Scarsdale High School
Scarsdale High School is a public high school in Scarsdale, New York, United States, a coterminous town and village in Westchester County, New York. It is a part of the Scarsdale Union Free School District.
The school was founded in 1917. In its very first selection process, the United States Department of Education named Scarsdale High School as "one of the 144 exemplary schools to which others may look for patterns of success." According to a study done for U.S. News & World Report, Scarsdale High School is in the nation's top 100 for math and science.
From the graduating class of 2017, 98% continued their education with college programs, and 97% entered four-year national and international colleges and universities. Thirteen students in the class of 2017 were named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists, and 27 students received National Merit Letters of commendation. Between 2007 and 2009, Scarsdale High School made a transition from Advanced Placement to Advanced Topics courses.
In the 2017-18 school year, SHS had a professional staff of 156 with a median teaching experience of 19 years. 99% of the faculty held a master's degree, 81% had 30 credits or more beyond a master's, and 4% had doctorate degrees. The student faculty ratio is 11.66 to 1, and its teachers have one of the highest paying salaries in the country: 44% had a base-salary of over $100,000 in 2005.
The school is 14.7% Asian, 1.4% Black, 7.8% Hispanic, 68.4% White and 5.7% other.
Japanese population
Around 1986 only 5% of the school was of Asian origins. By 1991 large numbers of Japanese students enrolled at Scarsdale High because their fathers, on business assignments from Japanese companies, moved to Scarsdale for the quality of the schools. By that year almost 20% of the students were of Asian origins, most of them being of Japanese origins and a few being of Chinese and Korean origins. The school established an English as a second language program to help Japanese students adjust. Initially the Japanese students faced hostility from many of the American students, and some Japanese students had hostility towards classmates they felt were becoming too Americanized and/or socialized too much with Americans. Therefore, the Japanese and American students socialized separately. Principal Judy Fox formed the Multicultural Steering Committee to try to resolve racial tensions within the school.Notable alumni
- Jacqueline Alemany, journalist
- Eric Alterman, Nation columnist
- Jacob M. Appel, author and bioethics scholar
- Nan Aron, civil rights advocate, public interest lawyer
- Nancy Friedman Atlas, United States federal judge
- Greg M. Behrman, author; Henry Kissinger Fellow for Foreign Policy at The Aspen Institute; founder, editor and CEO of NationSwell
- Dan Biederman, urban management pioneer
- Aidan Brennan, actor in the film
- Leslie Cannold, author, commentator, ethicist, activist
- Nick Civetta, rugby lock/flanker
- Lizabeth Cohen, historian, scholar
- Lydia Cornell , actress
- Wolf Cukier, student who discovered the TOI 1338 planet
- Laura Dave, novelist
- Lisa Donovan, actress
- Robert Durst, suspected serial killer, son of Seymour Durst and real estate heir
- John S. Dyson, businessman
- Nicole Eisenman, visual artist
- Eve Ensler, playwright, performer, activist
- Paul J. Feiner, mayor of Greenburg, New York
- David Feldshuh, physician, dramatist, artistic director at Cornell University
- Tovah Feldshuh, actress
- Lucie Fink, YouTuber and influencer
- Rob Fishman, entrepreneur and writer
- Richard Foreman, playwright, avant-garde theater pioneer
- David Galef, novelist, short story writer
- Lindsay Gottlieb, Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach
- Gordon Gould, physicist credited with inventing laser
- Earl G. Graves, Jr., basketball player
- Ross Greenburg, executive for HBO Sports
- Peter Grosz, actor
- Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist
- Jeffrey Hoffman, astronaut
- Richard Holbrooke, diplomat
- Heather H. Howard, health policy expert and political advisor
- Yanni Hufnagel, college basketball coach
- Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services
- Gish Jen, novelist
- Kenneth I. Juster, government official, lawyer
- Brewster Kahle, artificial intelligence expert
- Matthew Kahn, environmental economics scholar
- Bob Kauffman, professional basketball player
- Alison Knowles, artist
- Zach Kornfeld, YouTube personality and member of The Try Guys
- Barbara Kopple, documentary film director
- Richard Kostelanetz, writer and visual artist
- Glenn Kramon, journalist, assistant managing editor of The New York Times
- Robert Kuttner, journalist, editor
- David Lascher, actor
- John Leventhal, musician, producer, songwriter, recording engineer
- Mara Liasson, National Public Radio correspondent
- Cabot Lyford, sculptor
- Charles S. Maier, professor of history at Harvard University
- Michael Mark, musician/composer
- Linda McCartney, photographer, wife of Paul McCartney
- Liza Minnelli, singer, actor
- Rick Moser, NFL football player, actor
- Ethan Nadelmann, writer and advocate on drug policy reform
- Charles Newirth, film producer
- Jack Newkirk, naval aviator
- Judith Newman, journalist and author
- Suzanne Nossel, non-profit executive and human rights activist
- Dan O'Brien, playwright
- Jon Oringer, entrepreneur and the founder of the popular microstock photography site Shutterstock
- Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, journalist and writer
- Victoria Redel, poet, fiction writer, professor at Sarah Lawrence College
- Bryan Reynolds, playwright, Shakespeare scholar
- Thomas E. Ricks, journalist
- Tom Rogers, media executive
- Dan Rosensweig, business executive, CEO of Chegg
- Elisabeth Rosenthal, physician, journalist for The New York Times
- Cynthia E. Rosenzweig, climatologist
- Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian
- David Rusk, author and consultant on regional strategies for metropolitan areas, former mayor of Albuquerque, member of the New Mexico legislature
- Daniel Schacter, psychologist
- Noah Schnapp, actor in Stranger Things and The Peanuts Movie
- Carl Emil Schorske, cultural historian
- Christopher M. Schroeder, entrepreneur
- Alan Schwarz, sportswriter
- John E. Schwarz, political scientist, distinguished senior fellow at Demos
- DJ Shiftee, DJ, turntablist, born Samuel Morris Zornow
- Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter
- Andrew Ross Sorkin, journalist
- Richard Stengel, editor of Time magazine
- Roderick Stephens, sailor
- Carolyn Strauss, television executive and producer
- George Sugihara, theoretical biologist
- Ivan Sutherland, Internet pioneer
- Ojetta Rogeriee Thompson, judge
- Nina Totenberg, journalist, NPR legal affairs correspondent
- James Traub, journalist
- Gary Trauner, Wyoming politician
- Florence Wald, nurse, professor, administrator
- John Wallach, journalist, author, editor, founder of Seeds of Peace
- Ellen Weiss, radio executive
- Bob Wilber, jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, band leader
- Harris Wofford, United States Senator from Pennsylvania
- George Zimmer, entrepreneur