Let's look outside NY City, where the NY Times never looks. From the Hechinger Report 2018 In NYC reading test's 38 percent of students passed In math 36.4 % In Rochester, for example, just 6.7 percent of kids scored proficient on English tests. In Syracuse, 10.9 percent of kids were proficient on reading tests while 10.4 were proficient in math. Upstate NY is in death spiral of increasing poverty, increasing property taxes to support increasing social service needs, but the NY Times does not care. --------------- The Hechinger Report, is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

If white, non-Hispanic children are in the minority and most of these live in Far Rockaway or Staten Island, and segregation is defined as having few if any non-Hispanic white children in the school, then most of NYC's schools will be "segregated." Choice and zoning have little to do with the outcome. Get over it. There just aren't enough non-Hispanic white children to go around. NYC isn't much different today than it was decades ago when the immigrant minority-majority went to segregated schools where there were hardly any WASPs in sight. The blacks have gotten a raw deal that's hard to fix, but the Hispanics really aren't any worse off than the Italians were and there's plenty of reason to believe recent Hispanic immigrants are better off.

As the New York Time frequently points out, whites are shrinking as a percent of the population. White students are already a minority in our most populous states—California and Texas. They make up only 24.1% of California K-12 students and only 31% of Texas K-12 students. This make school integration difficult to achieve because there are no longer enough white students to go around. If black and Latina students can only learn when seated next to blue-eyed blondes, we had better change our immigration quotas. Otherwise, we should focus on making mostly black and mostly Latina schools as good as mostly white schools.

Ok, I'm going to sound as if I am a true blue (or red) racist, bigoted, biased and opinionated and infuriating white supremacist who embraces extreme right-wing Republican nationalism and who also hate minorities, women, and everyone else who is not a native born American. Here goes; I am sick and tired of hearing about segregation and desecration as the panacea for all the social, political and economic problems of black and other minorities. I am tired of hearing about white privilege. I am sick of glass ceilings and wage gaps, red-lined neighborhoods, elitism of social Democrats and how gentrification pushes people out of their homes. Enough! Enough! Enough! I was born in the Bronx, 353 Cypress Ave. across the street from PS 65. That was not a privilege. My parents and grandparents struggled through WWI and WWII as well as the Great Depression. My dad's college education was ended on Jan 01, 1942. Mom too left college and joined the Navy a couple of months later. We lived in a 2 room apartment w/one bath. Four of us slept in one bed-room. My parents and grandparents never complained. There was no subsidized rent. No food stamps, no unemployment comp and no health care. There was little money, few clothes, new shoes were a treat. Segregation was foreign to us. So was the social safety net or welfare. My brothers and sister and I went to school and broke our necks studying. Our parents worked themselves to death. No one complained. Segregation means nothing at all.

This "article" fails to define its terms. What does "segregated" mean? What percentage of a particular race qualifies a school to get this label? Race is not even mentioned, beyond the implications of the term "segregated," only income. Since the terms are not defined, and all we have is this 40% figure, the "article" is almost meaningless. In addition, the 40% figure applies only to kindergartners, yet an expert quoted later refers to all elementary students. Weasel words all around...

I'm confused ... What fraction of this 40% are white or Asian versus what fraction are black or Hispanic? Are these 40% primarily whites/Asian families living in gentrifying but still poor neighborhoods or are they primarily more ambitious black/Hispanic families looking to get their children into schools with more whites/Asians?

As a dedicated public school teacher in an inner city (not NYc), very few things get me more apoplectic than the way our poor black kids are treated. First, I'll get this off my chest -- the rank hypocrisy. Many of the white wealthy parents who wear BLM buttons, virtue signal, & voted for Hilary, are the same ones who move heaven & earth to avoid having poor Black kids in their kids' schools. Whether that's by moving to a particular zone or, if that fails, spending as much as necessary in a private, the goal is the same--segregation. They are totally against the 'patriarchy' or "white supremacy.' As long as poor Blacks are not in their kids' schools or friends with their kids, & their kids' schools will lead to Ivies & tapped into the Patriarchy. They need to take a good look in the mirror. But busing doesn't work either. These parents will pull their kids out. Demonstrated over & over. And what is also ignored is that there is a reason for this. The kids I teach have PTSD & Traumas that would make an upper class person curl up into a ball. Every single one of my students personally knows someone who is shot & killed. Most have a parent who is or has been incarcerated (usually drugs, sometimes theft). Gangs are prevalent & many boys think that's how you get money, selling drugs. Btw, illegal immigrants take many of their jobs, but that's not what you want to hear either. The schools are not magic; they will not improve until the society around the kids improve.

