Headline for this comment section: “Park Slope parents complain about diversity and integration despite simultaneously waiving a banner of moral righteous over everyone else bc they are so smart and progressive.”
You wanted Comrade Diblasio, and now you can’t handle the community effort socially equitable policies entail. Can’t have it both ways y’all. Boom roasted.
48
Kids from low performing schools may benefit from attending higher performing ones, but I doubt that the reverse is true.
93
Get rid of DiBlasio and Carranza, and then go back to the drawing board and this time people need to be able to voice their ideas and concerns without fear of being tagged as privileged, racist, segregationist, if they are not.
46
This process has from the beginning been laced with politics and a vehicle for politicians in our community to show how “progressive” they are. We’re a D15 family that we’re the clear losers in this process. Our child who never missed a day of school and got all 4:s was not offered a spot in any of the schools we applied for (we applied for 10 different ones), and was only offered a spot in arguably the worst school in the district and in Brooklyn.
We were in this new order the lowest prioritized family as we are not low income, special needs or had any other mitigating circumstance. We just played by the rules and lost big.
I can’t help to feel like the city has decided to make us the guinea pigs in some big secret experiment with little insight into how the process actually happened. Somehow they decided it was our job to integrate a school we never even considered.
It was apparently a lottery, but one were we had a clear disadvantage. So how is that fair?
Reality is that we will simply not send our 10 year old daughter to a neighborhood far away, in a community we don’t belong to in a school that has been deemed a failing one for years. So, our only option is to somehow hope they will offer us something else in the end, find a charter school or simply leave the city. To somehow paint this whole thing as a success for everyone is disingenuous and hurtful. We were the clear losers.
160
No one seems to care about the losers in this process. The comments range from “you’re already privileged so it will be ok” to “you deserve it, you oppressor!” No one seems to understand how changing the rules in the middle of the game undermines the credibility of the system and creates resentment and anger.
My guess is in a few years whoever is the next mayor and schools chancellor will quietly walk this farce back and re-introduce screening in some form. Too late for the students whose educational opportunities have been stolen from them.
71
Emil Lanne...your response is perfect. Thank you for saying it so well.
52
Another parent of a D15 fifth-grader who received his middle school placement yesterday. All this hysteria is really overblown. As Ellen noted, the middle schools in D15--even those with lower test scores--range somewhere from good to fantastic, and shifting kids around a bit isn't going to change that.
My own kids attend an elementary school with a preponderance of disadvantaged classmates, and they're excelling academically and getting a wonderful, well-rounded education, which I attribute entirely to their superb principal and teachers. What I've learned is that a school's overall test scores don't have much to do with your individual kid. Everyone should just take a deep breath and let the experiment play out. It could be really good.
37
I’d like to see you say the same thing if you didn’t get offered a spot in a school that you applied for. I doubt very much you would not be extremely distraught. 112 families in D15 did not get any of their pick and were placed at Dewey and sunset prep. Perhaps you would like to swap?
65
Where did your child get placed? You don’t have to answer that. But I bet it wasn’t the awful school in Sunset Park. Good for you.
30
"It's Working" Wow, I've not seen such slanted reporting from you on local issues. Letters went out yesterday for the first year of integrated students. Let's check back in 3 to 4 years to see if this is indeed working. The problem with this plan is that we lose a critical mass of engaged parents at any school, who could drive support and keep the administration on its toes. Now this is disrupted, with disengaged parents the majority at all schools. The reason D15's 447, 51, and New Voices are top performers is because they had critical masses of engaged parents. Disrupt this and these schools' performance will regress to the mean of subpar standards and in some cases outright failure of many other schools. But the DOE doesn't know how to fix the broken schools so more engaged parents want to go there. All they can do is breakup the higher performing schools and hope for the best. It's looking like time to check out the burbs.
65
I really would have liked to hear from parents who come from areas of concentrated poverty. What do they think about the system and why their children, generally speaking, are not performing as well as upper income kids? From what I can tell, this is largely people with relatively similar views, backgrounds and experiences speaking among themselves but not to the "other".
24
@Schneiderman. How many of the “other” read the NYT?
32
As a district 15 parent with two children with one child in middle school and now one in high school I think there is a lot of misunderstanding here. The majority of district 15 middle schools have historically served an academically diverse population. District 15 became so popular for families due to the strength of the schools, the curriculum and the teaching (this is where Carmen Farina started out). Many of these schools were 'strong' schools even when they had a racially, economically and academically diverse student body. Generally speaking, most of these schools have great principals and faculty who can differentiate instruction (remember they had students with IEPS etc). The one school that will most likely have problems is MS 51, where the instruction is weaker and their academic screens are rigid. The faculty there will need support and training.
18
So your point is that this won’t make a difference for most of the schools in D15, which are already diverse, except the one really good school in the district (MS 51) will be completely unprepared for the influx of needy kids.
So the only tangible effect of this is program is to destroy the one exceptional school in D15? Great.
31
Great! But are they doing anything to avoid the mistakes of the last integration effort? Social Psychologists developed a classroom technique called the "Jigsaw Classroom" which could be very useful.
3
The best way to have diversity in NYC schools is to have it in NYV neighborhoods. Would be great if there was an effort to keep NYC affordable for people that are not fabulously wealthy.
17
Where is the transparency in this so called lottery? Who is auditing the process? Does the lottery apply to parents who happen to be
DOE school principals and teachers? I dont think so. Ask around.
18
There is a child in PS154 whose father ran the Office of Student Enrollment for years and she received a seat at MS 51. This same child was also awarded a pre-k seat in 2013. I'm sure she's just a really lucky lottery winner.
45
You may be sure that, whatever the outcome, school administrators will declare it a success.
25
This article is so premature. The changes are forcing kids into groups of winners and losers, lucky and unlucky. Already people are considering leaving the district and city, including our family. What about the kids that are left crying and stressed because they didn't even get one of 12 schools on their list and are being sent to a neighborhood far away? I already regret sending my kids to elementary school in district 15 and would advise others not to do it. Why didn't DeBlasio send his kids to an outlier school? He's a complete fraud.
69
@Pat
The same thing happened under the old system as well. Plenty of kids did not get their 'picks' even when they were 'high performing.'
8
@Pat
DeBlasio,Carranza: of course their children went the the very best public schools the cities they lived in at the time had to offer. It's always about knowing what is best/social experimenting on other people's children.
34
Yes, those were tough situations for the parents. I know a few. But what’s worse, getting passed over in a merit based system or being intentionally discriminated against and purposely sent to a bad school?
19
Sure, let's destroy the good schools in the name of diversity.
51
@Shadai
Oh yes. It's not just about the Specialized High Schools! I read somewhere the DOE philosophy is: "If it's working, we'll break it".
30
@Shadai Yep! As soon as children from low socioeconomic classes start going to your children’s school there goes the neighborhood!
Can’t have the kids/grandkids of those minimum wage workers who wait on you and provide a service that makes your life comfortable think that they deserve and opportunity to succeed like your children!
27
Dear Eliza Shapiro, Parents did not "make a plan" to integrate their middle schools in District 15, Brooklyn. Do your research! This plan came about because of a small cadre of activist parents, who worked under the radar and in cohoots with our the new school chancellor. As late as last fall, I recall that the majority of D15 5th grade parents I spoke to had no idea the system was even changing. They all seemed amazed.
73
@BHB - agreed. Unfortunately, small cadres of activists seem lately to have outsize influence in the political sphere. Look at the Amazon deal. It's happening everywhere.
36
I know a lot of teachers. There are many pressing issues in neighborhood public schools that serve some of our most vulnerable children. My comments are only about what I've seen in elementary neighborhood schools.
Classes are usually at or above capacity (25 children in kindergarten, 32 children in grades 1-6). Also, you will often have "visitors" from other classes because their teacher is absent. They send each class an extra 5 children who may or may not be in the grade you are teaching. So a teacher at any day can have 30-37 children in the classroom.
About half of the children do not speak English in the home. Approximately 80% of your students will enter your class performing below grade level (many 2 years or more behind). In a general education classroom, about 15-20% or your students will officially have an IEP. Another 20%+ of your class may need special education services, but cannot get them for various reasons. 20% or more students will live in temporary housing. I could go on about the percentage of students who are consistently late, absent, or unprepared for school on a daily basis, but then things will get really sad.
I'm personally tired of reading and hearing about changing a few "elite" schools. If a school has found a way to succeed, then leave them alone. Start fixing some of these neighborhood elementary schools that have a myriad of issues.
94
@Liz
I think part of the problem is that we don't know how to provide high performing schools to areas of concentrated poverty. Yes, resources matter to a fair degree. But truly successful schools have engaged kids interacting with engaged faculty and leadership. The pressing question is how do you engage kids on a large scale basis? While there are some examples of successes among kids in high poverty areas - Eva Moskowitz at Success Academy and Geoffrey Canada at the Harlem Children Zone come to mind - nobody has figured out how to produce these dynamic leaders on a large scale basis.
18
I think in at least the district 15, that parents did not make the plan. This article and its headline should be corrected. The times has previously reported it was a radical administrator.
Parents, or a small set of focus groups, were presented with a set of options. They voted, and the city picked the plan with the least number of votes. And that is what the Times characterized as “Parents made a plan”. The study is available online as D15 diversity plan.
The initial enrollment is wonderful, and perhaps it will work. But no none has done it yet, no one has felt the burden of the extra commute, which can be an extra half hour to an hour in a different direction. There is no sibling preference, so parents and children could be spending hours a day extra getting to school. And it remains to be seen whether success in a wealthy, heavily parent supported middle school will sustain when the kids for whom parents are giving that support are moved out. There is also nothing to measure success by yet, except in seeing if parents and kids want to go to better schools, which they do
51
@Wake Thank you for supplying the full context of the D15 diversity plan. This information is illuminating.
16
Be prepared to see lots of unhappy parents move out.
Yes, I know it's "voluntary", but that just means some parents are pushing the proposal, and the remaining parents will be pushed out.
26
The folks in Park Slope took it open themselves to fix their corner of a broken system, and now they are being punished for it.
Much of what is now considered Park Slope, particularly the South Slope, was a dangerous, drug-infested neighborhood. That started to change in the 90s when wealthier people began moving in.
These folks got married, had kids, and stayed. They got involved in the PTAs of the local public schools and started monumental fundraising efforts for them. They volunteered their time as well. Years later, and as a result of their efforts, Park Slope is one of the most desirable places to raise a child in NYC.
Except some very radical folks now believe that everything I described above -- behavior most sane people would want to encourage, not punish -- is evil. It's "gentrification," it's "resource hoarding," it's "white privilege." Basically, it's a sin. And the solution is to destroy the nature and character of the local schools, all in the name racial justice. Let's force these parents to send their kids to low-performing schools that are miles away, the thinking goes, so that we can have "diversity."
But is that what we want? It's ultimately self-defeating. NO ONE is going to do the work of improving a neighborhood and its schools in NYC only to have the fruits of that labor snatched from them by politicians looking to score easy political points and to obscure THEIR utter failure to improve educational opportunities for the poor. Good luck.
