Its mission was to provide a location for prospective teachers to do their practice teaching.
By 1929, when The Milne School moved to a newly constructed building at 135 Western Avenue, it consisted of a junior and senior high school and served grades 7 through 12.
In the 1960s, the school's admissions policies were challenged as being overly favorable to the relatives of Milne students and thus effectively excluding minorities and new residents; the state human rights commission agreed with the challenge.
[1] By the 1970s, SUNY was suffering budget shortfalls and also deemphasizing the teaching mission of the Albany branch.
[2] In the 1977 Bricks and Ivy yearbook, Charles Bowler referred to the Milne School as having "a high-powered faculty teaching beautiful student teachers, experimenting with methodology, still keeping their covenant by turning out educated students.