A laboratory of American acculturation, the Seward Park High School has educated generation after generation of immigrant children growing up in the immigrant paradise of the Lower East Side. Jewish, Italian, and Irish in years past, the student body now has a Chinese plurality. Many of the students, in their first days at the school, speak little or no English. The school offers a unique educational environment, rich with history and tradition, and has an impressive record of faculty retention, with many teachers remaining at Seward Park their entire careers. Throughout much of its history a traditional, teacher-in-front-of-desks kind of school, the Seward Park High School has recently been reorganized, along progressive lines, into a collection of smaller, specialized, more intimate schools.