New York City “600” Schools and the Legacy of Segregation in Special Education

By Francine Almash

In 1964 Board of Education Committee on the “600” Schools was convened to address segregation and mistreatment of students in the city’s special schools for maladjusted and emotionally disturbed youth. New York City Municipal Archives.

In 1947 the New York City Board of Education announced the first centralized program for delinquent and maladjusted youth, known as the “600” schools (for their number designation). The “600” schools were the result of coordinated efforts beginning in the 1920s that linked the NYC Board of Education, the Bureau of Educational Measurements, which promoted psychological testing to aid in the education of “emotionally handicapped” children, and the New York City Children’s Courts, which gave judges the authority to act as surrogate parents to a growing number of “at-risk” youth.[1]

The announcement represented a shift from decades of Board of Education attempts to address chronic truancy through programs designed to avoid segregating “socially disabled” students in separate schools. The original purpose of the “600” schools carried over previous Progressive-era ideals of rehabilitation and reform of young people who had “lost their way.” However, as the city’s demographics shifted with increasing black and Puerto Rican populations, by the 1950s the “600” schools became an effective tool for the removal and isolation of these populations from traditional public school classrooms by labeling them as maladjusted, delinquent, and emotionally disturbed.

In the wake of Federal policies to desegregate education in the United States and against the backdrop of the struggle to integrate New York City public schools, the “600” schools played an important role in the fight for community control that resulted in 1968 in the largest teacher strike in the city’s history.

Establishing the “600” Schools

The 1940s and 1950s brought the second wave of the Great Migration of Southern African Americans to the northeast and the first wave of mass migration from Puerto Rico. As the face of the city shifted in the postwar era, so did public opinion about “troubled” children. The attitude of the city’s growing white, professional middle class was reflected in new school policies. While segregation of students in special classes existed from the earliest days of compulsory attendance, the Board of Education had spent the better part of the 1930s reorganizing the city’s three probationary schools in an attempt to move away from sentencing “troubled” youth to separate schools. Less than a decade later, the Board announced plans to revisit the question of segregation at all levels, from elementary to vocational and high for “truant, psychotic, neurotic and anti-social pupils who cannot adjust to normal classes, special classes or special schools.”[2]

In 1947 the Board of Education announced a plan for the first centralized program for truant and delinquent youth. Twelve planned schools, designated as the “600” schools, would be established across the city starting with the 1948 school year. New York Times, December 28, 1947.

In 1947 the Board of Education announced a plan for twelve new schools that would be established over time to address the ongoing problem of emotionally maladjusted youth and those in need of remedial disciplinary attention. At this time, PS 37 was the city’s last probationary school for truant children. The new program, the first unified program developed for truants, would be under the direction of the Board of Education’s division of child welfare and run by Lillian Rashkis, principal of PS 37, who had been nationally recognized for her work with troubled youth.

For the new program, Rashkis promised the same rehabilitative atmosphere she was known for as head of PS 37. She assured that only teachers “who really love children” would be suited for employment in the “600” schools, and that applicants would be carefully screened for “warmth, a sympathetic understanding, and the ability to be patient at all times.”[3] Rashkis made the familiar promise of a therapeutic, non-punitive educational program, where children would feel wanted and be treated as individuals so they could be integrated back into “normal” society — first the classroom and ultimately the workforce.

Four new “600” schools were planned to open in the 1948 school year (by renovating and renaming existing public schools), with additional plans to utilize five existing shelters and institutions (including one residential program for girls in Brooklyn, and two institutions located outside of New York City) for troubled youth referred by court order or referred by a social service agency. The program was expected to expand to include a total of between two and three thousand students.[4]

If Rashkis’s original vision for the “600” schools was ever realized, it was short-lived. During the 1951-1952 school year, the Bureau of Child Guidance, the agency charged with providing therapeutic services to the schools through psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists, began a survey of the then five existing “600” day school programs serving 1,500 boys aged nine to sixteen.

The Bureau found few positive things to say. Among the criticisms, a review of records for pupils assigned to “600” schools raised questions about the accuracy of the referrals students had received. The majority were found to have “serious reading disabilities or other marked educational handicaps” that could have been served in their neighborhood schools if the intent was to keep them there.[5] According to the Bureau, student referrals to “600” schools appeared to represent conflicting goals — rehabilitation of pupils on one hand, and the relief from disruptive children for the sake of the well-adjusted students in regular schools on the other.

