A Convenient Myopia: SEEK, Shaughnessy, and the Rise of High-Stakes Testing at CUNY
type: CreativeWork
description: A great struggle for racial justice was fought at City College and CUNY from 1964 to 1978. In this archival history, supplemented with thirteen oral histories of students and teachers, and grounded in the larger context of racial segregation and exclusion within American public education and American higher education through 1970, I argue that this larger struggle for justice should be seen as two distinct but intertwined struggles that had very different results. Throughout this history, I focus on individual teachers and students who either played key roles or whose experiences illustrate aspects of the larger issues. Some of their voices are also included directly through their appended oral histories, including transcripts of eight video oral histories that are up on youtube. The first struggle was over unjust admissions standards that excluded almost all black and brown students. Within the fourteen years from 1964 to 1978, CUNY’s student body was fully integrated. The key to the successful racial integration of the four-year colleges was the 1965 launch and the 1966 to 1969 expansion of the City College Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) desegregation and supportive teaching program. SEEK, both in its practice and its theoretical rationale, directly challenged CUNY’s admissions criteria as biased and invalid. In SEEK, students demonstrated their true college potential by attempting actual college coursework within a supportive environment that ameliorated the pain and damage of the wounds they carried, respected and recognized them as individuals, believed in their abilities, built their strengths, and always expected them to succeed. Close to 40% of the first three City College SEEK classes graduated by 1972, although none held the normally required admissions credentials. The second struggle for racial justice at CUNY was over instructional and assessment standards. This struggle was harder for many to see because it turned on many large a…
abstract: A great struggle for racial justice was fought at City College and CUNY from 1964 to 1978. In this archival history, supplemented with thirteen oral histories of students and teachers, and grounded in the larger context of racial segregation and exclusion within American public education and American higher education through 1970, I argue that this larger struggle for justice should be seen as two distinct but intertwined struggles that had very different results. Throughout this history, I focus on individual teachers and students who either played key roles or whose experiences illustrate aspects of the larger issues. Some of their voices are also included directly through their appended oral histories, including transcripts of eight video oral histories that are up on youtube. The first struggle was over unjust admissions standards that excluded almost all black and brown students. Within the fourteen years from 1964 to 1978, CUNY’s student body was fully integrated. The key to the successful racial integration of the four-year colleges was the 1965 launch and the 1966 to 1969 expansion of the City College Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) desegregation and supportive teaching program. SEEK, both in its practice and its theoretical rationale, directly challenged CUNY’s admissions criteria as biased and invalid. In SEEK, students demonstrated their true college potential by attempting actual college coursework within a supportive environment that ameliorated the pain and damage of the wounds they carried, respected and recognized them as individuals, believed in their abilities, built their strengths, and always expected them to succeed. Close to 40% of the first three City College SEEK classes graduated by 1972, although none held the normally required admissions credentials. The second struggle for racial justice at CUNY was over instructional and assessment standards. This struggle was harder for many to see because it turned on many large a…
author: Molloy, Sean
keywords: Rhetoric and Composition, civil rights, basic writing, SEEK, Shaughnessy, CUNY, assessment
date published: 2016-09-30T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:58:22Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York