Educators Letter and Nadelstern's Response

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6/3/09 Letter from educators & community organizations:

On June 3, 2009 fourteen distinguished educators and twelve community organizationssent the following letter to Ms. Lacey and Chancellor Klein:Dear Ms. Lacey and Chancellor Klein:We are educators and community organizations in NYC concerned with issues of equityand justice in our public education system. We understand that large numbers of studentsand other members of the community at the Beacon School, one of our City's highlyregarded public high schools, are concerned about making its admissions process as fair and equitable as possible.In recent years, Beacon's student population has had a small--and shrinking--number of students of color, low income students, English Language Learners, and students withspecial needs. The exact statistics are listed below.We know that these critical issues of access and equity are relevant to all our publicschools across NYC and that many of our schools, particularly those considered topschools, are not as accessible to low income students and students of color or to EnglishLanguage learners and students with special needs as they should be. Our concern aboutBeacon is part of our larger concern about the need for an equitable admissions process inour City's schools.We support the efforts of the Beacon community and hope that the Beacon administrationand DOE will address their concerns and work toward insuring that we have schools anda school system that serve ALL our children and provide them the high quality educationthey deserve.

Signatories:

Scholars Organizations:

Professor Gary AndersonBloomingdale Family ProgramProfessor Jean Anyon Congrtegation B’nai JeshurunProfessor Anthony De JesusCenter for Immigrant FamiliesProfessor Michelle FineIndependent Commission on PublicProfessor Ofelia GarciaEducationProfessor Maxine GreeneIt Is TimeProfessor Linda LevineJews for Racial and EconomicProfessor Deborah MeierJusticeProfessor Kate MenkenJudson Memorial ChurchProfessor Pedro NogueraNY Collective of Radical EducatorsProfessor Katherine O'DonnellTeachers UniteMadeline PerezThree Parks DemocratsProfessor Bree PicowerTime Out from TestingProfessor Luis O. Reyes

Professor Klaudia M. Rivera

Dept. of Education’s response to educators’ and community organizations’ letter

Eric Nadelstern, Chief Schools Officer, responded by email to the educators’ andcommunity organizations’ letter later on 6/3/09:

Mr. Nadelstern’s letter:

Dear Concerned Educators:Chancellor Klein has shared your e-mail and asked me to respond to your concerns. Firstly, I need to express our commitment to the goals of access and equity that you have articulated. Toward that end, we haveimplemented a high school admissions process that is driven by student and familychoice, and that has provided our students with more high school options thanever before.Beacon High School is one of our highest-performing high schools, andattracts many more applicants than available seats. As a screenedschool, all applicants are expected to meet the same high standards for admission. While there has been a small decrease in enrollment of students of color, it should be acknowledged that in some categories of your analysis,Latino students for instance, the decrease over the last three years is but asingle student. In fact, most of the data you reference can be accounted for by demographic changes in Manhattan, and the change in admissionsstatus for Beacon from "educational option" to "screened" during this same time period. Beacon remains one of the most diverse screened high schools inManhattan, and is more diverse than the population of that borough. Nevertheless, we remain as committed to equity of access atthis school as we do at all others across the school system. Towardthat end, we intend to work with the administration at Beacon to conduct targetedrecruitment in underrepresented communities in Manhattan and the other boroughs.It is our belief that through this process, we can maintain highstandards for admission as we strive to maintain a diverse student population.Thank you for sharing your concerns.Best regards,Eric NadelsternChief Schools Officer

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