When the Bureau published the results of its survey in 1955, little of Rashkis’s ideas about compassionate treatment of troubled youth remained. Two years later, as the push for desegregation of the schools in the wake of Brown gained ground, an editorial in The New York Times on the planned expansion of the “600” schools quoted County Judge Samuel Leibowitz of Brooklyn as saying, “Hundreds, maybe thousands of wild animals are occupying rooms where decent kids go for an education.”[6]

During the 1957-1958 school year, the number of students assigned to the “600” schools increased to 2,400: 1,200 public school students attended a “600” day school while another 1,200 were remanded to one of six upstate institutions. The Board of Education, however, insisted that an additional 9,500 “hard-core delinquents” remained in neighborhood schools, and the city was not doing enough to protect the decent children forced to attend classes with them. In February 1958, when budgeted funds for the expansion of the “600” schools had not yet materialized, the Board of Education took matters into its own hands. Citing a reversal of policies that “pamper delinquents” by keeping them in regular classes, principals were ordered to immediately remove “hard-core” students from the rolls. The next day 664 students were denied access to their schools and told to stay home. The Board of Education claimed that in spite of the Compulsory Attendance Law, they could not safely provide educational services to these children.[7]

Ten days after this mass school removal, a lengthy exposé by The New York Times on “hard-core youth” described them as the products of families and communities with “plenty of nothing” but “lawlessness, hatred, and ignorance.”[8] They were characterized as delinquent children from delinquent families. Their behaviors and attitudes were described as “a disease” and “contagions” that started at home and infected the classroom.[9] The ethos of powerlessness and dependency passed from one generation to the next defined a “culture of poverty” a year before anthropologist Oscar Lewis put a name to it.
 

Milton Galamison and the Era of School Boycotts

In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement grew, so did frustration over the city’s inability (or unwillingness) to address segregation in its schools. A grassroots movement emerged in New York, led by Milton Galamison, a minister and activist in Brooklyn who was part of a coalition of parents and community leaders. Well-known published histories of New York City’s fight for school desegregation and the battle for community control that led to the 1968 teacher’s strike discuss Galamison’s most famous school boycotts. The first, the Freedom Day Boycott calling for a city-wide plan for integration, was held on February 3, 1964. Four hundred and sixty thousand public school students participated in what was arguably one of the largest civil rights demonstrations ever held. A second boycott, less successful, was held on March 16, 1964.[10]

While these two boycotts are discussed as pivotal moments leading up to the subsequent demand for community control of the schools and the 1968 teachers’ “strike that changed New York,” there is often little mention of the boycotts Galamison carried out early the following year specifically targeting the “600” schools.

In November of 1964, Galamison announced “Operation Shut Down,” a planned boycott of thirty-one of the city’s 139 junior high schools, all of which had more than eighty-five percent black and Puerto Rican enrollment. Among the schools on Galamison’s list were the city’s fifteen “600” schools, which had grown to enroll approximately 5,000 students (twenty-nine other “600” schools were attached to hospitals, prisons, and residential treatment centers – these were not included in the boycott.)[11]

In the weeks leading up to the boycott the white press began publishing articles highlighting the violence and aggression of the students inside “600” schools alongside articles portraying the schools as something of an oasis — the only place such children would be welcomed and cared for.

At the same time, scrutiny of the “600” schools had peaked. The newly published Allen Commission Report on School Segregation supported Galamison’s accusations that the schools had no clear function and no clear curriculum, as well as serving a disproportionate number of minority group students. Additionally, an investigation of teachers and administrators accused of mistreating students was underway. The Board of Education was forced to convene its own committee to investigate the “600” schools to address criticisms it could no longer ignore.

On January 19, 1965, Operation Shutdown began with three junior high schools and one “600” school.[12] James Donovan, President of the Board of Education, referred to it as “a reprehensible act” and threatened to jail Galamison for violating compulsory attendance laws.

The “600” schools proved to be a controversial issue for Galamison’s Operation Shutdown. Donovan accused Galamison of using “sick” kids for political gain and made good on his promise to jail him, but the boycott continued, and Galamison continued adding schools even though he was faced with increasing criticism in both the black and white press.

With mounting pressure as those within the black community publicly questioned whether students placed in “600” schools were the right ones to focus the movement on, Galamison began to pull back. Though he continued to include the “600” schools in his integration plan, after seven weeks Galamison called an end to the boycott, explaining that “the press was making the ‘600’ schools the whole issue.”[13]

It was the first time the question of the suspension and transfer of black and Puerto Rican students out of mainstream schools had received such public attention. Galamison’s efforts put the Board of Education on the defensive. The Board conceded that the schools needed improvement, though they insisted that reforms were already in the works.

The UFT and the “Disruptive Child” Strike

In the spring of 1967, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) entered into contract negotiations to be implemented at the start of the school year in September. Key among union demands was the “disruptive child” provision that would allow individual teachers the authority to expel any seriously misbehaving student in their classes and refer that student to a “special service” school. The UFT received pushback from two sides. On one side, the Board of Education argued the union was trying to overstep and gain managerial control over the school system by placing decision-making power directly into the hands of classroom teachers. On the other side, black teachers, the African American Teachers Association (ATA) specifically, and black parents believed that the “disruptive child” clause was a direct attack by white teachers on poor black children.[14] In spite of the pushback Galamison received regarding his earlier boycott of the “600” schools, the issue remained a central organizing principle for the community.

By September of 1967, with a planned walkout of over 30,000 UFT teachers looming, tensions between the union and the black and Puerto Rican communities continued to rise. With no resolution in sight, the UFT went on strike.[15] The so-called Disruptive Child Strike lasted two weeks. In the end, the UFT yielded some ground on the issue of expelling problem students. It appeared to be a victory for parents and students, but the Union had managed to successfully shift the issue away from racism and ineffective teaching and framed it as one of disciplining problem children.