82
@So Over It: You need to read the article, especially the sentence that says: "Parents who were frustrated with the segregated state of their local schools — and with the city’s reluctance to adopt measures to integrate the system as a whole — took matters into their own hands last year by drafting proposals that City Hall eventually approved. "
The parents themselves drafted the proposals that City Hall approved.
The parents CAME UP WITH THE PLANS.
7
Yes, your approach worked. But we are in a different era now and need to scale-up. The goal is no longer one neighborhood or school but the whole district. We are not victims of success but building on that success.
10
Let's be clear that it was absolutely not ALL parents who wanted this change. There was a better way to implement this.
35
I live in Park Slope (cue vaudevillian boos) and my child will be attending middle school this September. We went through this new process.
Firstly, after seeing all the school, I was left thinking that we really have a lot of great public middle schools in the district. Some of them looked a bit tatty (including some of the ‘good’ ones), however, that’s New York, things are tatty. Take a look at the subway. If you want pristine, this is not your town.
Secondly, I was so relieved that my child would not be subjected to the ‘survival of the fittest’ approach of previous years. My child would not be doing entrance exams, interview, auditions, etc and be judged if they were ‘good enough’ to attend a certain school.
Lastly, I’m happy that future children will not be subjected to hysterical and over academic elementary hot housing where kids are primed for good middle school entry from kindergarten. Very little painting, playing, community, singing and fun for those kids, it was ALL about the grades. And don’t even think about taking a sick day in 4th grade – kid gets flu, never mind, they’re coming in!
And the politics? Well, the clue is in the name - PUBLIC school. That means everyone gets a fair crack. If you want to control the school your kids goes to, and are anxious that they get the best education has to offer - go private, get a load of tutors, book mandarin classes and maybe get ready to bribe some sports coaches at a later date.
77
@C R I wish I could recommend your comment more than once. Thank you for speaking up and sharing your opinions.
Many don’t understand the meaning of PUBLIC SCHOOL and that it’s a government institution. They are obligated to provide equity or put systems in place to ensure that every child has an equal chance for success.
23
@C R but why not fix the outcomes at the Kindergarten to grade 5 level? If a child is behind on reading, why not have better reading classes or after school reading programs in grade 2?
It's not useful to fix the problem in the middle of the cycle. Fix it at the beginning. Most of the students who are underperforming in grade 6 were also underperforming at Kindergarten!!!! And, yes, there is such a thing as underperforming at Kindergarten. These kids are being left behind before even getting to the starting line. Fix that, through whatever reasonable means possible, as much as possible, and then leave success for success. If you want to counsel your children to not get caught up in the educational race, that's your business. But the "solution" you're advocating here is not going to change much at all, and in the end will damage quite a few students, both many of the significantly underperforming ones who end up at a school dominated by regular performing students, and some of the regular performing students/families who are unlucky enough to land at a school dominated by underperforming students/families.
18
@elizashapiro - Will the DOE release all of the statistics? Including what percentage of students got their 1st choice, 2nd choice, , etc., and if that percentage differed based on income level?
21
Also, follow up with who actually enrolls in which schools.
6
They will not. Nor will they release stats on the number of DOE administrators in D15 whose children got their top picks.
18
Social engineering is what largely destroyed the city schools in the first place. Even if you integrate schools, you can’t have children who are functioning well with those who are not (adding behavior problems and non English speakers) in the same classroom.
Children ordinarily should attend their nearest elementary and middle schools. High schools should serve several neighborhoods.
Parenthetically, in ancient times, I went to an integrated local nyc high school, integrated because it was the nearest school for all who went there. Some of its graduates, white, black, and “other” did extremely well.
25
I am District 15 parent and my child attends MS 51, the school featured in the article. And it is high time to desegregate schools within the district.
For those arguing that standards will fall, what should be noted is that MS51 already teaches a range of academic skills - all classrooms have two teachers to support children with IEPs (Individualized Education Plans). And the students follow the same curriculum as all city middle schools.
As for rewarding hard work, this is primary and middle school students we are talking about. Let’s reward hard work at higher levels of education, but let our kids be kids. Having them cram for entrance exams and auditions at 10 years of age is not healthy or developmentally appropriate.
Finally, the desegregation plan is just that - to desegregate the schools. Lifting education quality so that every child goes to an excellent neighborhood school is a different challenge and one that won’t be solved by moving children around. But it won’t happen unless we work together to improve the system as a whole. So long as the wealthiest families keep their kids in a parallel system, be it public or private, we won’t achieve that goal.
28
Gosh, I sound like a republican, but it’s not the job of wealthy people to save public education for everyone. Wealthy people in NY pay state and local income taxes that fund the DOE, which hires teaches and administrators to run the schools. If the DOE needs more funding, then I’m fine with paying more in taxes to provide it with more funding. But I shouldn’t be asked to sacrifice my own kids’ educational opportunities to help the poor. What’s next, should I be forced to give up one of my kidneys for someone who needs it? There are lines in a free society that we do not cross.
39
@Unimpressed
Of course it's the job of people with means to subsidize the education of people without. That's what it means to have PUBLIC education. You are free to send your children to private school if you think the public schools don't offer sufficient educational opportunities. But you should not be allowed to hoard public goods (ie, popular public schools) at the expense of the less fortunate.
30
I was never “hoarding” popular public schools.
There were objective admissions criteria for D15 middle schools. If my kids didn’t meet the criteria, they didn’t get in (and they didn’t all get in to the schools they wanted). That was fair.
Instead, now there’s a lottery where affluent kids are statistically disfavored to get into popular schools and could easily end up at terrible schools miles from home. And the system was *intentionally* designed with that result in mind. That’s not fair at all. That’s absurd.
And what do you think will happen when folks like me who have younger children begin pull them out of this new system that’s been rigged against them? Who’s going to spend hours organizing your annual fundraisers? Host fundraising parties? Serve on the PTA? What’s going to happen to school performance overall when you start losing kids whose parents spend a lot of time reading and studying with them? You think everyone will be better off?
Good luck.
67
So instead of focusing on improving just the low-income or poor performing schools, let’s fudge with the good ones?!
38
Another 'brilliant' idea of our 'wonderful' mayor. He is doing exactly what he is trying to do with the specialized schools- kill the meritocracy and replace it with the 'lottery' system. He has been also a huge advocate against the gifted and talented programs. Of course, who cares about the bright and talented kids when he needs to show is he pro diversity. Mr Deblasio wasn't so eager to break these schools when his own kids attended one of them. NYC, you are a disgrace. This is the reason I will be moving, and I hope many other affluent parents do too. I am sick and tired to be punished and rely on a lottery for my daughter who scored 99 on GT to be placed in a school with 67% of homeless and low income kids whose parents cannot help them learn and the school has no funding to do that either.
59
@Katy
The article stated: "91 percent of students admitted to I.S. 136 in Sunset Park last year were poor, homeless or learning English. This year, that number will drop to 67 percent."
Don't know how that was grossly misinterpreted by you and why you assumed that 67% of poor, homeless, or English language learners were going to be placed in your daughter's school.
I hope you researched the school districts in Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties before you move and pay triple the property taxes you pay now in an effort to escape public school desegregation.
Many of the most prestigious and high performing districts in those areas have a population of homeless and poor children. Since the districts are smaller, a few of them may become your daughter's classmate. I hope you also know that most of the children who have a special-education classification are instructed in general education classrooms. They will most definitely be in her class. The horrors you'll have to endure.
6
DiBlasio / Landers both used the middle schools where they are now getting rid of any kinds of admission criteria. Daughter is currently in GT and there are no longer any programs in the middle school for District 15 for her so the only choice is to leave.
8
That quote is premature. Let’s see who actually enrolls in these underperforming schools far away from home. For those with resources and who never approved of the diversity plan to begin with (a majority of the parents) there is no way that is going to happen. Check enrollment in the local charters. It’s going to go way up.
13
To all those criticizing this venture, keep in mind it was parent-driven and voluntary.
No one's going after your precious suburban property tax money to fund this, so you have no horse in this race.
4
@Lmca No and no. It was not "parent-driven," unless you mean a small number of radical parents who shoved it down everyone else's throats.
And it is not "voluntary." I was not given a vote, and my kids go to school in D15. And my kids will certainly have no choice but to participate in the lottery when they get to middle school.
51
@Unimpressed: Did you show up to the hearings where the proposals were discussed? Did you send in a counter proposal?
4
From my perspective the “activist” parents working with the DOE to come up with and implement this plan in D15 (with zero transparency) are the super wealthy who do not work and own mansion-wide brownstones. Very smug group.
10
Everything you need to know about this article can be extrapolated from this paragraph:
"Several schools in districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn will be more racially and socioeconomically diverse on the first day of school this fall than they are today as a result of these new measures. And the apparent success these districts are seeing could prompt other neighborhoods to consider their own diversity initiatives."
In other words, as long as we increase the token diversity, who cares about student grades, test scores, graduation rates, etc because we have #diversity
49
@JP I think we can read your biases from your response. The paragraph you cite says nothing about "token" diversity, student grades, test scores or graduation rates.
You insert them based upon what? Diversity does not equal bad schools. My experience in NYC public schools is that as a whole we benefit from diversity.
8
I'm a district 15 parent who got our lottery results yesterday; not thrilled but mostly supportive of this push.
Regarding funding: The PTA at PS321, a premier District 15 school, spends ~$700 per student on everything the DOE budget doesn't cover. Extra teachers to maintain smaller class size, music and art programs, extra help for struggling/IEP students, maintenance, everything. This was the case when I went there 30 years ago, is moreso now.
Having followed this process intently for some time, I felt 'increasing diversity' was code for "forcing wealthy kids to go to marginal schools so their helicopter parents would take an obsessive interest in a school they otherwise wouldn't be caught dead even walking near".
For those interested in seeing how this came together, you can view the diversity plan here. It makes very interesting reading! http://d15diversityplan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/180919_D15DiversityPlan_FinalReport.pdf
If you feel going to a good school will magically make better students, please note how many students were previously rejected from the better middle schools due to awful attendance/tardy rates. Not so certain kids who can't get to school on time --and their parents!-- are necessarily cut out for a more academically rigorous program.
20
@Clotario Thanks for sharing your experience. We live on the Upper West Side, and with one of three yet to hit high school the issue of middle schools is largely past us, but I am concerned about the high school situation. Both of my "mixed race" children go to specialized schools, and I'm horribly concerned about the idea of throwing more and more students who aren't academically up to the same standard into those schools. High school is way too late to fix this problem on a large scale (yes, it can fix it on an individual basis). Kindergarten and the earlier grades are the place to start. I'm certain that this push at middle schools will have a mixed result, at best.
I wish the emphasis on improving outcomes for students would be exponentially higher in lower grades, and then let the students who have worked hard and have the educational achievements succeed at the highest levels as the academic ladder gets taller.
