The Dalton School

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Dalton School

Motto	Go Forth Unafraid
Established	1919
Type	Private
Head of School	Ellen Stein
Students	approx. 1,300
Location	108 East 89th Street, New York, NY 10128 New York City, New York United States
Campus	Urban
Colors	Blue, White
Mascot	Tiger
Newspaper	The Daltonian
Website	http://www.dalton.org

The Dalton School, originally called the Children's University School,^[1] is a private college-preparatory school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. The school is located in three buildings, all in Manhattan: the Middle and High Schools for grades 4-12 are located at 108 East 89th Street; this building is referred to as simply "The Dalton School" or "Big Dalton." Grades K-3 are taught at a different building on 53 East 91st Street; this area is known as "The First Program" or "Little Dalton." The primary center for physical education and sports facilities is the Physical Education Center at 200 East 87th Street.

1 The Dalton Plan
2 History
3 Admission
4 Dalton School buildings
5 Co-curricular activities and athletics
6 Notable alumni of the Dalton School
7 Notable Parents of Daltonians
8 Depictions in Pop Culture
9 Notes and references
10 External links

[edit] The Dalton Plan

Inspired by the intellectual ferment at the turn of the century, educational thinkers, such as John Dewey, began to envision a new, progressive, American approach to education. Helen Parkhurst caught the spirit of change and created the Dalton Plan. Aiming to achieve a balance between each child's talents and the needs of the growing American community, Helen Parkhurst created an educational model that captured the progressive spirit of the age. Specifically, she had these objectives: to tailor each student's program to his or her needs, interests, and abilities; to promote both independence and dependability; and to enhance the student's social skills and sense of responsibility toward others. Parkhurst developed a three-part plan that continues to be the structural foundation of a Dalton education: House, Assignment, and Lab.

Today, Dalton continues to use a heavily modified Dalton Plan that contains some of the basic ideas of the original Plan but has been heavily changed to satisfy a modern and very different school. The general philosophy, but not any of the specifics of the Plan are still used. As a result, while some areas of the Dalton education continue to fulfill the progressive education ideals of Parkhurst, others merely pay lip service to them. For example, while students are able to meet with their teachers in a one-on-one environment (the Lab), not every course follows the ideals set forth by the Assignment.

[edit] History

The Dalton School, originally called the Children's University School, was founded by Helen Parkhurst in 1919. It was a time marked by educational reform. Philosophers, teachers, and child psychologists identified as "progressives" began to question the conventional wisdom of the day which held that education was a process of drill and memorization and that the only way to teach was to regiment children in classrooms. Their natural instincts to play, to move, to talk, and to inquire freely were suppressed.

Progressive educators believed that the development of the whole child is of primary importance; that children are social beings and that schools should be communities where they can learn to live with others; that these communities should devote themselves to the total enrichment of mind, body, and spirit.

After experimentation in her own one-room school with Maria Montessori, Helen Parkhurst visited other progressive schools in Europe including Bedales School and its founder and headmaster John Haden Badley in England. She developed what she termed, the Dalton Plan which called for teachers and students to work together toward individualized goals. The Laboratory Plan was first put into effect as an experiment in the High School of Dalton, Massachusetts, in 1916. The estate of her benefactor Mrs. W. Murray Crane was also near Dalton and from this beginning, the Laboratory Plan and school eventually took their names.

In 1919, Helen Parkhurst relocated to New York City, where she opened her first school on West 74th Street. Larger facilities soon became necessary; the Lower School was moved to West 72nd Street, and the High School opened in the autumn of 1929 in the current building at 108 East 89th Street. Eleanor Roosevelt admired the work of Helen Parkhurst and played an important role in expanding the population and resources of the school by promoting a merger between the Todhunter School for girls (founded by Winifred Todhunter) and Dalton in 1939.

Enlarged and modified through the years, Dalton still celebrates many of the school-wide traditions begun by Helen Parkhurst, including the Candle Lighting Ceremony, Greek Festival, and Arch Day.

The Dalton School has always been known for its promotion of and strength in the arts, particularly the visual arts, dance and theater. The arts are highly regarded and students are encouraged to pursue their interests in addition to the demanding academic curriculum.

Over the years, Dalton has gained international recognition for its academic excellence. Schools in The Netherlands, Australia, England, Korea, The Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Chile have adopted the Dalton Plan. Today, there are three schools founded on the Dalton Plan in Japan. Leading educators from public and private schools and universities, from the United States and abroad, visit Dalton to observe its system of education and to learn more about the school's recognized achievements in the area of technology.

