On Friday August 25, 2017, the Center for New York City Law at New York Law School hosted the 144th CityLaw Breakfast. The event speaker was New York City Department of Education Chancellor Carmen Farina. Commissioner Farina was welcomed by Anthony Crowell, President and Dean of New York Law School and introduced by Ross Sandler, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for New York City Law.
Chancellor Farina began by noting that comprehensive education can truly change a person’s life. Farina focused her discussion on the efforts the NYC Department of Education has taken beyond academics to ensure current and future success of students. She remarked that the goal of public education is to have students grow up to be good citizens of the world. Farina spoke of many City programs that have supported this goal of creating good citizens– Universal Pre-K, a Back to High School Mentorship program between college and high school students, more funding for arts programs, mental health services, collaboration between schools, and communication with Student Governments. (read more…)
The Center for New York City Law cordially invites you to a City Law Breakfast
presenting
Carmen Farina
Chancellor, NYC Department of Education
Speaking on:
“Setting Priorities: Equity and Excellence for All”
(read more…)
Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. Image credit: CityLand
(Editor’s Note: The Department of Education recently released statistics on the first round of 2015 admissions for New York City’s examination high schools. According to their report, offers to join the 2015-2016 incoming class at Stuyvesant High School counts just ten African-American and twenty Latino students. The following by Professor Aaron Saiger of Fordham University’s School of Law was published in the January/February issue of CityLaw.)
New York City is experiencing one of its periodic flare-ups over its eight selective “examination” high schools. As in the past, attention has focused upon what a United Federation of Teachers task force calls “the profound inequity in the admissions demographics” at the exam schools. UFT, Redefining High Performance for Entrance into Specialized High Schools 3 (March 2014). This inequity results from these schools’ practice of admitting students based exclusively upon scores on the standardized Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Because the exam schools now function as one component in the broader current system of citywide high school choice, however, it is possible to argue that their test-only admissions in fact enhance the diversity of the system overall, their racial demographics notwithstanding.
(read more…)
