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Parent after parent took the mic at a public meeting in Manhattan last month, painting a dire picture of the state of special education at Beacon High School.
One parent said teachers at the Hell’s Kitchen school are “sentencing my child to fail, and no one is able to fix the problem.” Another said, “We are watching Beacon’s demise, and we feel trapped.”
Dan Bright, the father of a ninth grader with a disability, said Beacon was so ill-equipped to support students with disabilities that he transferred his son to a new school within two months.
How the school fell so short in accommodating students in special education — and who is to blame — is at the heart of a crisis that has been roiling the Manhattan high school for months. The turmoil threatens to upend the school’s leadership and is forcing Beacon to confront longstanding questions about its mission and identity.
Long considered one of New York City’s most coveted public high schools, Beacon had some 4,400 applicants last year for 360 spots, according to city data. It’s nationally recognized for its progressive approach to education, which emphasizes student inquiry and projects over tests.
In recent years, Beacon’s student population shifted, accelerated by pandemic-era admissions reforms that increased numbers of students with disabilities, from low-income families, and testing below grade level in math and English. The changes brought new challenges, according to families and educators.
The school has struggled to provide students with disabilities with routine accommodations, such as extra time on exams, and many such students have received failing grades at a higher rate than their peers in general education, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents, educators, and students, and a review of academic records.
Some parents and educators blame the crisis on a variety of missteps made by interim Principal Johnny Ventura, who took the helm in 2023, and Assistant Principal Naisha Baidy, who started in 2021 and oversees special education. Nineteen parents and teachers submitted testimony, much of it anonymous, to the city’s Panel for Educational Policy last month criticizing the leadership of Ventura and Baidy and calling for their removal, according to a copy obtained by Chalkbeat.
The conflict between faculty — some of whom have been at the school for decades — and the administration has many teachers eyeing the exit, several staffers said.
“I’ve never seen more people dissatisfied and looking for the door,” said one veteran teacher, who, like other current Beacon educators, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
But others say Ventura came in facing significant headwinds and is being blamed for problems that predate him.
The student population changed “at a pace that the school wasn’t ready for, the teachers weren’t ready for,” said Alberta Conteh, the parent of a Beacon senior and president of the Parent Teacher Association. Ventura is “inheriting a lot of things that are not innately his fault, and then obviously he gets the blame,” she added.
The conflict at Beacon, and how the school accommodates its changing population, could have implications for other selective schools. Of the city’s 27 most sought-after screened schools, 22 saw an increase in their percentage of students with disabilities between 2019 and last school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data.
Ventura, reached by phone Wednesday, said a number of the criticisms from parents and staff were “not true” but declined to elaborate, referring a request for comment to the Education Department’s press office. Baidy couldn’t be reached by email or phone.
Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said Beacon has “a long history of serving students with disabilities,” including a partnership with a District 75 school, which serves students with significant disabilities, located in the same building. The Education Department has provided coaching and training on best practices in special education, and Superintendent Alan Cheng is actively working with the school to decide on next steps “that best serve all” students, Tull added.
Debates over Beacon’s mission stretch back decades
Launched in 1993, Beacon began as a small school with a diverse student body and educational philosophy opposed to standardized tests. Beacon is also an original member of the city’s consortium network of schools, where students complete “performance-based assessments,” like projects and portfolios to graduate, rather than the Regents exams used in the rest of the state.
But as the school grew in size and prestige, some faculty members say it drifted from its original ethos.
Beacon began screening applicants based on academic outcomes in the mid-2000s, leading to dwindling numbers of Black, Latino, and low-income students. And many of the new teachers and students were less committed to the consortium approach, some educators said.
“Beacon is the rare example of a pretty big school where they’ve managed to make this kind of assessment system work at a very high level,” said Harry Feder, a former history teacher and parent at Beacon who now serves as executive director at FairTest, a New York-based organization that advocates against using standardized testing in college admissions. “But over the years … there’s cracks in the facade.”
The debates over admissions resurfaced during the pandemic — amid a citywide reckoning over the effect of school admissions policies on diversity at selective high schools — and as Beacon’s founding principal, Ruth Lacey, retired. The school continued to screen students, but it adopted admissions reforms that decreased emphasis on grades and set aside two-thirds of seats for students from low-income families.
The shift was significant.
The school’s proportion of students with disabilities, which had been steadily rising even before the pandemic, jumped from 13% in 2019 to 20% last year. The share of economically disadvantaged kids rose from 33% to 50%, according to city data. In 2019, just 17% of Beacon freshmen who took state math exams in eighth grade entered the school having scored below “proficient.” By 2022, the last year for which data was available, that number was 37%.
A new principal takes the helm
Many in Beacon’s community greeted Ventura’s appointment in the summer of 2023 with excitement. The school’s first principal of color, Ventura, who identifies as a Black Latino, openly shared his story of dropping out of high school and earning a GED diploma.
Ventura, a former school counselor, came to Beacon from Brooklyn Technical High School, the city’s largest and one of its most selective high schools, where he served as an assistant principal overseeing special education. Some families and educators thought that would be a boon at a time when Beacon was seeing enormous growth in its special education population.
