August 4, 2010 Diversity Debate Convulses Elite High School By SHARON OTTERMAN With one of its alumnae, Elena Kagan, poised for confirmation as a justice on the United States Supreme Court, it should be a triumphant season for Hunter College High School, a New York City public school for the intellectually gifted. But instead, the school is in turmoil, with much of the faculty in an uproar over the resignation of a popular principal, the third in five years. In her departure speech to teachers in late June, the principal cited several reasons for her decision, including tensions over a lack of diversity at the school, which had been the subject of a controversial graduation address the day before by one of the school’s few African-American students. Hours after the principal’s address, a committee of Hunter High teachers that included Ms. Kagan’s brother, Irving, read aloud a notice of no confidence to the president of Hunter College, who ultimately oversees the high school, one of the most prestigious public schools in the nation. The events fanned a long-standing disagreement between much of the high school faculty and the administration of Hunter College over the use of a single, teacher-written test for admission to the school, which has grades 7 through 12. Faculty committees have recommended broadening the admissions process to include criteria like interviews, observations or portfolios of student work, in part to increase minority enrollment and blunt the impact of the professional test preparation undertaken by many prospective students. Eliminating the test, which has remained essentially unchanged for decades, is not on the table, said John Rose, the dean for diversity at Hunter College. The test, he said, is an integral part of the success of the school, which has a stellar college admissions profile — about 25 percent of graduates are admitted to Ivy League schools — and outstanding alumni like Ms. Kagan and Ruby Dee. “Parents, faculty members and alumni feel very strongly that the test is very valuable in terms of preserving the kind of specialness and uniqueness that the school has,” Mr. Rose said. As has happened at other prestigious city high schools that use only a test for admission, the black and Hispanic population at Hunter has fallen in recent years. In 1995, the entering seventh-grade class was 12 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic, according to state data. This past year, it was 3 percent black and 1 percent Hispanic; the balance was 47 percent Asian and 41 percent white, with the other 8 percent of students identifying themselves as multiracial. The public school system as a whole is 70 percent black and Hispanic. When Justin Hudson, 18, stood up in his purple robes to address his classmates in the auditorium of Hunter College, those numbers were on his mind. He opened his remarks by praising the school and explaining how appreciative he was to have made it to that moment. Then he shocked his audience. “More than anything else, I feel guilty,” Mr. Hudson, who is black and Hispanic, told his 183 fellow graduates. “I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.” They had been labeled “gifted,” he told them, based on a test they passed “due to luck and circumstance.” Beneficiaries of advantages, they were disproportionately from middle-class Asian and white neighborhoods known for good schools and the prevalence of tutoring. “If you truly believe that the demographics of Hunter represent the distribution of intelligence in this city,” he said, “then you must believe that the Upper West Side, Bayside and Flushing are intrinsically more intelligent than the South Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Washington Heights. And I refuse to accept that.” The entire faculty gave him a standing ovation, as did about half the students. The principal, Eileen Coppola, who had quietly submitted her formal resignation in mid-June but had not yet informed the faculty, praised him, saying, “That was a very good and a very brave speech to make,” Mr. Hudson recalled. But Jennifer J. Raab, Hunter College’s president and herself a Hunter High alumna, looked uncomfortable on the stage and did not join in the ovation, faculty members and students said. In a sense, Mr. Hudson’s message came from the faculty. To relieve some of the pressure on its students, the school does not name a valedictorian; instead, it invites seniors to submit proposed graduation speeches and a faculty committee selects one to be read. This year, it chose Mr. Hudson’s, to his surprise. The day after the speech, Dr. Coppola, a Harvard-trained urban education expert in her first job as a principal, informed the staff at an emergency meeting on June 25 that she was stepping down, making it clear that she did not want to go. She cited a “culture of fear” from above and “untenable working conditions,” several faculty members present said. Reading from a statement, Dr. Coppola, who was the principal for two years, said Ms. Raab told her in late May that she seemed to resent the senior staff at the college. She was told to consider whether the job was a good fit. Randy Collins, director of the Hunter College Campus Schools and Dr. Coppola’s supervisor, said that the admissions issue was not behind Ms. Raab’s criticism of Dr. Coppola, and that it had more to do with her failure to communicate with and listen to senior college staff members. But Dr. Coppola told the faculty she thought Ms. Raab had been upset, in part, because she did not mute faculty voices calling for changes in admissions, as well as other aspects of the relationship with the college, including hiring procedures and budgeting. After Dr. Coppola left the room to a standing ovation, the teachers there, roughly three-quarters of the 100-member faculty, decided to use the blackboard to draft a letter to Ms. Raab, a number of teachers who were present said. They were facing the reality of a fifth person serving as principal in little over five years, including one past acting principal and one coming in; in 2005, another popular principal left under pressure. “The faculty was furious,” said Rembert Herbert, a longtime English teacher. “It is a wonderful school, and it goes on in spite of this. But Dr. Coppola was doing a great job, and there was no reason for her to leave.” The teachers agreed on three points: a vote of no confidence in Ms. Raab’s leadership, a vote of support for Dr. Coppola and a statement of intent that after the summer recess, in September, to take the matter to Matthew Goldstein, the chancellor of the City University of New York, of which Hunter College is part. Later that afternoon, a faculty committee delivered the letter to Ms. Raab and read it to her, said Carolyn Mayadas, the head of the committee, who has since retired. Mr. Kagan, a social studies teacher, declined to comment. Citing advice from her lawyer, Dr. Coppola also declined to comment. Ms. Raab would not speak directly about the reasons behind the resignation. “Although changes in leadership always bring challenges, we have a stable, accomplished team in place at Hunter College High School to ensure a smooth transition,” Ms. Raab said in a statement. Mr. Collins acknowledged that the notoriously difficult test, which has math, English and essay sections and is given in the sixth grade, “isn’t a good indicator of giftedness.” “It is a good indicator of whether you will be successful at Hunter,” he added. Efforts are under way to increase diversity, focusing on outreach. For the first time, the school this year sent mailings directly to all city fifth graders who scored in the top 10 percent on both the state English and math tests, the criteria to take the Hunter test, rather than relying on schools to pass the word. Hunter High also started a mentoring program for promising third graders. One-quarter of the city students qualifying for the test this year were black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Hunter could not provide data for how many black or Hispanic children took the test in 2010. Ms. Raab was not the only one who did not applaud Mr. Hudson’s speech. Irene Kwok, a graduate who was a co-president of the Asian Cultural Society, said she had heard more negative than positive comments from her friends afterward. “Some of my friends felt the reference to their neighborhoods was insulting,” she said. “They felt like their admission was an individual achievement, not because of some racial community they belong to.” On the other hand, she added, “it really made us think about who we are and where we came from.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment