‘It Has to Start Somewhere’: Grass-Roots Drive to Integrate New York Schools

What does integrate mean? If you want education, then children with similar academic abilities should be put together and challenged, otherwise, you are not providing education, you're just making political statements about economic inequality. DOE is not concerned about education, but they just care about statistical performance especially of poorly performing schools. Reduce the number of poorly performing schools by disseminating those students into above average schools and your performance numbers go up. So, our lovely mayor is cutting 25% from G&T programs?! Frankly, if you increase the G&T program by at least 25%, your numbers will go up as well. So the mayor and his novice "educational" chancellor should really stop mucking around and just making things worse.

This is a tough problem. I think that it's important to understand that in my opinion, it's not driven by racism. We have, and always have had, a system where active wealthier parents in cultures that value education find a place for their students to get great opportunities. Whether that's in public schools, private schools, charter, wherever. On the other side, we have less wealthy parents who have no time to be active and just take what they get, living in a culture enmeshed in a cycle of poverty. As a result, those two groups will end up segregated somehow. When we allowed tracking, the segregation happened in the same building, now that we don't, it's happening by having vastly different quality schools. If we start busing to even the schools out, we risk losing students to private education while the public school system falls apart. So the big issue with policy moves that attempt to mash these two populations together (like eliminating tracking) is the reaction: active parents find another way to get their students into better programs. The next step is privatizing. An obvious alternative is to focus on providing opportunity instead of forcing the two groups together. Allow tracking again, but provide supports to low achieving students so that they have a chance to get into the high level ones (segregation currently precludes this). But I'm skeptical. No easy answer.

The raw number’s in the school don’t tell the whole story. In 1973 I attended a JHS in Bensonhurst with forced bussing. As we walked in the door the whites turned left and everyone else, right. Immediate segregation was achived in the gym and lunchroom by choice. The classrooms were segregated by academic tracking.

Until NYC eliminates segregation by the district lines, this won't work (at least in Manhattan). Very easy to move from District 3 (Upper West Side) to District 2 (Upper East Side and Tribeca and Battery Park -- yes drawn very funny). District 3 will lose whites. Won't be able to integrate.

Question: Why is excellent education is available only at magnet schools? Answer: Students. My son went to a school on a top 10 list. Except for two classes, he self taught himself chemistry, calc, stat, comp sci, and history. He told me that he owed his A+ in 9th grade English to his 8th grade teacher. This is sad truth - teachers, with a few exceptions, are not better in these schools - it is the students that earn a school its reputation. A son of close friend graduated from Stuy - same story. You have very smart and achievement oriented kids who are pushed by their over-achievers immigrant parents or simply parent who care, and -ta da! - a school's acceptance rate is lower then Ivy's.

The problem is that PTAs are left to fund the schools with parent donations since all programs have been cut. This turns some public schools into cheap private schools effectively. If this practice were stopped, schools would equalize.

I may not be a parent, but I know that parents want the best for their children. My hope is that the noble instinct to ensure their children get a good education does not warp otherwise good people into doing something unfortunate. This is not me raging about bigotry... I'm speaking to normal people with a firm grasp of right and wrong who are nervous about what seems to be a social justice experiment with their children. A lot of families work hard to live in good school districts. A descendant of slaves (but raised in a majority white, upper middle-class), I would still acknowledge that even most recipients of "white privilege" are simply involuntary beneficiaries, without the intent to harm. No one, black or white, wants to risk what they've got; however they may have gotten it. Sometimes life is unfair. But I'd be willing to bet that those who protested integration during the Civil Rights Movement weren't all Klansmen-types. At least some of them had to have privately acknowledged the unfairness of the situation, but just couldn't bear the thought of THEIR children's school being the test case. Is that "racist"? I don't know that it is. But it's not something you'd want a grandchild to find out on ancestry.com either. A lot of these issues hinge on good people simply deciding to MAKE life fair even while afraid. And kids will learn the lessons they're taught (whatever that lesson might be). So whatever happens with all this, I hope people are big about it.

When my kids attended a very diverse PreK the curriculum was structured in a more inclusive and learning positive way. Once they entered into a white, segregated school I noticed the school seemed incapable of dealing with kids who don't have at least 1 stay at home parent and can afford additional tutoring. We are lucky to have been in the neighborhood long enough to see change around us; my kids' school today seems ill-prepared to deal with kids who don't have outside resources but if they had to deal with it on a more regular basis I believe the school would quickly adjust given how amazing the administration is! The diverse backgrounds my kids were exposed to at the PreK that was fed from the entire borough was a Far Superior learning atmosphere for all kids compared to the narrow one they are exposed to today. Anecdotally I've heard that diverse learning conditions and all the way up to diverse boardrooms are better at problem solving. Why are we making it so hard to give all kids the best learning environment possible?

There is a lack of diversity on certain basketball, & football teams which also do not reflect certain populations appropriately either (ie: whites, asians). Will the same principles be applied to sports?

According to Pro Publica, 37% of Stuyvesant students qualify for a free or reduced price lunch. They are from poor families. https://projects.propublica.org/schools/schools/362058002877 To give a student a bit of a lift getting into a merit based program, based on poverty, seems reasonable. For academics to argue in 2018 that admission should be based on a student's skin color should be terrifying. 69% of Stuyvesant's students are Asian, a group which has been hugely discriminated against for as long as this country has existed. Why are Asians doing so well?