33
Children with good grades and attendance also did not receive places at those schools. There are simply not enough seats at the ‘desirable’ schools in the district. In the meantime, there are excellent and innovative middle schools in the district that fly under the radar.
7
I am no rocket scientist ,but learned to read early in life. I remember being put in reading groups with much slower readers in elementary school.That is when I learned how to daydream and watch the clock. Children of all levels need to be challenged, and some of the responsibility still has to reside at home. The proof will be in the pudding in this experiment.
33
I hope you have sufficient staff and resources for this sea change. The students who were already succeeding will likely continue to succeed. The students who have challenges to their academic success (hunger, transience, ELL, lack of access to the resources others take for granted (heat, shower, coat, transportation, safe sleep, internet, research materials, etc)) will still have those issues even when sitting next to the up-and-coming Doctors, Lawyers, Writers, World Changers. Unless the school has resources to solve the underlying problems, I cannot envision how Diversity for Diversity's Sake will be a panacea.
33
@Esther
Yes. If you have seen the Starz series "America to me" it's about a well-developed and heart-felt integration plan in Oak Park Illinois, a relatively affluent suburb of Chicago. The series showed the serious challenges (academic and otherwise) that kids from poor families have compared to the more affluent kids and how these challenges were at best only marginally overcome.
The real scary part is that maybe it's necessary to give much, much more individualized attention to the under-performing kids. What if it requires a 5 or 10 pupil to teacher ratio to get these kids up to speed? Think how many billions of dollars extra that will require.
5
@Esther Of course it's not really the schools' job to make up for the lack that poverty brings with it. As a society we should all be fighting to close the income gap by fighting for good jobs at fair pay for everyone, and getting people the help they need to get off the generational poverty wheel. Dignity for dignity's sake as a social value would make a huge difference.
3
Some words of caution from an integrated school system: the socioeconomic impact on academic achievement will not go away, and due to the racial correlations with socioeconomics, your integrated schools will be deemed racially biased. Since it is forbidden in some vocal progressive circles to ascribe any responsibility of a child’s educational outcome to their family, new bogeymen will be found. If you have any academic tracking, kids from the WhitesAndAsians race will end up in different classrooms as the BlacksAndHispanics race. This will be labelled “segregation”, and detracking efforts will be undertaken. Your school’s hiring practices will also be brought into question because there are not enough Black teachers (because, obviously, only WhitesAndAsians can learn from non-Black teachers). And on and on you will go chasing after that holy grail of diversity of input and homogeneity of mediocre output.
43
It does not work. Back in the 1950's was in mixed classrooms from kindergarten through 6th grade. I was bored silly. Special Progress for Junior High was pretty good as was a specialized high school. By dumbing down the curriculum you ruin it for the best and the brightest. The BOE and the parents are living in fantasy land.
40
@Marj R. unless a kid is gifted (and truly gifted is a small % of the population) or has special needs they all enjoy a "mixed" K-5. how else would you suggest doing it?
4
This entire thing is built on false premises.
False premise #1. NYC schools have different funding levels based on neighborhood. Obviously, not true
False premise #2. White kids do better in school. There is no genetic component to performance.
False premises #3. Conditions at home, are not the primary drivers of school success, being a good citizen and a decent person
You liberals and progressives keep pushing the false idea that somehow society can replace family. Not true. If you want your kid to grow up to be a good person, fix yourself.
The NYTimes has become extremely selective about what they publish and how they publish it. If it doesn't support their narrative, it is squashed.
You need to be guided by logic, reason and objectivity, otherwise your entire life will be a lie
Needless to say, I live in a "good" neighborhood. The people who live here are hard working, respectful and decent. Guess what? There kids are too. Perhaps their lives are a little too structured and harried, after all we are all burdened New York States oppressive taxation and liberal laws
I grew up in a horrible neighborhood. 99% of the parents got everything for free and respected no one and nothing. Guess what their kids grew up to be horrible people, who you wouldn't want to spend 10 seconds with.
39
You can forget about expanding this program all over the NYC school system, which is only about 15% white. Park Slope parents are going to be shocked when they see what happens to their well-off children in less well-off schools.
NYCDOE demographics (.xlsx) - https://infohub.nyced.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/demographicsnapshot201314to201718public_final8597442c0f1a4708b49b23ff4617f35d.xlsx
23
@NYC Taxpayer You mean they might see what life is like for less-well-off kids in less-well-off schools, realize that that's not good enough for any child, and fight to improve the system for all? Dare I hope?
7
It’s premature to proclaim this policy is working unless the most important measure of success is increased diversity in the students initially assigned to each school. Wait until the fall and measure the diversity of students who show up at each school. Wait another year and report on how students with similar test scores in the 5th grade score in the 6th and 7th grades depending on their school assignment. Survey teachers at these schools next June and ask them if they have the resources and time they need to adequately differentiate their instruction for all learners in their classrooms. Measure the academic growth of high achieving elementary school students assigned to each middle school.
Give us real data.
42
@Bonnie Heidal A common evaluation mistake, to measure something other than the program's goals.
They've only said that the admissions process has been a success in terms of reaching the distribution goals they set. The program is a desegregation effort. Your model is design is for academic achievement -- something else entirely. Please evaluate the goals of the program first, then you can assess whether it is appropriate to measure other things like satisfaction, resources, and academic achievement.
2
You’ve got to love all the “I’m for diversity, but...” comments.
Actually you don’t. They’re awful. De facto segregated schools inflict enormous damage on low-income children of color. If the complainers here (whose objections are really not that different from those of white parents in the Jim Crow South 50 years ago) really care about standards, then they should fight for smaller class sizes, more resources and higher teacher salaries that will benefit ALL students instead of defending their own privileged position in an unequal system. NYC can afford to deliver a quality education to all, and is more likely to do so when educational opportunities are more equally distributed.
The data is clear. Desegregation reduces the racial gap in grades and test scores. It does so without lowering the educational outcomes for middle class white students, but it does reduce their unfairly acquired comparative advantages and that is what really freaks their parents out.
There is no way to accomplish this without upsetting at least some of the beneficiaries of the old system. They will wrap their concerns up with chatter about how standards are being lowered, but don’t be fooled. Their fears are precisely of the effects of a more level playing field.
31
When you say that we need to eliminate the “unfairly acquired competitive advantages” that white people have, what you really mean is “we need to punish people for being white.”
And you’re surprised that white people aren’t happy with this plan?
27
@Unimpressed
A better question would be: Why is it that when minorities want to put systems in place that provide for equity in education to ensure that EVERY child has an EQUAL chance for success that Whites see that as a punishment and an existential threat?
Equity does not mean taking from Whites to give to another. It means EVERY person has an EQUAL chance.
Desegregating public schools in NYC or even through out the country is not going to tip the scale in our favor or make Whites the front runners in the Discrimination Olympics.
12
@ATOM
I agree! Everyone should have an equal chance.
Except the prior system offered something closer to an equal chance than the new system. Middle schools in D15 used to have objective screening criteria. Maybe the screening criteria could have been adjusted or made more fair -- there was room for improvement -- but at least they applied equally to everyone.
The new plan, however, does not offer anyone an equal chance. How could it? It only considers one criteria -- wealth -- as a proxy for race. By design, it discriminates against affluent students, ensuring that they cannot be a majority at any D15 middle school, including at the most popular schools.
Not sure how that counts as an "equal chance."
19
So high performing children will be sent to low performing schools?
31
I didn't come half-way across the world (legally) and work hard to leave my child's education to chance. I moved.
45
The place to start is to improve elementary schools, before kids fall behind.
17
So proud of the parents and educators in Brooklyn District 15, where my son, now 28, was educated. Sneer at Park Slope all you want, but this is a breakthrough that will change enrollment policies in city schools and bring an end to NYC's shameful history of public school segregation. Well done!
16
@Daisy
No it's going to send these hipster parents to the suburbs. It's going to be like the white flight of the 50s and 60s all over again and breed resentment.
21
@Daisy my kids attend an integrated public school, and there is still an achievement gap from K-12. The kids are tracked into different classes according to ability, and this gets decried as the new “segregation”. Our school system has recently “solved” this by allowing kids to choose what track to take regardless of their ability. This is all a big shell game that will not change anything but optics, just like the desegregation in Park Slope.
16
“It’s working.”
If the goal was to take the handful of top public middle schools in NYC and drag them down to the same level of mediocrity as all the other schools in the city, the plan has succeeded!
Parents who care about their children’s education will realize that formerly elite schools are no longer capable of providing their children with a high-quality education because over half of the students in every class are now going to be academically unprepared or can’t speak English. Because the mission is to hunt down and destroy excellence wherever it exists in the NYC public school system in the name of equality, the parents will have no choice but to send their kids to private schools or move to the suburbs.
(And how are these integrated classrooms going to work, exactly? Will the academically advanced students be expected to provide remedial education services to the underprepared students? Sure sounds like it. Would the DOE be willing to compensate them for this labor?)
And in 3-4 years the high-performing middle schools will be just as mediocre as every other school in the city. But they will be diverse!
58
@Unimpressed Why do you assume that the white students are academically advanced? Why do you think that adding students from different economic and racial backgrounds will make schools mediocre? Can you honestly say why?
3
Interesting that District 3 was selected over District 2, which seemed to have the greater share of selective middle schools in Manhattan.
10
Did Schools in District 15 screen by the color of ones skin or ones level of wealth, as so many proponents of the Mayors' plan insinuate?
I thought it was based on attendance, academic record and state wide exams.
Why is the Mayor instituting this program in one or two districts vs citywide?
Because he found a willing progressive city councilman in BRAD LANDER that wouldn't fight him in District 15 (the Mayors home district) and he couldn't risk the entire Middle School system/backlash if this experiment fails.
I have seen nothing supporting the theory that this rapid implementation of eliminating ALL academic standards will lead to an overall lifting of academic achievement, while change of this type and at this speed puts at risk some of the best middle schools across the entire borough.
I'm an advocate for desegregation/integration/thoughtful change based on well researched academic studies...that's not what this is.
This is political fireworks for a Mayor looking for his next job.
26
@Dave Read James Coleman's study on separate but unequal schools.
1
Here is a fact about NYC public schools that people who live outside of the city may not know. Many of the high performing schools in gentrified neighborhoods do so well because the parents are funneling tons of money and resources into the schools through aggressive fundraising and donations. With private tuition in NYC well north of $50K per year, even $5-10K donated to your public school is asking very little in comparison. This money is used for supplies, equipment, staffing, etc. It's not a really matter of smarter students or better teachers, rather NYC public schools in more affluent areas are honestly more like public/private hybrids. When schools are now 57% low income, it's going to impact more than just the make-up of the children in the building. The operating budgets of the PTA, etc, will plummet as well.
41
@M
Correlation is not causation. It's just as likely that the parents who donate are also the ones that make sure their kids behave and do their homework.
