Amazon.com description: Product Description: The Hunter College Campus Schools have always been committed to excellence - and since 1941 to the particular kind of excellence related to identifying and teaching gifted students. For half of that time, since 1965, they have been searching for various ways to be equitable as well, perpetually refining admissions policy to accommodate diversity. Elizabeth Stone chronicles each stage of these efforts, providing a critical history of the Campus Schools and their attempt to balance their historical commitment to excellence with the egalitarian ideal of equity - a challenge which all gifted programmes face. Stone, who spent a year at the schools during a particularly turbulent period, tells a rich and revealing story of life there, drawing on material from the school archives, classroom experiences, administrative and ETA meetings, and over 200 interviews with past and present teachers, administrators, students and parents. The result is a narrative chronicling the struggles - past and present - of a singular institution facing problems and issues endemic to education in a democratic society, including single-sex education, racial tensions, and the question of just which criteria for giftedness are reliable. "The Hunter College Campus Schools for the Gifted" should interest anyone - professionals or parents - concerned with gifted education, educational policy, urban education, or the history of education.