In 1968 the New York State Department of Education published the results of a five-year study on vocational training for disabled students which highlighted discriminatory practices in sending students to “600” schools. New York State Education Department.

In the year following the 1967 Disruptive Child Strike, the New York State Education Department published the results of a five-year study of a vocational program involving the “600” schools and children with emotional disturbance. Blunt language described the racial discrimination that was evident in the process of evaluating and referring students to “600” schools. Psychiatric evaluations conducted for all participating “600” school students found no signs of the reported emotional disturbances that had caused their transfers to the “600” schools to begin with. Echoing the Bureau of Child Guidance’s earlier study, some had undiagnosed learning disabilities, while others were found to have high-average IQs. “We are not dealing primarily with “emotionally disturbed” children,” the report stated, “but rather with the more manifest and glaring examples of the consequences of living in the subculture of poverty… complicated by discrimination and segregation.[16]

It was the second time the state called out the Board of Education for discrimination against students sent to “600” schools — the first being in 1966 when a preliminary report on the vocational program was released. It is difficult to say what, if any, effect NYSED’s report could have had on the conditions of the “600” schools or the triggering events that led students to be transferred there. By the time the five-year study was complete, the city was on the verge of experiencing the crippling economic and social fallout resulting from UFT president Albert Shanker’s crusade against community control that had precipitated the infamous 1968 UFT strike. The problems of the “600” schools were eclipsed by those events, which completely transformed the landscape of the New York City public school system and its system of governance.

By the mid-1970s, after the decentralization of New York City public schools, District 75 was established, though it would be years before it evolved to the segregated special education district it is today.[17] In 1977, thirty years after the first “600” schools opened, the NAACP won a lawsuit claiming that New York City routinely transferred black and Hispanic students to schools for maladjusted youth while helping white students remain in their community schools.[18] As recently as 2021 advocacy groups on New York filed a class action lawsuit on behalf District 75 students seeking integration into community schools. The lawsuit contends that separating disabled students equates to segregation in “unequal schools and classrooms” and also makes note of the disproportionate number of black students placed in District 75.[19] In spite of these legal actions, little has changed. The “600” schools have been passed down as little more than a footnote in the historical record even as the disproportional representation of black students classified as emotionally disturbed and segregated in District 75 continues today.

Francine Almash is a PhD candidate in Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She researches race and disability in New York City schools, and is a recipient of the 2022 CUNY/Schomburg Archival Dissertation Fellowship.

[1] “History of NYSED: New York State Library,” accessed January 31, 2020, http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/edocs/education/sedhist.htm; Jennifer de Forest, “Tilting at Windmills? Judge Justine Wise Polier and a History of Justice and Education in New York City,” History of Education Quarterly 49, no. 1 (February 2009): 68–88.

[2] “Separate Classes Asked for Misfits,” The New York Times, August 20, 1946.

[3] Benjamin Fine, “Education in Review: New York Will Begin a Well-Rounded Program for Truant and Delinquent Children,” The New York Times, December 28, 1947.

[4] Fine; Committee on the “600” Schools, “‘600’ Schools, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. A Report to the Superintendent of Schools. June 1964 to February 1965” (New York City Board of Education, 1966).

[5] Board of Education, City of New York, “The Bureau of Child Guidance in the New York City Schools: A Survey,” 1955, p. xvi-xvii.

[6] “Schools and the Bad Boy. Editorial,” The New York Times, December 6, 1957.

[7] Gene Currivan, “Board Defends Its ‘600’ Schools,” The New York Times, January 24, 1965.

[8] Gertrude Samuels, “The Schools, the Children, the Dilemma,” The New York Times, February 16, 1958.

[9] Samuels.

[10] Clarence Taylor, “The Second School Boycott and the End of the Movement,” in Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Glamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997).

[11] “Galamison Planning Prolonged Boycott Of 31 Junior Highs,” The New York Times, November 14, 1964; Committee on the “600” Schools, “‘600’ Schools, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. A Report to the Superintendent of Schools. June 1964 to February 1965.”

[12] Martin Tolchin, “90% Boycott Hits Problem School,” The New York Times, January 20, 1965.

[13] “Rev. Galamison Sets More School Closings,” New York Amsterdam News, January 30, 1965.

[14] Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean-Hill Brownsville Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2002).

[15] Quoted in Podair (p. 56).

[16] “The Effectiveness of Early Application of Vocational Rehabilitation Services in Meeting the Needs of Handicapped Students in a Large Urban School System. Final Report of a 5-Year Collaborative Study” (Albany, NY: New York State Education Department, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, June 1968).

[17] As described by the New York City Department of Education, District 75 is a non-geographic district consisting of 60 schools, with approximately 370 program sites. District 75 schools exist in a variety of settings and locations, including co-located in District 1-32 buildings; in separate school buildings where all students have IEPs (individualized education programs); and agencies, hospitals and at home.

[18] Bryant Rollins, “Blast School Bias,” New York Amsterdam News, October 15, 1977.

[19] “Staten Island Special Education Students Sue to Join Neighborhood School Classrooms.” The City, 4 Feb. 2021.