35
@M Parent financial contributions make a school more enjoyable for their children, but the contributions that make a difference in academic achievement take place outside the school building. A child who arrives at school well rested and well fed and from a home that is not chaotic is easy to teach. If they go off track academically, these parents are paying attention and have the resources to help them either personally or by providing a tutor.
26
@M Under Mayor Bloomberg, NYC spends MORE on students in poor communities than in rich ones. In some cases, substantially more, approximately $5,000 per student. In fact, per student spending in the magnet schools is lower than the citywide average. So no, parent contributions don’t account for the difference in performance
12
In fall 2018 there were 1,135,334 students in the NYC school system, only 15% (170,300) of whom were white. There are 1,840 public schools (including charters), with an average of 617 students per school. (Source: NYC Dept of Ed)
This tiny percentage of white students means that the closest NYC can come to integrating its schools would be to place an equal number of white students in each of the City's schools, which would mean an average of 93 white students and 524 non-white students per school.
The Mayor and the School Superintendent seem to believe that mixing white students with minority students is the only way to improve educational outcomes for all students, but I don't think mixing 93 white students with 524 non-white per school is enough to accomplish that goal. (And isn't it insulting to minority students to suggest that they need exposure to white students to improve or succeed in school?)
Unfortunately, if the Mayor and Superintendent make further attempts to force integration by busing or by re-zoning school districts or by lowering admission standards for specialized schools, further white flight to the suburbs or private schools is inevitable.
There are simply not enough white students to spread around NYC public schools; the solution to the problem of variable student outcomes and opportunities is to acknowledge that residential and economic segregation exist and focus NY's efforts and funds on improving education at ALL public schools.
55
@Mon Ray Mixing students is the best way to improve educational opportunities, not outcomes. There's a big and important difference between the two.
2
@Mon Ray And how many of them are on Staten Island? What are they going to do? Load them up on Ferry's a distribute them around the city?
4
This is a good step, but (based on my own experience in a low performing elementary and middle school), I worry about how teachers and administrators will handle high achieving kids who become bored or frustrated in classes becoming a lot slower and more strained. What is the best way to truly help students who need to catch up while, at the same time, helping students who feel held back?
18
@Caroline The best w to help is to make sure they won't get left behind in the first place, by having mandatory after-school homework programs.
The longer, in terms of age and years in the system, we take to fix that problem, the harder it is. And it's exponentially harder. By the time you get to an 11 or 12-year old, they have already lost interest if they are so far behind, for the most part. There will be rare exceptions, but you can see it in any high school in the US or Canada.
4
@Caroline
No one cares about the high achievers they will be 'just fine' according to all the supposed studies
13
My children really love to learn and this is reflected in their grades and achievement, and what I have observed is that children who are bright will get bored, frustrated and tune out if they are not challenged academically because they have to wait for the rest of the class. They will complain instead of just sliding by because they love learning. So, as we discuss fairness, let us also be mindful of such children. Let's not hinder their development because we have parents who have failed, and are still only interested in talking about a good education, but not willing to contribute to the hard work of educating their own children (e.g., read, turn off the cable, internet, put away the phones). These parents have failed to do basic things to get their children to understand the value of a good education.
30
@Isle Wow, I haven't heard the blame the parent argument in a while. Do parents with multiple jobs fail their children because they are taking care of basic economic necessities? Do single parents fail their children because they don't have another parent to share the responsibilities? Let us all reflect on our good fortune if we have the time and resources to give our children a life of reading, a supportive learning environment and the freedom of worry from harm or hunger.
8
As a middle-class white parent whose daughter went to primary and middle schools where lower-class minority students predominated, I feel this is long-overdue! Long-term segregation has doomed some schools and their students to chronic underperformance. Having noisy middle-class parents involved is a good way of ensuring resource allocation and teaching quality. Lower-income people are often too hampered by more pressing concerns to take on this "squeaky wheel" role. And certainly NYC students (and residents generally) benefit from mixing with people of other races and income backgrounds. I'm glad my daughter escaped the sense of entitlement that so many young people are plagued with when material affluence is taken for granted. I feel less privileged students will also benefit from the expectation that they can match the performance of better-off peers.
23
PS 180 Hugo Newman is getting less "poor and low-performing" because of the gentrification of lower Harlem. It's the most popular public preK-8 in the area. Perhaps the diversity effort is helping, but it's definitely getting whiter even without these efforts.
Also, I want to note that there will be A TON of change in enrollment lists between now and the fall so this celebration is a bit premature.
8
It sickens me to see so many comments slamming this move before it gets a chance. It's not a shock to see that most of the readers have never lived in low-income communities or attended mixed schools.
I grew up in a situation that is increasingly rare. I lived in a poor, subsidized housing complex in the middle of a white middle-class town. Both my brother and I thrived. It was sometimes difficult socially when we couldn’t afford to do the things our richer neighbors could. No Paris field trips for me. But coming in on the low-end only makes kids fight harder and work harder. Getting involved in sports and activities helped ease the social stigma that followed us. And for my brother and I (and our neighbors) attending higher education was a given.
Just like most low-income parents, my mother did everything she could to get us a well-rounded education, something that is only possible when the school is equipped to offer that help. Thankfully, New York’s move toward integration doesn’t depend upon the selfish whims of the public. It depends on doing what’s right, and separate isn’t equal.
If people here have any questions as to how a low-income kid will perform in a ‘privileged’ school, I suggest they read Michelle Obama’s biography. She was just like me.
18
@chodger I was with you until the statement "just like most low-income parents"...
I agree that it's critically important that every student has the chance to get an excellent education. But many parents don't provide the necessary support to their children, whether because the child is raised in an unstable home, single parent, whatever.
Those kids come to school and struggle, and they always will. Our school system is bending over backwards in an attempt to fix these kids who have problems at home, and in my opinion it's incredibly damaging because it reduces opportunities for kids like you if you end up in the same classroom with that kid, and it doesn't really change the outcome for those kids anyway.
Our school system should give everyone the opportunity to be the best they can be, and if they don't step up, they should fail and be put into remedial classrooms where they stop dragging down everyone else.
The problem the low income schools have is that they don't do this. They keep trying to pretend that everyone can succeed, and as a result no one does because the lowest kids drag everyone else down.
21
I’m slamming this move primarily because I grew up in a low-income neighborhood in NYC and went to some spectacularly awful public schools. You don’t know what a horrible environment those schools are unless you went there. What’s happening is you have a bunch of middle class liberals from the Midwest who moved to Park Slope and the UWS and think it would be swell to see the local public schools integrated with low-income kids. Until, of course, their kids can’t learn anymore because students are disrupting the teachers constantly, kids who do perform well are targeted for merciless bullying, and weapons, drugs, and gangs take over the school.
Just wait.
45
@Kevin
Your comments are judgmental. Your outlook on children from low socioeconomic backgrounds is dark and pessimistic and grounded in myths and misinformation.
What efforts have you made to get to know those parents and make them feel valued and included in your community?
You speak of a need for services to be provided to students who fall behind their peers. However, research-based programs (response to intervention (RTI) or multi-tier system of supports (MTSS)) are already MANDATED for these students! The school MUST provide them and they do.
They're not in the form of "remedial classrooms." I'm not sure if you were implying all students who fall behind should be placed special education. I suggest you research IDEA and special education.
Speak to the principal of your child's school. She/he can share much accurate information on how the school functions in multiple areas and the inner workings of pedagogy and instruction.
5
The only way to end inequity is for us to recognize our own privilege - and then give some of it up. When parents say, "Oh, I don't want my kids going to that school," anyone listening should respond, "So why are you ok with any child going to that school? And how will turning your back on the public schools improve them?" An educated society benefits all of us, but producing an educated society also takes all of us, not just teachers. And teachers who are roundly demeaned and criticized by all segments of society - parents, the media, politicians - while being asked every day to do more and more and more.
In my 17 years of teaching, my school has gone from "a normal school" to one that now serves breakfast, that offers homeless students a place to stay until 5:00, that has a clothing pantry, a food pantry, and a toiletry pantry, and where teachers and staff routinely donate home furnishings to formerly homeless families who have finally found a stable shelter. Seventeen years is a long time, but it's not really a long time.
The changes in America have swept across America's schools in alarming ways, and yet most of what I hear from America's leaders is that teachers and schools will just have to learn to make do with less - and less and less and less - because there simply isn't any money to provide for our future.
22
“So why are you ok with any child going to that school?”
I’m not ok with it but first, it’s not my job to fix it. I pay taxes so that professionals in the dept of education can fix the schools with my money. (It’s called division of labor). They’re incapable of performing their jobs, clearly. So they want me to surrender some of my “privilege” (forcibly dispossess my family of economic and academic opportunities) to make up for their own incompetence.
And second, you can never eliminate educational inequality. Some parents care more about their children’s education than others. No amount of social engineering at the schools is going to fix that. All you can do is drag everyone down in the name of equality. I don’t think educational policy should be motivated by spite.
24
Fix the problem at age 0 to age 12. Please.
Mandatory after-school academic programs (not basketball programs) for any student not performing up to their potential, starting at the first day of school until the end of grade 10. After that, you're on your own.
Mixing students by academic success at later and later ages is not ever going to work.
36
@Think Strategically
"Mixing students by academic success at later and later ages is not ever going to work."
Your statement is inaccurate and has been disproven by evidence-based research/data.
2
@ATOM You're not going to get success putting a person who can't read into organic chemistry. No data will ever go against that point.
A lot of the social science data I've seen quoted in the press is often misquoted and ill-conceived with poor design and control.
Every teacher knows that the primary determinant of educational outcome, for the vast majority of students who are mentally capable, is the focus on education by the family and the student. For students that fall behind despite their abilities, for whatever reason, why not run after school programs instead of putting an illiterate student in a students reading at the top level in a grade 8 class? You're going to frustrate many of the lower performing students and bore many of the higher performing students.
Fix the problem, and the problem materializes long before grade 6.
23
All this does is enhance an educational business opportunity in NYC. It's called the academy system. Don't think for a moment that NYC parents won't band together in response to diversity at the expense of academics.
9
@Mike
Because charter school are so incredibly successful! Just look at the wonders they did in Michigan!
1
@Mike that’s just another venue for segregation.
@ATOM
Charters get kids to college. Sounds like you don’t like college.
1
How can this program succeed when the recommended funding was stripped out of the proposal? It takes money to educate every child to the peak of their abilities. One teacher can not possibly create/manage 35 individual educational programs. We know how to create successful schools, but we (as a country) don’t want to pay for it.
11
@Jean Sims this is not for students with IEPs. For what it it's worth there is already a students with disabilities requirement at every school .
@Jean Sims
There would never be a classroom of 35 students with an IEP. Classroom sizes for special education that big are against IDEA and probably against union rules.
Why is their so much misinformation on this comment board?
@ATOM
It’s hilarious you think that just bc there are union rules and IDEA on the book that everything is ship shape. I once saw a union member kick a non-verbal special needs student in a stairwell in a district 15 school. Literally nothing happened when it was reported. The union just punished the person who raised the issue (by dragging them through the mud). Naïveté.