The NYC public school enrollment is 15% white, 13% white if you exclude the schools on Staten Island. There aren't enough white kids left to move around. Manhattan schools are 16% white. In fact the whitest schools are on SI, and even they are only 46% white. This 'grass roots' whatever may make Carranza feel good about himself but the numbers tell the real story. NYCDOE stats (pdf) - - https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/dd504571-f84b-4151-bede-f521539cd7d4

I'm trying to think this through. You have a class full of kids reading/learning at or above grade level, who got there based on test scores. But you replace 25% of the at/above grade level kids with kids performing below grade level or at the lowest level--"below basic." If all these kids were of the same race/ethnicity, would you think this was a good idea? Or if the kids were already highly diverse, would you think this was a good idea? Or is it only a good idea because it will promote diversity?

More charter schools!

What is all of this actually saying? That minority students need to be physically exposed to white students in order to improve academically? Why would they be? Why can't they excel in majority-minority schools , in the city that is in fact majority-minority? 70% of the student body in NYC is black or hispanic. There simply isn't enough white faces to sprinkle across all schools in NYC if that's what's needed to bring up their test scores. Perhaps, all this energy can be better spent identifying and rooting out the cause of the problem - what are the reasons, cultural or otherwise, that seem to cripple majority-minority schools? How can this be fixed, how can the culture of learning be fostered in those schools and communities? To imply that minority kids can't learn unless exposed to the whites should be borderline offensive, indeed.

Studies have shown a positive link between household poverty and the likelihood of failing in school. It's not enough to desegregate by race. The schools in the new system must also commit to meeting the needs that the child's family cannot meet because they are poor. Free meals. Free medical care. Free counseling services. Free remedial services. Otherwise, the parents whose kids are succeeding in school will find some other venue for them to pursue their studies. And, rightly so. Everyone gets one shot at a K-12 education.

Diversity is great - as long as a school has resources to ensure that gifted under-served children continue to succeed by heavy monitoring ALL students, not just those with "low" grades to avoid the stigma of failure expectation. If these students were to be accepted to a magnet public school, the BoE must provide necessary resources to avoid any reliance on family members, who might not be able to provide as much support as upper- and middle- class family, for many reasons. Often times, it is because they have to work late, or multiple jobs. If the school lets out children at 2 - 3 pm, they will scatter to their expensive after-school activities, leaving those with no resources behind. The school must provid after school activities of the same caliber to all students to ensure the inclusion of every student. This is what private schools have been doing for years, and they have less dollars than what NY taxpayers provide for.

I remember a lesson in college on self-fulfilling prophecy. The teacher gave an interesting example, which was “a person who goes begging for money and faking a mental illness motivated by external factors without consequence. As the days turn to months the mental illness act takes up more of the beggar’s time, slowly shifting their sense of reality.” In the end, the person will stop being able to separate the act from reality and real mental illness will set in. An idea occurred to me. I asked, “Can the same thing happen for someone who wants to do something positive? For example, I come to school because I see myself as a business manager or owner already. I ignore my lack of experience and visualize all the case studies in my business law books as my reality. Despite my inexperience, I see myself working smart, graduating, being successful and running my own business. Not all schools are the same and not all people are the same. Let's all make our best effort at modeling the behavior we want and expect from our kids. A good starting point is placing more expectations on ourselves and our kids. Where does it start? Its starts by the stories we tell ourselves. Our stories are just labels that put us at odds not just with reality, but with the real strategy that make us successful in the first place. From that place, we might think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story—when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck.

This is really an attack on excellence in education dressed up a liberal cause.

Here's an idea: let's completely end selective enrollment schooling, which is an inherently classist and racist institution. (Who has the resources to be "selected"? Whiter, richer families.) Instead of the band-aid solution of socioeconomic quotas, we need to make public education a truly public institution, one void of tiers and hierarchies that is truly open to all New Yorkers, regardless of test scores and the like.

This is an enlightened attempt to equalize opportunity for at least some of the black and Hispanic children but surely it can't make much difference overall. A great boost would be to have the same amount of money spent on each student wherever they are from: - similar teachers's salaries and infrastructure. A good start but will the better-off areas pay more taxes into the less well off areas in order to fund it? Probably not, but just say that this happened. A child's education isn't dependent only on schooling. Parents need to provide a secure, stable home environment, help with homework when required, read books and liaise with the school with both parent and teacher having the child's welfare at the center of things.

How can underperforming schools be made more attractive the same way undervalued real estate became sought-after? Can STEM/Mandarin/Latin/art/music lessons be added to entice more fortunate families to attend schools with lower test scores? Can the coveted spots for higher achieving schools be based upon graduating within the top range of the class not just the standardized tests? It's very hard to see parents wanting change if they are currently benefiting from the status quo.

What is the point of integration in schools? To get races used to each other or to have white people's values "rub off" on people of color? Whatever it is, it's a joke... an expensive one at that. New York is a multi-cultural city. The problem, if it's a problem, takes care of itself especially today. Years ago when there was very little mixing of races in any meaningful way, it definitely was a problem and possibly fostered racism. But today when it's hard to turn on the TV, walk down the street, go to work, dine out, go to the theater, ballgame shop without mixing with a multitude of races is impossible. Even interracial marriages are on the rise. You only have to look at the lives of parents and students on a daily basis to realize how expensive and physically impractical busing has been over the years in the name of integration. If the city took the busing money and spent it on improving all local schools there would be little difference in educational opportunity for all students of the city. Opportunity is the real problem. Not race.

Why is the NYT is not reporting about the predominantly White-Asian and high-performance Hunter School? Why nobody promoting the integration in Hunter or in Anderson? The funding of Huner and Anderson should join the effort of all Public School for equality.

This approach works very well in the National Basketball League. The tall and fast and athletic players teach all the short and slow and un-athletic players the game and the best teams have gender, race and religious denominations exactly equal to the population at large. NOT.

This will barely touch the surface. What happens to the thousands of students left behind in bad schools? How about making those schools better?