An Upper East Side building houses two seemingly segregated elementary schools: one for mostly black and Latino kids, one for mostly white and Asian kids. Since 1959 it's been home to P.S. 198 (aka Straus), a school that serves local children—24 percent are black and 47 percent are Latino. But go in the front door and you'll find yourself in the reportedly "serene" hallways of the Lower Laboratory School (P.S. 77), a gifted and talented program where 69 percent of the student body is white or Asian. The old sign for Straus hangs out front, but kids from that school enter through the back door.
Real and symbolic inequities aren't hard to spot; in fact, The Village Voice lists them for six pages. Teachers wonder if disparate achievement at the two schools is a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Some of those teachers, they think that because their children are 'gifted,' that makes them better teachers," said one Straus faculty member. "But why? They've already selected out the highest-achieving kids. They're easy to teach. We have to take anyone who walks in. We have to bring kids to the table."
Though he was one of just five officials to vote against shutting down 19 underperforming public schools earlier this year, Patrick Sullivan, the borough president's appointee to the Panel for Education, says a black and white perspective on the two public schools is oversimplified. "The gifted and talented criteria is a standardized test that, I believe—and I believe many other people believe—unfairly draws from higher-income children and families, because they are better able to prepare for that test," he said. When asked if having racially divided programs share a space might make Straus students feel inferior, and act that way, he responded "No, I don't think it has an effect."