4
This reporter seems much more concerned, based on a large sample of her articles, with diversity than with education. They are not the same thing, much as ethics is not the same as the current trend of social justice. Diversity itself does not in any decent, reputable, large scale study, conference measurable academic benefits. If academics are important to families, they will want the better school, not the more diverse school. A diverse environment can be excellent, but it is a whole host of factors that contribute.
59
@RE If you're limiting education to the three Rs, then you might be right. In the real world, there are diverse people. Schools need to reflect that reality. That's education, too.
12
@Donna Kny the current trendy expectation that the racial makeup of NYC academic environments should exactly reflect the racial environment of the city is based on nothing more substantial than liberal social justice platitudes. It may be possible with a lot of screening and academic support to create a racially diverse and excellent school,but simply throwing people together, and claiming that diversity is working , is meaningless.
37
@Donna Kny good luck!
3
We have no idea whether this plan is going to work. It is admirable and I am hoping that the Times will follow this story and report on whether it actually does work. I hope it does. However, our family had a very different experience with our personal efforts at "integration." We purposefully sent our daughter to a magnet school in a marginal neighborhood with about a 70% free and reduced price lunch student body. By third grade, she was bullied, bored and done with school. We were done too and with the full support and recommendation of her teacher we pulled her out of that school and bit the bullet at an independent school that had great academics and a robust scholarship program that supported a diverse student body. ((We were not alone in this, at least 10 other families did the same.) She is thriving. I'm really tired of the research telling us that putting kids like mine in a low performing school benefits all students. It does not benefit high achieving kids academically one bit.
115
I live in D15 with a kid in public kindergarten. From my conversations with other parents, including ones with kids much closer to middle school, these are the main concerns:
1. Much like many of the comments brought up, are the schools going to receive extra funding?
2. Why get rid of all academic screening? Couldn't some seats in a school be a blind lottery and another percentage be reserved for rewarding academic excellence?
3. How is transportation going to work? And how will that be funded?
4. Parents want diversity in schools.
10
@Matt
5. The DOE has spent or will spend 200 billion dollars on this whole process.
1
In the 1930s and early 1940s, I attended a low performing school. I behaved in a rebellious manner, correcting and challenging teachers. My mother came to school requesting that I be given more work to do. Instead my teachers made me tutor other children. This was very difficult, probably the hardest job of my life. You don't want to send your children to low performing schools if you want them to excel regardless of your altruistic leanings.
28
This article is totally confusing. Every article published by the NYT so far has portrayed parents of students in high performing, high income and predominantly white as fighting redistricting tooth and nail. If you read through the comments, the local parents responding seem much more concerned than excited. One parent commented that former MS 51 families who were given seats at lower performing schools are now frantically looking for private or other options. But, parents are driving integration???
34
It’s a fantasy that the parents in Park Slope support this. But no one will speak out lest they be branded a “racist”. Everyone saw what happened in the UWS when one parent spoke out at a public meeting about the diversity plan there — video of her comments was posted online and she was savagely attacked. Believe me, in private and in small groups, parents are FURIOUS about this move.
The fact that no one seems to get their heads around is they most people move to neighborhoods like PS or the UWS (and pay a hefty premium in rent or mortgage) because the SCHOOLS ARE GOOD. If you mess around with the schools in the name of social justice, these folks leave, and they take their high-performing kids and their fundraising with them, leaving the local schools in even worse shape.
What’s more distributing, is that a number of comments here and elsewhere talk about the need for these parents to be forced to surrender their “privilege,” as if they should be dragged down and punished for being successful and caring about their kids.
32
@M
It was not a parent driven process, it was a city driven process with some involvement from some focus groups of parents, who recommended other plans than the one the city imposed.
14
@Unimpressed My conversations with parents do indicate concerns, because it's new, but not furious. Some express relief that the high level of competition to get their child into the "best" schools was minimized. Years back, you went to your neighborhood zoned school - no choice, that's where you went or you went to an independent school. If you didn't like it, you moved. What's so different now?
4
This will only result in the dumbing down of the middle schools, because "tracking" kids based on academic ability (where invariably the low-income students will be placed into more remedial tracks and the middle-class white and Asian students placed in more advanced tracks) will be deemed "racist."
Eventually there will be white and Asian flight, either to the suburbs, private schools and other parts of New York City not yet subject to these misguided policies. So then the schools that were once considered good will be so no longer, and the schools where these kids flee to will just become better.
The quality of the school is primarily determined by the kids (and their families) who attend them. Placing low-performing kids into higher performing schools won't magically make the low-performing kids smarter; it will just make those schools worse. Wherever you go, there you are.
You can't force middle-class parents to send their kids to certain schools. Don't underestimate the means that these parents would take for the sake of their kids' education.
54
@Alison No one is suggesting that students will "magically" be made smarter. Intelligence is fixed. Learning is not. What is being suggested is that much more learning will occur for all of the students. That will not be magic. It will take hard work by students and by teachers--and it will require training and support. Perhaps those won't be available, and this project will fail. But it is hardly inevitable, and perspectives like yours contribute to the failure of such hopeful and worthy endeavors. Do you WANT to contribute to their failure?
10
@David Katz I agree with most of your comment. However, intelligence is not fixed. There is a ton of evidence-based research in various fields (psychology, pedagogy, neuroscience, speech-language pathology) that indicates that it is highly-malleable that it grow and change.
6
@ATOM
Pretty much every reasonable study indicates that intelligence is relatively fixed at birth - not ABSOLUTELY but relative to your peer group.
I would also love to know how flooding a class with underperforming students will 'benefit' the higher performers in a learning environment. If someone wants to make a utilitarian argument then I would accept that.
11
What about the students that do very well and who now end up in a mediocre school? It does not seem like an advancement for them.
55
@Don Juan
The only way sensible people can argue for it is to make a Utilitarian argument that the improvement of the lower performers outweighs the retardation of the higher performers.
Most folks reject utilitarian arguments for obvious reasons.
10
These people are deliberately sabotaging their own children. Sure, more “vulnerable” kids can be let in without academic screens but how are they going to fix their home life, ensure that mom and dad focus on education, and fix the culture from which they come? Are they even smart enough to succeed? To sacrifice ones own kids on behalf of liberal ideology is noble, I suppose, but also contrary the moral obligation of being a parent.
42
@DRS parents that aren't motivated for their kids to do better won't send them to the higher achieving schools. There is a self selection.
Don't believe the hype. The District 15 plan was not a "grass roots" effort which arose spontaneously. It was orchestrated by the DOE, City Hall, CM Brad Lander and a small number of activist parents to push their political agenda of integration at any cost. And NYT, let's wait until we see the school performance results of this plan before declaring "it's working"...
80
@EW Exactly. It is OK to admit a few more underprivileged/under-performing kids into the well performing school. But the problem happens when successful, hard working students are forced to go to a school where 91% of the students are disadvantaged. How is it fair to the hard working, successful students? How exactly will they be educated? If they will be educated by the same teachers who are used to poor, under performing students then this will be a disaster. Their parents will be forced to either move to the suburbs or to pay for private school, if they can.
I suppose this plan could succeed if the Board of Education really cares about both under performing and well performing students. If well performing students are forced to go to a historically under privileged school then they need a lot of extra support as well as qualified teachers. But I don't think this will happen. NYC Board of Education mainly cares about underprivileged minority students and barely provides any support to the hard working and successful white/Asian students.
24
@Ilya
I have taught in the Bronx, Washington Heights and am now on the UWS. I didn't teach a single caucasian student in the first 15 years in NYC. Not one. How could that happen? A number of reasons but likely foremost is that our elementary schools reflect the catchment area surrounding the schools. As our neighborhoods gentrify due to an increasingly unequal NYC and America poor people of all races leave and upwardly mobile families move in and replace them. These schools all receive equal funding on paper but the PTAs fundraise to support enrichment programs and parents volunteer opportunities. I worked at a school where PTA fundraising for the year was successful if it raised $1000. I've also had kids in schools when a bad year raised $150,000. Lastly, which school will a talented teacher stay in--one that has incredible parent support and enhances her curriculum with materials and trips or one that doesn't have those opportunities. Which schools will have higher staff turnover?
Obviously, this is a very complicated issue--but I want to make sure that our conversations and thoughts reflect that complexity rather than reducing this to characterizations of hardworking students versus disadvantaged students or worse--hardworking races versus less hardworking races.
15
@Ilya those kids will get straight As all through school, then at some point discover that they are woefully underprepared relative to peers who went to better schools.
17
There is no way to make slow children smarter. This is a colossal waste of time and money.
22
@Ayecaramba While I agree that this endeavor seems to be useless, you can make slow children smarter, but not by throwing them in with high achievers. It has to be a gradual process and some of the slow children will catch up.
1
@Ayecaramba Why do you assume the children in poor performing schools are slow? Some may be and others may simply not have ever been given the right environment to blossom.
1
"the percentage of students who are poor, learning English or homeless will jump from 33 percent to 57 percent this fall" Exactly how is this good for the students who don't fall into those categories? Does this author even care?
45
We need more reporting. We need to know if whites will leave those districts.
19
These children will try something new, in the fall, and the Times declares, “Success!” An article about addiction with addicts clean for three months. “Success!”
Love to see a series of articles about the academies in the Harlem Children’s Zone. It was all anyone could talk about half a dozen years ago. Well, how is it going now? What lessons can be learned?
How can we help children from poor families get the most out of their education? New York spends twice as much per child as California. Does the extra money significantly help poor kids? New York spends almost triple what Utah spends, yet Utah kids significantly outscore NY. Why?
Fewer feel-good stories and more investigative journalism please.
30
@Michael Haddon
Seriously! As someone else in the comments noted, parents of children being sent to lower performing schools are frantically looking for other options. I personally know families who have picked up and moved when their child didn't get a seat at their high performing school and I don't doubt that families with means will resort to this and other measures. Let's see how many of affluent families actually show up to the lower performing schools next September. Or how many of them stay for more than one school year.
12
@Michael Haddon
With all due respect to the wholly admirable Geoffrey Canada- the reason you saw so many articles back then is because Mayor Bloomberg/Klein found it suited their charter schools as superior bias that they were promulgating. The reality is so much more gritty and challenging. Look beyond the latest "miracle"...the true work is very very difficult. And there is no miracle. (Unless you counsel kids out / don't replace the empty seats like Success Academy)...Mr Canada's network is more authentic than that so prob no longer can boast the miracle that served Bloomberg/Klein though they do god's work. The truth is not pretty - and it's not pc, and it's doesn't fit the progressive agenda. Would love to see more follow up too, can only guess it's because hey, it's not a miracle. It's just a true struggle. And bless those that engage in it.
1
Outrage about gerrymandering and acceptance of school segregation is hypocrisy.
9
Nope! Two entirely different things. Especially when the schools in question were open to all who met the academic criteria.
