of the pupil population.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/11/archives/pilot-project-aids-gifted-children-in-city-schools.html

  • 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 called for a revision in state law to make possible such an admissions policy.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/24/archives/new-entry-policy-at-4-special-schools-is-urged-group-appointed-by.html

  • 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 tests—had been admitted as part of a “Discovery” program, similar to those long used by many elite colleges. Last fall, the four schools admitted 3,484 regular contestants in the competition plus 352 Discovery students. Over‐all, enrollment at the four schools, on the average, is 25 percent nonwhite, compared with 5.1 percent for all of the city’s academic high schools.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/23/archives/education-high-school-challenge-to-the-concept-of-the-elite.html

  • 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 to 35, and was sent to the Senate after minority‐group members led the opposition and accused white colleagues of seeking an exclusionary racial quota at the schools.


    The schools, all highly regarded nationally, are the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, Stuyvesant High School and La Guardia High School of Music and the Arts.


    Shouted accusations of hypo critical liberalism, racial prejudice and unfair intrusion by upstaters in city affairs echoed on the Democratic side during a three‐hour debate as members repeatedly jumped to their feet and interrupted one an other.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/20/archives/assembly-votes-high-school-curb-limits-city-boards-power-to-ease.html

  • 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 and Art.


    The tests, especially those for the three more technical schools, have been the subject of recent criticism that they discriminate culturally against blacks and Puerto Ricans.


    On Jan. 21 Alfredo Mathew Jr., superintendent of School District 3 in Manhattan, charged that the exams for Bronx Science worked to “screen out” black and Puerto Rican students, and he asked Dr. Scribner to move against such policies.


    No Immediate Changes


    In a four‐page reply last night, Dr. Scribner told Mr. Mathew that after investigation and careful consideration: “I do not believe that it is possible for me to make a determination to change existing policies. I have discovered enough, however, to raise serious questions with reference to admissions policies in all our specialized high schools.”

    And he said he would, therefore, appoint a committee to examine the present admissions procedures and to make “appropriate recommendations.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/02/24/archives/scribner-to-name-unit-to-study-specialschool-entrance-tests.html

  • 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 the entrance examinations given at the school this week.

    The community board and its superintendent, Alfredo Mathew Jr., said the Bronx High School of Science was a privileged educational center for children of the white middle class because “culturally” oriented examinations worked to “screen out” black and Puerto Rican students who could succeed at the school. They said that 90 percent of the school’s 3,200 students were white.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/22/archives/bronx-high-school-of-science-accused-of-bias-in-admissions.html