Education Next – Peter Meyer
“If one is looking for a symbol of the rise and fall—and resurrection—of the American high school, one need but take the #1 IRT subway to 225th Street in the Bronx, then walk a few blocks up Marble Hill along the north shore of the Harlem River. The eight-story building covering some four city blocks looks as if it was lifted from the drafting table of a Soviet bloc architect. Opened in 1972, John F. Kennedy High School housed in its heyday between 3,000 and 6,000 students—4,500 started that first September. According to Iris Zucker, who taught there in the 1990s, “It was as big as some towns. We had 350 teachers.” It had everything for everyone—except an education. By the end of the century, only one-third of its students graduated. Furthermore, it was dangerous, described in a 2004 New York Times story as a school that “has turned out more horrifying tales than success stories. There was the substitute teacher whose hair was set on fire, the assistant principal hospitalized after being knocked down by students, the assorted objects—trash cans, ceramics projects—hurled from windows, sometimes into teachers’ parked cars. In 2002, one summer school student fatally stabbed another outside the school. A few months later, things became so rowdy after a fire drill that the police officers on duty used Mace…”.”(more)