5
While the mayor and chancellor did indeed stand in front of television cameras and applaud themselves for approving the final, parent-driven proposal, they later made small but significant modifications, including removing the language screen from the two, small dual language programs in District 15. Kids who don't speak any Spanish were admitted to the Spanish program at MS 88. Kids who dont have any French were admitted to 497. The dual language program will, I suppose, dissolve into just another school with a language class. The "on ramp" that had been put in place for new arrivals from places like Puerto Rico and Haiti has been removed in the name of diversity.
14
@John wait, so English speakers were put into a program for Spanish speakers?
If that's true, it's ridiculous and yet another indication of how silly this drive for integration is, at the cost of all common sense.
7
@Kevin The Dviersty Plan called for heritage speakers and children who have academic proficiency in a second language to have priority for the two dual language programs, even in the first year of the roll out. These programs have most of their regular classes in English but then a couple classes (including science and math ) in the target language. This isn't like a K-5 dual language program where kids who speak Spanish at home and kids who speak English at home mix. You need a cohort of kids who can handle 6th grade science in Spanish. This is why the two programs in District 15 are open to bilingual students borough-wide.
For some reason, the DOE thought this went against the diversity plan and just let anyone apply to anything. I know a kid who wanted the Spanish program at 88 and got placed in French program at 497. Because that makes sense, right?
7
I just finished reading the Melinda Gates interview. Perhaps the school district in this column could work with the Gates Foundation to get some additional support and money for this educational experiment. Sounds like smaller class sizes would help get the less advanced students up to the desired level. Give it a try!
4
@Juanita But why should a private foundation have to give money to public schools?!? If NYS gave NYC the millions (billions?) it owes (as ruled by the court), then these needs would easily be fulfilled.
5
@Juanita Bill Gates has been clear that he does not believe smaller class sizes are important (for other people’s kids). He’s supportive of spending more on classroom technology though. Paying more teachers doesn’t put money in his pocket.
@Juanita The Gates Foundation is a strong and perhaps the largest financial supporter of charter schools. They like Betsy DeVos want to gut public education.
2
The article does not clarify how the students will be placed in terms of their ability. Will the students with low grades and low test scores be placed in the same class as high performing students? If that is the case, then it is a recipe for disaster. If the instructions needs to be modified to meet the needs of the lower students, then the high ones will be deprived of a challenging and stimulating curriculum. Conversely, if the instruction targets high performers, then the low performers will lag behind and not learn anything. So, will there be classes for the low performers separate from the high performers? As a teacher, you can't target such extreme differences in ability and achievement in one class, and you can't differentiate your way out of it either.
Does anyone know how these children will be placed?
29
Everyone mixed together.
I spoke with the principal (well, acting principal, as the real principal left the school as soon as the plan was approved) of one of these soon-to-be-formerly high performing schools — they won’t say it out loud, but they have no idea how to make this work.
A lot of talk about “our teachers are going to have to get used to teaching kids with a wide variety of abilities” and “we will need to re-evaluate our standards.” So, basically, dumb everything down and pray.
24
A large part of the original proposal was increased funding and resources for schools, so that the schools could address the new mix of students who would be coming in to the schools. Without any public vote or pubic hearing on the final proposal, the DOE adopted only the change to admissions, and did not put any significant amount of money or resources into the schools. So, now you're going to have all these classrooms with one teacher and 30+ 6th graders, some of whom are reading at a high school level, and some who are reading at a 1st grade level. How are they going to address that? Where are the resources for this? Further, some of the schools may be worse off - because they may lose Title I funding. It's far too early to call this new system a success.
76
@Parent You hit the nail on the head. As I said below, the DOE only cares about Day 1 (optics). Day 2 (learning) - who cares? As long as we have our pretty picture with children of many skin tones.
And the teachers, principals, and of course, students, are left to their own devices.
34
I’m the working-class parent of a high-performing student entering middle school under the new admission standards in District 15. I was born, raised and educated in a multicultural, low to middle income neighborhood in Queens.
Diversity in itself does not bother me, but a school system that dismisses academic and disciplinary merit to replace them with a randomized lottery system most certainly does. Since my daughter reached school age, I’ve worked 70 hours a week so that I could afford to live in an area where my children would be educated in a successful public school. For her own part, my daughter has worked extremely hard to maintain her academic excellence. Like all children, she is more than just an arbitrarily assigned number in a lottery.
I spent yesterday afternoon talking to D15 parents across a wide range of racial backgrounds. We had all just received our middle school enrollments. My own family was fortunate. The vast majority of other families I spoke to did not feel that they had been fortunate at all. Many of them were scrambling to find charter or private schools that might still admit their kids.
It’s a bit early to declare victory here. If the Times should choose to cover this important story further, then it might be a good idea to get out in the districts and talk to the people actually affected by these changes, both parents and students alike.
I think you’ll find a far greater deal of trepidation than these pages suggest. I know I did.
158
Spot on. My child will not attend the school she was placed in. And let's be very clear, she was placed, we did not select it. I am a black mother FWIW and this plan was executed poorly and hastily.
44
@Daniel James McCabe
Yes, there is much trepidation when knowing your child is about to be surrounded by students who have not been in the accelerated track the entire time or will be a disruption to the collective learning method other children are in.
And when these concerns are addressed with parents moving their children into private, charter or other public schools, the reasoning will all be explained away with a charge of racism. No more research or investigation will be conducted into the matter at that point.
21
@Daniel James McCabe I'm a D15 5th grade parent as well. We listed 12 schools. We got assigned one that we had not listed and that is not conveniently located, as did many in my child's class. Almost every one I know is extremely unhappy, including the parents of color, and many are appealing or looking at charters. The DOE completely disregarded the ranking lists were were asked to submit. This article reads like a press release from the DOE. (What success?)
50
It takes COURAGE and a willingness to be unpopular while trying to do the right thing. Will it be successful? We hope so - even if the program does not achieve everything in the plan, but people, PLEASE, give them credit for doing SOMETHING because they are determined to make a difference.
Might want to ask yourselves just how courageous you would be to see your neighbors' children receive the same opportunities to learn (grow, expand) that your children have (or had at the time).
15
To say this program is working or that there was real community dialog before instituting these policy changes is akin to false reporting. We have no idea whether our new chancellor has any idea what he is doing (his background is that of music teacher and two failed stints in other cities as chancellor) or that our mayor is motivated by anything but progressive politics and a presidential run. What I can tell you is the successful middle schools in District 15 will have a tremendous challenge shifting from screened schools (based on ability/talent) to lottery schools. I hope our middle schools do not go the way of the subways. By the time we know the results, both the mayor and chancellor will be long gone and we (New Yorkers) will be left to fix what they break in the name of progress.
44
Not to mention that Carranza was struggling to get Cs in University of Arizona studying electrical engineering for two years, before he gave up and switched to Education major, and found his true passion for education.
16
electrical engineering is the toughest undergrad major, it's not for everyone....
It's very interesting measure of success: "more high-achieving children will enroll at low-performing schools"
22
@areader Or vice versa. More low-achieving children will enroll at high-performing schools. Let's see how long those schools continue to be high-performing - and/or if the low-performing students stay all three years.
18
My family has personal experience with integrating schools.
We grew up in Teaneck NJ in the early 60's and the northeast section of town where Bryant School was located was becoming mostly a school for black children.
My mother and her group of friends got together and decided that they would send their white children to Bryant to try and keep the school integrated. It soon became apparent that most mothers didn't really want to send their kids after all.
It turned out that just two families sent their children, my older brother, Andrew Hecht, and a girl, (Cindy or Cynthia Simpson who moved to Seattle a few years later. If you read this, please get in touch with us.) I was too young but probably would have gone to kindergarten at Bryant the next year.
The next year, Teaneck became the first school system to voluntarily integrate schools with busing. I never understood why but my mother didn't want any of this in the book "Triumph in a White Suburb".
So, it really is possible for a few concerned parents to make a difference and get local schools integrated.
15
The turbulent middle school years are not the best time to make such sweeping changes in expectations. Why not start the process of re-integration in preschool? Extensive tutoring and enrichment programs should be added to the curriculum in all underperforming schools.
While the goal here is well-meaning, the method of reaching the goal seems ill-considered and likely to have the opposite result intended by the proponents of this initiative.
25
@Mary I think you've hit the nail on the head with "tutoring and enrichment", or what I call after-school mandatory homework sessions.
People talk about high performing "schools", but really it's the students, and their families, who are high performing or low performing. I come from a family of two high school teachers, and they both say that it's the family and student attitude toward education that matter the most, not the teacher. What will happen with this current plan is little but optics. Yes, some lower performing students on the margin will sop up good, positive attitudes and work habits from higher performing students. But for every one of those there will be another 10-20 who will just sit and stew that they can't achieve what all those "white" (for these purposes, "white" includes Asian) kids can.
So, yes, some progress will no doubt be made for those few kids.
On the other hand, you'll also have a number higher performing students who will, on the margin, miss out on better class academic dynamics, and who will be marginally less prepared as they go to high school.
Not much will change, until the families, students, and school system focus on education from age 0 to age 12.
12
One more thing. D3 schools were required to make 25 % of offers to low-income, low-performing students. But Booker T only made 18% of offers tot hose kids. I was told by a reliable source that "If they filled less than 25% of the priority group, it means they did not have enough applicants in that category."
Now isn't that interesting! Why not?
Are low-performing, low-income kids intimidated by the workload and academic demands of this school? Do they feel unwelcome there - either because of their class, race, or academic achievements? Do they feel like tokens?
8
Do any of the naysayers in these comments actually live in either of these districts, or even send their child to public school in NYC? I live in District 15, with a child in public school here, and I am excited by this plan. It was developed by parents who actually live in the district (not our do-nothing mayor), most them white and upperclass, who are eager for more diversified schools. If we wanted our children to only go to school only with wealthy white kids we would have moved to the suburbs, or the upper east side, both of which are probably cheaper than Park Slope. But we believe children are enriched by attending school alongside kids from different backgroundds and ethnicity, it's why we live in the city. Those of you in these comments who think this is a disaster in the making, not to worry, you and your offspring need never step foot in one of our schools. Those of us who believe kids of all colors and income can learn better together will move ahead, trying to make this city a better place for all.
26
@Katherine Brava! Progress comes with push back, particularly from those who don't actually "want" the progress if it means they might have to invest by actually participating or stepping up.
7
@Katherine - I think you are missing the point. The majority of naysayers are not against diversity/integration; what they are against is asking teachers/schools who have been instructing children at the same learning level (for decades) to all of sudden to shift (overnight) to instructing children of vastly different capabilities.
There was zero study on whether removing all screening in one year is a recipe for overall success. The schools, parents and students of the test case districts will bear the brunt of this live study if it fails.
Middle school years come once in a child's life. There is no do-over.