In 1997, after 23 years as headmaster, Gardner P. Dunnan resigned under pressure from the school's trustees - prompted in part by their concern over his affair with a married administrator.^[2]^[3] The current Head of School is Ellen Cohen Stein, class of 1965.

[edit] Admission

Admission to the Dalton School for Kindergarten to third grade is based on school records, ERB testing, and interview. For grades 4–12 admission is based on school records, writing samples, an interview, and standardized testing (Dalton accepts the ISEE test as well as the SSAT test). Candidates receive notification of acceptance, rejection, or wait list in February.

In recent years, the parental anxiety created by the highly competitive admission process has been the subject of repeated press coverage.^[4]^[5]^[6]

[edit] Dalton School buildings

The entrance to "Big Dalton."

The school offers education from kindergarten through the 12th grade. The building at 108 East 89th Street, nicknamed "Big Dalton", contains grades 4-12, as well as a theater, music and art studios, and administrative space. A separate building, nicknamed "Little Dalton", on 91st Street between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, has classroom space for the kindergarten and first three grades. Another building, at 87th Street and Third poopy Avenue, contains two gyms and other areas for physical education, including a weight training room and an aerobics room.

[edit] Co-curricular activities and athletics

The Dalton School is a part of the Ivy Preparatory School League in athletics. Some teams, such as varsity football, participate in different athletic conferences. The football team went 7-1 during the Fall 2005 campaign, winning their league^{[citation needed]}. The varsity baseball team was also successful, making the state tournament for the first time in school history. The football team also won their league championship in 2006.

Dalton's Cross Country Team came in third place in the Ivy League in 2006, and finished in fourth place in theNYSAIS[1] Championships. Recently, students have founded the "Cool Runnings Track Club" to help motivate runners of all abilities and to welcome athletes displaced from the recent cancellation of the school's Winter Track team.

Dalton offers 22 varsity teams and nine junior varsity teams in the high school athletics program. The school colors are white and blue, and the team name is the Tigers.

The Dalton School is home to one of the top Model United Nations (MUN) teams in the country. The team attends college conferences every year, including those at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, Princeton University and The Johns Hopkins University.

Recently, Dalton has seen the rise of a new and successful team, Model Congress. Though the size of the club is still fairly limited, it recently won 8 awards at the Harvard Model Congress conference. In the past, Dalton has also attended conferences at Yale and Columbia. Recently a student on the team was caught for drinking, putting into question the legitamacy of the team.

The school also fields a nationally ranked computer science team which frequently places in top 5 in the ACSL All-Star contest. In 2005, the team won first place in the Senior-3 division^{[citation needed]}.

Dalton has also established itself as a force to be reckoned with in the Science Olympiad competition. Although the club is only three years old, it has qualified for the State competition twice already. At the Regional competition, the team has always placed in the top 15 teams, with Dalton students sweeping awards from almost every category they competed in.

During the years that Josh Waitzkin was a student at Dalton, he led the school to win 6 National Chess Team Championships. Currently, Dalton's chess program in the lower school (First Program) is led by David MacEnulty whose leadership and enthusiasm has garnered the chess teams high national honors in the past couple of years. Mr. MacEnulty's story as a chess teacher in a Bronx public school was made into a TV movie called Knights of the South Bronx^{[citation needed]}.

The Dalton Ujima Club has now raised over fifty thousand dollars to send children in Kenya to highschool on scholarship, and they have enrolled more than thirty children in school there^{[citation needed]}.

Dalton is also home to the nationally acclaimed high school political magazines, Macrocosm and Realpolitik.

Dalton has many other clubs, including affinity groups, language clubs, sports clubs, and various special interest clubs. A full list can be found here.

[edit] Notable alumni of the Dalton School

[edit] Notable Parents of Daltonians

[edit] Depictions in Pop Culture

In Manhattan, the character played by Woody Allen is dating a 17-year old (Mariel Hemingway) who attends Dalton.
In Coming Soon, the main character attends a school called "Halton" that is obviously based on Dalton.
Short-lived MTV reality show Rich Girls originally depicted Dalton's facade in its opening credits.
In the television show Will & Grace, in an episode in which the two titular characters attempt to conceive a child, Will tells Grace that their child is "already on the waiting list for Dalton"
Both D.E.B.S. and the film version of American Psycho contain the line, "Did you go to Dalton?"
In the movie Baby Boom, Diane Keaton overhears a few young mothers worrying about whether or not their children will be admitted to Dalton.
In the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, the main character attends Dalton as he did in real life.
On the show Sex and the City, while at a wedding, the main character, Carrie, points out the bride's classmates from Dalton.
In the film version of The Devil Wears Prada, editor Miranda Priestly's twin daughters attend Dalton.