MAPLEWOOD, N. J.—Columbia High School seems to have it all—great sports teams, great academics, famous alumni and an impressive campus with Gothic buildings. But no one boasts about one aspect of this blue-ribbon school, that its classrooms are largely segregated.
Though the school is majority black, white students make up the bulk of the advanced classes, while black students far outnumber whites in lower-level classes, statistics show.
“It’s kind of sad,” said Ugochi Opara, a senior who is president of the student council. “You can tell right away, just by looking into a classroom, what level it is.”
This is a reality at many high schools coast to coast and one of the side effects of aggressive leveling, the increasingly popular practice of dividing students into ability groups.
But at Columbia High, the students nearly revolted. Two weeks ago, a black organization on campus planned a walkout to protest the leveling system. Word soon spread to the principal, who pleaded with the students not to go. The student leaders decided to hold an assembly instead, in which they lashed out at the racial gap.
The student uproar is now forcing district officials to take a hard look at the leveling system and decide how to strike a balance between their two main goals—celebrating diversity and pushing academic achievement.
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The flashpoint of the assembly came when Nathan Winkler, a skinny, intense senior who says he wants to be governor some day, grabbed the microphone and announced that he had no sympathy for people in lower levels because all it took was hard work to move up.
His short outburst was like a cleaver, splitting the student body in two. Many blacks booed him. Many whites cheered. He was then accused of using the term “you people” in his speech—though he did not, according to a videotape of the assembly. After the assembly, he said, he was stalked in the hallways.
He now admits that he spoke out of fear.
“I felt extremely isolated during that assembly,” he said. “For the first time I was aware of being part of the minority. White kids are outnumbered at Columbia. I knew that, but I hadn’t really felt it before.”
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(Posted on April 4, 2005)