34
@Katherine
Please. Is this a joke? Solid public school options was the major thing keeping the middle and the lower upper class parents in the city despite the exuberant taxes, absurd housing prices, crumbling subways, homeless crisis, etc... Remove that and see the "white flight" all over again. At some point it just is not worth it. Who needs the grief? The number of parents who are willing to make their kids an instrument for social justice warfare is actually surprisingly small. I think it will be even smaller once they pay a visit to their lottery-based 'hood school. Who needs this grief? Westchester, here they come.
34
So many arguments concerned with the high-achieving privileged students being brought down. I understand. My daughter attends a racially diverse high school. Constant efforts to better integrate. First, demands for busing. Then busing demands for no busing, but better local schools. Then blending honors students with non-honors in one room, so honors classes don’t look segregated, and letting kids earn honors credit with optional extra work. And English curriculum based on reading minority writers exclusively. Theatre productions that exclude white students in favor of students of color.
And after a generation of good-faith efforts, there’s still an achievement gap. That’s because our society as a whole still embraces racism, and if you doubt that, just watch Fox News and it’s coverage of issues like the border wall (south border only.)
And yet...my (privileged) daughter is getting a challenging and appropriate education. White families have not fled (for the most part.) This child is the one in the family who’s most aware of race politics, and she strongly supports efforts to raise up her friends of color...she figures it sometimes comes at her expense, but she can afford to pay that price. Students like her will lead the charge for the next generation.
If you’re white, go back and read these comments pretending you’re black, a built-in societal disadvantage for you and your kids, and see how awful it feels to be judged.
56
@Anglican
I really hope we're not moving to a situation where one race gets to decide that all members of another race must "pay that price" for past injustices.
Collective punishment is a war crime, except, of course, among 21st Century "woke" liberals in America.
15
Our economy is profoundly anti-democratic: it rewards the elite.
In this context, I believe that true integration of race, economic status, and intelligence, is impossible.
Solution is for the wealthy to recognize their duty to contribute to our nation through taxes. It's not enough to endow a chair at your alma mater, or a new wing at the fashionable museum. Those who have money must support our nation, that means taxes.
To solve problems I'm with Ben Franklin: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." As a family doc I focused on prevention of disease. We have a model: vaccination wiped out smallpox and vaccination kept kids safe from fatal or disabling disease. (Hemophilis Influenza caused infant encephalitis and brain damage in thousands of Americans before the vaccine.)
My prescription is preventive: support families by providing to every junior high school student clear education in family economics, parenting, and family planning. Then provide absolutely affordable and universally available family planning and birth control to every woman in the U.S.A. who wants it. This will
cost very little in taxes compared to defense.
But it will enable families to commit to proper preparation for parenthood and prevent ACEs. (Adverse Childhood Events, look it up) Read "The Deepest Well" by Jamala Burke Harris, MD.
6
The easiest away to achieve ethnic diversity would be to recognize the ethnicity of all students, not just students whose ancestors spoke Spanish. Hispanics are actually the nation’s largest ethnic group.We think of them as a minority only because we lump most students into the catchall all “non-Hispanic white category,” as if they have no cultural heritage. If we recognized the ethnicity of all students, classrooms would have German-American, Irish-American, Anglo-American, Italian-American, Polish-American, Scottish-American and Russian-American students, etc. We would also have students whose cultural ancestry is so diverse that they describe themselves as simply American. We could achieve unprecedented levels of classroom simply by asking all students about their ancestry. Given that the importance of classroom diversity is recognized, it is astonishing that we haven’t already done so.
13
@William Case: I cannot help but notice your constant drum beating on the subject of Hispanic students, as if they presented some unique challenge or threat.
The NYC schools system actually offers dual language programs in languages other than Spanish.
https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/077-19/mayor-de-blasio-chancellor-carranza-47-new-pre-k-dual-language-programs-across-every#/0
1
37 percent poor is already pretty high - and if you look at the photo, the school looks pretty diverse. I'm wondering if there is a tipping point - meaning do children from disadvantaged families and backgrounds reap more benefit when they are in a school with 60 percent non-economically disadvantaged children then do children where the majority of the school is economically disadvantaged? There is a tipping point for English Language Learners. If they are a majority in the school, it will be harder for them than if they are a smaller percentage. The need to speak English when most of your classmates speak English is greater. And, will these schools get greater resources and smaller classes to deal with children that may need more help? I don't think so.
26
In the 1960s I did some of the earliest school integration research on busing black children from urban public schools to elite white suburban schools. While the stresses on the black kids (travel time, hostility, overt racism, increased academic competition) were substantial, much worse was the fact that the urban schools had not remotely prepared their students to compete at the same grade levels as their suburban peers.
Integration is a worthy goal, and the plan described in this article seems likely to provide a more diverse mix of schoolchildren in the schools mentioned. However, there are several issues:
1. There is an unspoken assumption that mixing black kids with white kids will somehow improve the black kids, an assumption many blacks I know find insulting or demeaning.
2. Mixing students of very different academic abilities will force some teachers in the high-performing schools to teach down to the lowest common denominators, which will short-change the high performers.
3. Given the large performance gaps between the high- and low-performing schools, the former will need to provide substantial counseling and tutoring services to help the incoming students try to catch up with the higher-performing students.
4. The parents of many students who are forced to attend low-performing schools will likely consider switching to private schools or relocating to the suburbs, thus reducing the number of white students in the school system.
94
@Mon Ray
All valid points, but is the alternative to do nothing, to try nothing? Seemingly, at the heart of this initiative lies the premise that diversity strengthens our communities and ourselves. I'm please to see families trying to build communities they want to live in.
20
@Mon Ray I’ve been active in school integration efforts of NYC. What you described (busing students in the 60s and 70s) is desegregation, but it is not integration. Desegregation was done the backs of African American students with no regard for how they would be successfully integrated once in these majority-white schools. At the conversations I’ve attended with integration groups in the city, there is discussion of meaningful integration versus just assuming “blacks will be improved.”
As for these families relocating to the suburbs: unlikely on the UWS or Park Slope. Those who I’ve seen decamp to the burbs have done it before their children hit middle school and those who are here live in and love their neighborhood. Those neighborhoods are majority white (among the younger population) and affluent, as this article notes - and people who fit those demographics increasingly choose and prefer city life.
That said, I think you’re right about the challenges posed by differences of ability in the classroom - but I choose to be optimistic. The majority of parents and committed to the changes and those who didn’t support as much - as noted in the article - are often concerned with attention for lower performing students. Let’s hope and see what happens. For students attending heavily segregated, chronically underperforming, and mediocre schools in the city they don’t have the luxury of waiting for a perfect solution. Their education is happening now.
8
@Mon Ray I wonder why none of your valid concerns are even mentioned in this article? They are all vital to the success or failure of this program.
6
Disaster in the making. I’ll be interested in reading the results of this experiment. Of course one has to feel bad for the kids who will of course suffer the consequence of being stylish for the whims of a few. Birds of a feather no matter how you mix. Good luck this will only change the average to bring all to simply the best mediocre there is. Nice.
35
@J Clark What could you possibly mean by "birds of a feather"? Perhaps you're commenting on the wrong article. We're talking about children. Which children specifically do you believe will suffer?
4
Schools should not be a place where you shop, or select, or compete for the top rung. In my humble opinion, school should be place where collectively the community develops the next generation's innovation, social skills and vision of the future. Academics are measured like they are the only important factor in success. How success is defined may be the only factor in question here. After generations of defining success as getting ahead of the crowd is the best for your kid, this change in how "we" succeed in our communities may take a while.
23
You do that..meanwhile I’ll keep my kids in their top private school working toward a top college. My kids will be educated and able to compete with the Chinese. How about yours?
21
@DRS New Mexico is the 50th ranked state in education, so not so much.
4
Race has nothing to do with academic success, but intelligence and behavior sure does. I went to a highly diverse school district growing up and saw first hand how 1 misbehaving student, who's family didn't value respecting teachers, could torpedo an entire classroom.
The current kumbeya thinking of throw everyone together sacrifices the outcome of advanced kids for other metrics such as diversity.
in reality we should be moving in the opposite direction. Schools should not be geographic based, but all schools should have exam requirements with some schools taking the highest scores and some focusing on the lowest. This will allow the high performing children in poor neighborhoods to go to schools that better serve them.
80
@George
I disagree politely. When children from low socio-economic backgrounds are thrown together, there's a self-fulfilling prophesy--I'm not good enough. When you mix the groups, these students learn more than just academics. They learn important lessons on how to interact. True, one student can torpedo a classroom and schools need to address that problem. But don't throw the baby with the bathwater.
17
@George
I disagree also--this comment posits that one group of children are the victims of another--claiming it is not about race is just coding a blame-the-poor mentality. One sour experience with a poorly managed classroom is what you describe here. When teachers are trained well, class size is appropriate for ages (NOT the case in NYC across the board unless parents supplement collectively to the tune of $1500+ per family expected), and there is an unbiased policy of behavioral expectations, the blaming of children can stop and the real work can begin.
11
@NYCPT there’s not an unbiased policy of behavioral expectations though. Today, schools allow the worst behaved students to run rampant, a reaction to attempts to rate schools based on metrics like graduation rate and percentage of students suspended.
A lot of the worst behaved kids get diagnosed with ADHD which means we can’t hold them accountable for behavior because it’s a “manifestation of their disability”.
You end up with one student whose horrendous behavior dominates and ruins every class he’s in (it’s almost always a boy) and if your child is unlucky, they end up in classes ruined by that kid repeatedly throughout middle school.
36
There’s a solution and it’s to stop funding schools with property taxes. Equal opportunity used to be an American ideal.
13
@Tracey Wade That's not how it works in New York City. Different schools don't get a larger percent of the NYC taxes depending on the neighborhood. Meaning, the taxes go into the same bucket no matter what neighborhood you live in. Also, these schools are in the same district, anyway.
26
Then why is funding not the same at NYC schools?
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/31/how-does-your-schools-budget-compare-to-others-in-new-york-city/
The first thing people with kids look for when buying a home , if they can afford it, is what School district their kids will be in... the higher the value of the home, the more funding in their district.
@Tracey Wade Until you have equal home lives, there will always be unequal educational outcomes.
16
A great first step, but there are some dangers. High-performing kids put in low-performing schools can easily get frustrated and start to blame their classmates. Kids without home-enrichment can likewise struggle to feel at home. The key is to provide home enrichment for families who have been deprived of it by generations of racist, ethnic, and economic deprivations.
10
@Elizabeth r Now you want the government in the business of managing families? Oh, what could possibly go wrong?
1
We live in Park Slope, and from what we’ve seen, the quality of school is all based on school funding. The more fund raised, the more/better the programs will be (including after school). I’m all for diversity and integration; I’m a minority myself. However, because of the lack of community funding and parent participation/volunteers to many of the schools here, some of them don’t even have arts/science programs. So it is really worth it to have more diversity at the cost of diluting funding?
13
But why should those programs rely on parent volunteers and donations in the first place? Shouldn't we all demand more funding from the state to ensure all schools have those programs?