One question is whether the schools that under-perform do so more because of: (i) the population mix and the effects of concentrated poverty or (ii) a lack of resources at these schools (including experienced teachers). Obviously, it is some of both but I wonder if the causation issue can be more definitively determined.

The focus of this article and by the New York City school board on segregation is a diversion and a waste of time and money. It fails to take in the reality that under 15% of the students in the public schools are white. This would mean that even if schools were perfectly integrated (and no white families left the school system) there would be from 4 to 5 white students in each classroom of 30 students. Would this magically lift achievement for all students in the classroom? I don't think so. The reality is that 77% of New York City students are living in poverty, 40% live in homes where English is not spoken as a first language, and almost 20% are classified as learning disabled. There are not enough non-disadvantaged students in the system for integration to have any meaningful impact. Instead, NYC should save the money they are wasting on this endeavor and spend it on programs that can improve the educational quality at all schools for all children.

Blame the city for not improving sub-par schools, don't penalize families for putting their kids in better schools. If the city brings down entry standards for high performing schools, and does not raise academic standards and performance elsewhere it will have major negative repercussions. There simply is a shortage of high-quality, well performing schools. Frankly, even the good schools have been under resourced and over crowded since 2008. This inequality is an ongoing issue, for years. The city has had ample time to work on improvements. Bloomberg tried to do so systemically but his approach, which locked out families and teachers, was problematic. I haven't heard the current administration say anything about programs to actually improve the quality of academics --the one big push was to expand access to pre-kindergarten, and while that may have succeeded, what has been implemented for all the other students? Putting kids who are not up to par in high performing schools will only imperil academics at those schools and further undercut the framework of the city's educational system, especially if additional resources are not allocated systemically to expanding resources and improving academics, teacher training, etc.

While it is certainly true that affluent parents sending their children to schools other than their local public elementary school are helping to create schools with a higher proportion of less advantaged kids, it is not always true that it results in less diversity; take PS 9 on the upper west side, according to your chart, about 50% of students in the catchment attend another school but the stats from Inside Schools say that just under 59% of students are white, over 19% are Hispanic, followed by Asian, Other and Black. Assuming most of the 50% in that catchment who are going elsewhere (mostly private schools) are white, their decision not to send their children to PS 9 actually increases diversity at the school. Furthermore, as others have noted, if they are sending their children to private schools, they are not using public resources that would otherwise be devoted to their children's education. Similarly, PS 87 and 199, which are highly sought after schools are in catchments where a large percentage of parents don't send their children to their local public schools. If they did, overcrowded schools would become more overcrowded and diversity would almost certainly get worse.

I didn't attend Bronx Science (3 buses commute from where I lived) to avoid going to school with black and Hispanic kids. I went there to get a superior education. I lived in a very integrated, and somewhat crime-ridden neighborhood to attend Columbia Law- I could have gone to any of ten lesser-ranked schools in lily-white, ultra-safe neighborhoods. People who want the best for their kids' education aren't subjecting their little kids to long commutes to avoid blacks and Hispanics- their primary motivation is to get a better education for their kids. If there is a very high correlation between these two things (blacks/Hispanics and poor schools) the basic problem is not there aren't enough white faces around the classroom. It has far more to do with these minority cultures and how they value education.

Clearly the coercive power of the State needs to be brought to bear on the white people of New York, as was done in Boston and numerous other cities decades ago. Yes, this means forced busing, and in the end, it would be good for everyone, including the white kids being bused for the sake of diversity. Mayor de Blasio, do the right thing.