“I was optimistic that he, as an Afro-Latino, as someone with a background in social work and special education, could really find ways to bring the community together,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a parent leader and former member of the Panel for Educational Policy who advised Ventura early in his tenure at the school.
But staffers and parents soon grew concerned over missteps. When the school discovered racist and antisemitic graffiti in March, which included a school shooting threat, Ventura initially left out the racist remarks and threat in a communication to parents. The oversight spurred one student to create an online petition calling for Ventura’s removal. Ventura later apologized for the omission.
Teachers bristled at Ventura’s attempts to direct classroom instruction, given his lack of experience as a classroom teacher and in consortium schools. Some said he showed little interest in, or understanding of, the school’s consortium approach.
According to an internal union survey of more than 60 teachers in October, only about 20% said the principal valued their instructional expertise and looked out for their welfare, according to results shared with Chalkbeat.
A contentious meeting of the teachers union chapter earlier this year also revealed divisions along racial lines. Several Black staff members spoke up in support of Ventura and said they’ve personally felt marginalized at the school, according to multiple staff members present.
Conteh, the PTA president, said she suspects Ventura’s race has played a role in the criticism he’s received.
“Are there things that he’s being held to because of his color?” said Conteh, who identifies as a woman of color. “It’s just a fact. … People have a lower threshold for failure if you’re a person of color.”
Special education complaints boil over
As the internal fighting among faculty continued, families felt increased urgency to address the situation of students in special education.
Roughly 54% of students in special education received failing grades in 10th-grade Geometry during the third marking period last year, compared to 18% of students in general education, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. More than 40% of students with disabilities in Algebra 1 and ninth-grade biology got failing marks in the same quarter, compared with 16% and 14%, respectively, for general education students, the data showed. (Final course grades were not included in the data.)
In last year’s school survey, just 48% of Beacon parents of students with disabilities said they were satisfied with how the school was meeting their student’s individualized education program, or IEP — the lowest percentage of any high school in the city where more than six parents responded.
Multiple parents told Chalkbeat that the school failed to place students in classes with dedicated special education teachers, a violation of their IEPs. Parents also said that teachers routinely denied relatively common accommodations, such as extra time on tests and homework, the option to retake exams, and graphic organizers and study aids — even when they’re outlined on students’ IEPs.
There have been improvements: This fall, 95% of students entitled to a dedicated special education teacher were placed in a class with one, up from 84% last fall, according to special education reports reviewed by Chalkbeat.
But there’s still some disagreement over where to point the finger for the school’s problems in special education.
Some parents said some teachers’ attitudes are a big part of the problem.
“A lot of teachers have never taught to any kids with learning differences, and they’re totally out of their depth,” said one parent of a student in special education, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear their child could face reprisal. “There’s tremendous resistance among some staff.”
During one meeting of the School Leadership Team last year, a math teacher said students with disabilities couldn’t be expected to keep up in higher-level math courses, according to a parent present.
Several veteran teachers countered that, with some exceptions, teachers want to learn to better support students with disabilities but haven’t gotten the necessary help from the school’s leadership. Some educators blame Ventura and Baidy for mismanaging staffing assignments and ignoring teachers’ and parents’ requests for help.
“We are working every which way possible to fight against the same system that [parents] are fighting against,” said one teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’re just hitting the same brick wall.”
Ventura has made efforts to improve the situation, but parents and educators say some have backfired.
This fall, he unveiled a new grading policy meant to address concerns from parents that rules varied widely between classes, and some courses relied too heavily on tests. The policy, a copy of which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, mandated that tests count for no more than 70% of a course grade and required teachers to offer two assessments a quarter.
Several educators said they supported the idea of bringing more coherence to a school where teachers have long had wide latitude to set classroom policies, but they objected to the fact that it was done with little consultation of teachers.
“All of a sudden, we have these, hammer, top-down policies without any meaningful discussion,” said a veteran teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Some parents said they ultimately blame Ventura, as the school’s leader.
“A school like that needs a really strong principal who can make the case to educators” to change their practices, said one parent, but Ventura is “basically alienating all the teachers.”
Beacon’s crisis could have ripple effects
How Beacon weathers its current challenges may well reverberate beyond the school.
The consortium model has attracted increasing attention as the state embarks on a multiyear effort to remove the Regents graduation requirements — and Beacon is its crown jewel.
The school has also been at the center of some of the city’s most fiery debates over school admissions and equity. How it adjusts to its changing student population could have an impact on future efforts to diversify the city’s screened schools. Some teachers who have pushed for the school to open its admissions worry that its current struggles could undermine those efforts.
“We’ve created this change … and haven’t created structures to support those kids,” said a veteran teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “That leaves a space open for people to say, ‘See, these kids can’t make it here.’”
At stake in all the debates over the school’s leadership and direction is whether Beacon can live up to its founding ideal of providing a top-notch progressive education to a wide swath of city kids, educators said — something at which the school once excelled.
This story was updated to clarify that many Beacon ninth-graders don’t take the state math exam in eighth grade.
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org