“She’s become very, very popular,” her father, Benson Yang, said at the school’s family night in early spring, when the children performed. “She gets a lot of attention.”
Kylie’s mother, Angie Cao, was so pleased with her daughter’s experience that she persuaded some friends to enroll their children at P.S. 257 next year. “Everybody will come here after seeing her,” she said.
If only change were as swift and simple as a child’s dance recital.
Instead, P.S. 257, where 73 percent of the students are Hispanic, has found integration to be far more intricate. One of four Williamsburg elementary schools to win a 2010 magnet grant from the United States Education Department to spur desegregation, it has struggled to follow a federal model created decades ago while focusing on more urgent battles: for resources, students and, above all, test scores.