Regardless of city or state the same issues arise with unruly, poorly parented kids disrupting classes. The difference in education programs, teaching staff and facility quality vary between all our schools. No Child Left Behind lead to teachers and staff managing behaviorally challenged kids while trying to encourage brighter students to excel. There's no easy answer, especially for a very densely populated NYC. But hey, there are great Jobs and schools here in Virginia.

Looks like it is long overdue to begin busing student to make sure schools are fully integrated. First, neighborhood populations are better explained by economics than race. Secondly, the outcome is racial segregation. Equal funding is not enough...separate but equal was struck down 70 years ago.

Failing schools are rarely an education problem. It's a symptom of high poverty, violence, and family instability. Spend the money on children and their families from birth to high school, to include vocational ed, or spend the money on juvie, prison, and rehab in fifteen to thirty years.

Well this is very interesting, racist actions in NYC, who knew???

Worth reading the whole report via the link. A lot of interesting stuff, eg: Apparently kids would be more segregated if all attended their zoned schools than results from school choice.

Decisions have been made to not allocate sufficient funds to provide a quality education to every child in New York City in order to keep taxes low. That's the bottom line.

Schools are segregated because no sane New Yorker with money would ever send his kid to a New York public school. Public education in the United States has failed, and it should be abolished.

Do American citizens have a right to free association or don't they?

I teach in a very segregated and low-performing school in the city. The majority of my students read and write far below grade level. Behavioral issues sometimes take up a large chunk of my day. This is a massive problem, but I don't think trying to engineer public school enrollments is going to improve the situation much and might in fact make it far worse. The problem is societal: The city has huge numbers of impoverished, homeless, and otherwise traumatized kids. Students going through these things, particularly those without a lot of family support, are often going to act out or under-perform. Yet if large numbers of these underperforming students are moved into "better" schools, their issues won't disappear. Instead, if standards drop and classrooms become unruly, parents with more resources or more committment to their kids' education will withdraw their kids and send them to private schools or move out of the city. I would move, for example, before I would send my kid to a school like the one I work. Honestly, I don't think that many parents in NYC care about the color of their kids' classmates. They just want their kids to get a good education and that can be challenging if the teacher is trying to remediate 75% of the class to get them to grade level.

New York City schools have never been segregated. Not now, now before Brown vs. Board of Education. It is people's right to choose to live near others like themselves, just as the Fair Housing Act entitles them to live near others unlike themselves. It is people's right to seek the educational opportunities for their children that they deem best. It is not anyone else's right to interfere.

What you left out is the large number of white students choosing not to attend public school at all, especially among the more affluent. Of course, their parents pay private tuition and pay the taxes that fund our public schools. If you attempt to derail the current balance, by arguing against alleged segregation, you will force more students to opt out of public schools.

I went to school in New York beginning in 1952. Schools then were white. By 1956 we left NYC and moved to Glens Falls. There were no blacks in Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, Fort Ann, Fort Edward, Lake George and the rest. In 1960 we moved to Harrisburg PA. Again few if any blacks and by high school less than 2% of classes had any minorities. However, New York, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and the rest had dramatically changed. Blacks now lived in the Bronx and other places too. Neighborhoods had changed too. Poverty, unemployment, crime and drugs was very evident. Whites fled the cities for the suburbs for jobs, housing, schools and more. Jobs fled the cities as imports flooded our markets destroying our manufacturing base. If schools and neighborhoods are segregated its not simply because populations move or jobs are present or schools are better or worse. There is a far greater social and cultural upheaval that we have not recognized or dealt with. And we don't want to deal with it either. I'm 70 now, retired and living in The Villages Florida. Its 98.2% white. Its also gated and wealthy. No blacks, minorities, drugs or crime. I don't miss the crime ridden cities or suburbs of the North. I do miss the diversity and color of New York. If you haven't taken a ride on a NY subway and sat next to the people with purple hair, and who clearly are hispanic, black, Asian, Puerto Rican, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, Catholic, Irish, Italian you haven't lived. NYC is not segregated.

Classic dynamic at play. Democrat party voters dont want democrat party policies for their own kids.

"But its authors found that the choice came with unintended consequences: “The schools they leave behind face ever-greater challenges as they struggle to serve the city’s neediest children.”" It may not have been desired, but there is no way that it was not anticipated.