24
@Kay If you want to preserve the status quo because it could dilute funding, then what you are really saying is that some kids just aren't worth as much as other kids...especially if their parents aren't as rich, as involved, as fortunate.
There is only one way "we" can have an inclusive society, and that is if we love the stranger as our self.
If money made a great society, as the richest country in the world we wouldn't be tearing each other apart in so many ways; afraid of "the other", lacking health care, destroying our environment.
PS - School is a public good; it shouldn't in any way be reliant upon parent funding and volunteering to begin with.
7
I totally agree that the public school system isn’t fair. And in this imperfect world, there isn’t enough focus or money on public school education. Having said that, this is why we have school zones, and you pay to be in the zone whether you like it or not. Some people just want their cake and eat it too. Honestly, if you can’t help fund raise, then you have to put in the hours. It’s for your own kid, so why wouldn’t you put in that extra cent/time?
3
I look forward to a day when American no longer formulates policies based on people's skin color.
25
Exactly! Equal opportunity with schools equally funded with a revenue source not based on property taxes. That’ll be the day!
7
@Luciano you realize that there is nothing in these proposals that have anything to do with skin color. The metrics being used are income, whether one is fluent or not in English, and whether one is homeless. There is no mention of skin color and NYC Dept. of Education does not allow for data collection based on skin color.
18
@EME
It's clear from the article that the policies were meant to create diversity - including racial diversity
2
For decades Chicago was the most segregated big city in America. And the Chicago Public Schools reflected that bigotry.
Whwn I was a kid and teen elementary schools in black neighborhoods were put on shifts and had mobile trailers as classrooms. In order to keep black kids, teachers and administrators out of white neighborhood schools. I participated in a student boycott and demonstration protesting segregation in Chicago Public Schools in October, 1963.
While the shifts and trailers slowly vanished Chicago schools never fully and truly integrated. Nor did their quality increase.
Integration was that very brief interlude between the arrival of the first black family and student and the departure aka flight of the last white family and student.
When Dr. King came to Chicago in 1966, I went to hear him speak at Nat King Cole Park in August. " Any time that you are south of the Canadian border you are South in terms of bigotry and prejudice". Dr. King's response to why he was in the North when racism was a Southern problem.
King faced chanting mobs in a white ethnic sectarian South Side Chicago neighborhood. King was stoned. And he said the hatred was worse than any he ever faced in the South.
Integration in Chicago Public Schools is dead. Thanks to the antipathy of Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan and Forest Claypool. And a few corrupt weak black school superintendents. Privatization misled by charter schools is the " new Jim Crow" in education.
17
I'm also reacting to the " Also, more high-achieving children will enroll at low-performing schools that have typically been shunned by some middle class parents."
I too would struggle greatly with this prospect. I'm at a different stage in the school process, with my child graduating in June from a NYC high school, and just now committing to a college after weeks of "revisit days" at various colleges. Her two top choices are very different, each attractive for their own reasons. One is co-ed (preferred), one is a women's college (not preferred). In the end, my daughter justified her choice of her less preferred college by stating that the "co-ed college is just not academic enough."
I recognize college is different from high school, but I can't imagine even 9th grade academically inclined students seeking less rigorous schools. "Low-achieving" schools aren't going to become academic powerhouses overnight, if at all. What a position to put young students in. We appropriately spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on special needs students. Is there any investment at all in academically inclined/gifted students?
78
@Factumpactum great and thoughtful comments but you buried the lead “Is there any investment at all in academically inclined/gifted students”?
6
@Factumpactum
The answer to your question is “yes, there is massive and highly unequal investment in so-called gifted and talented kids.” They are very largely doing fine with their biggest problems coming from their college educated parents driving them to adderall addiction. “Gifted and Talented” is how we (barely) hide segregation. It only fools the beneficiaries though who are all convinced that their little angels are also geniuses.
2
@Christopher I can't agree with you, knowing far too many extremely bright children from low to very low income families. Moreover, I was one of them. Few if any of the parents are college educated.
9
What does it mean for integration efforts to be “working?” For me it’s not how many minority kids are at the school - it’s whether they are *succeeding* at the school. The first just looks at optics. That’s awfully facile imo.
176
Exactly! In most cases, I strongly recommend and approve of integration, but in schools? The statement, "... much is still unknown about how the new system will work once in place." jumped out at me. If it means lowering standards and, hence, the quality of the education, then it's a nonstarter. The loss outweighs the gains of integration.
32
@Glenn Thomas Yup. it doesn't just mean lowering standards. It means they actually DON'T KNOW. The DOE has not planned for Day 2, when the kids start learning. It's only planned for Day1, the day of the photo-op. And anti-bias training is not the same as more support in the classroom, more support for struggling students out of the classroom, more support for teachers. You try teaching a class of 34 kids with a huge range of academic accomplishment and ability. It can't successfully be done with one teacher. A smaller class? Maybe. And/or a smaller range of abilities? Sure. But not both.
40
@Rachel Doesn't this depend upon why the students were struggling in the first place? It seems that the integration programs also tried to balance schools with respect to performance. So now in most cases, 1 in 2 or 2 in 3 children is a high performer. I think that will have an impact on the classroom dynamic. It might also have a positive impact on overall achievement.
6
So I guess this is good news for property values in Westchester and Fairfield Counties.
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@A F If you want your kids to grow up in bubble with zero culture/exposure until they reach adulthood. Why not just move Florida and call it a day.
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@Dave
And NYC isn't a bubble?
Please.
Only someone who lives in The Bubble of Bubbles could snobbishly think there is no culture outside of their little world.
And yes, there are certain "exposures" I would prefer my kids not to have until they are adults. Because I'm a decent parent.
I went to grad school and spent my early professional years in NYC. I found it's "culture" to be superficial, scattershot, and isolating.
I grew up in a small town and am raising my kids in a small town in upper Fairfield County. Give me deep relationships, shared values, a priority on family life, and the quiet freedoms and proximity to nature and the outdoors ANY DAY. That is culture. It is a wonderful way to live and grow up.
If we want to go to the Met, we can always just get on the Metro North.
Culture is more than being able to eat from an ethnic food wagon, going to an occasional poetry slam, and turning down your nose at all those uncool rubes who live outside your View from 9th Avenue.
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I'll be curious to see if it works. Classrooms that have a majority of kids who are poor, homeless, or learning English don't traditionally thrive.
If the goal is simply more diversity, it will probably succeed short-term. But if scores plummet, white families are going to look leave those schools, too.
And if there is no public alternative, they'll switch to private schools or move.
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Will the schools be accused of racism when discipline rates are higher for the new arrivals? If so they will fail quickly.
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@Brian they will. So they will roll back efforts at discipline and the poorly behaved students will wreck the classroom experience.
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Why will discipline rates be higher?
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@FilmGeek really? I have to answer this question?
Parents of middle and upper income students largely got there because they did well in school, and they know what it takes and what the behavior standards are. They pass that on to their children.
Parents of lower income students generally did poorly in school, and they don't know what it takes to be a good student. So their kids are unprepared for the behavioral and academic expectations of a school. Therefore, they get disciplined more.
I feel like we're getting dumber as a society when things like this have to be explained... way too many people with ideas of how things should be instead of how they are.
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The relationship between integration and education is akin to the relationship between a flagpole and a tadpole. Motivated and disciplined students will learn and the rest will not do as well. It is the job of the home to provide these things. The schools provide tools for those who are able to use them. Integration is one more Hail Mary piece of window dressing.
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Ok, here is the bottom line on this that history has taught us.
1-Integration is desirable only if it is voluntary. If not bad schools, resentment, and lowering of education standards will be the answer.
2-The most critical thing to good education is the parent. Jewish and Asian parents stress education as very important (sometimes too important.) If other races, religions, ethnic background parents did the same thing, education and integration rates would soar.
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You’re assuming that other ethnicities don’t...
which is simply not true.
Most Jewish and Asian families are not poor or in broken homes or have the societal stressors of racism working against them.
I’m a firm believer in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and if you don’t have a bed to sleep in, you can’t begin to think about the next level.
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Why punish kids with schools that don't offer the same programs just because they were born to parents who don't instill those values?
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@Paul
Neither of these widely repeated claims is actually supported by the data.
Forced desegregation, which peaked in the 1980s, produced sharp reductions in racial disparities in educational outcomes without any overall reduction in standards or average outcomes. This has been studied exhaustively and is not a controversial position among serious researchers.
Also Jewish and Asian educational success has more to do with the social class status of families in their countries of origin than in any supposed special racial or cultural predilection for learning. Different immigrant communities have different typical social class compositions. Many first generation members of some immigrant communities have college educations even while language difficulties limit them to working class jobs here.
If we are serious about ending racial and economic inequality we need to prioritize raising up everybody’s children, not just those who already have advantages even when they aren’t immediately obvious ones.
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Five years from now perhaps success or failure can be determined. And defined. Will the schools be better integrated, but not the classrooms? Will the lower-performing students performance improve? Will the high-performing students maintain or improve their performance? Will the students socially and culturally integrate? If so, how will various parent groups feel if elements of their culture are sacrificed? I will be interested in reading the follow-up in 2024.
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So let me get this straight, some of the people who paid millions to live in Park Slope will see their kids enrolled in middles schools in Red Hook? Aka the hood where you still in this day and age see junkies hanging out freely at the corners? Does anybody seriously think that they will send their kids there? This experiment will for sure fail, people who can afford it will send their kids to private schools or will move to the suburbs. Property values will drop for sure. If i was a mortgage banker with exposure to those districts I’d be concerned.
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@Sophie K You quite obviously do not live anywhere near Red Hood (people pay $1 million+ to live there, too, and junkies, lol) and do not understand how enrollment in New York City public schools works. If parents want to send their kids to private school, no one is stopping them. If property values drop, maybe some middle class or "merely affluent" people will move to the neighborhood. None of this sounds bad to me.
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@Sophie K there are no middle schools in Red Hook, so no, that won't happen. And by the way, have you been to Red Hook in the past 20 years. I live here. There are no junkies "hanging out freely on the corners." Red Hook had, I think 1 murder last year. People actually spend millions of dollars now to live in Red Hook. Take a look at Zillow and see what a single family house goes for on King Street.
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@Sophie K We lived in Morningside Heights and sent our child to school in East Harlem. If the schools do a good job, parents will be happy to send their children there, whatever the location.
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I am a parent who always believed in diversity and intentionally avoided gifted programs and specialized schools for my daughter. My daughter received a superb education, and benefited greatly from the diversity. Having said this, the classes my daughter were in had a significant majority of high performing students. I have serious doubts when sixty to seventy percent of the students are low performing. I worry that when you get to these kinds of numbers, the low performing students will drag the high performing students down instead of the other way around.
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@kierz How would a "low performing student . . . drag [a] high performing student down"? How does that work? I assume you have studies to support this hypothesis? Why isn't that individual student responsible for not getting "dragged down" (whatever that means)? Just curious.
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@Law Feminist if you had ever had a child in this situation you would know. Children don't always understand why they are feeling bored and consequently misbehaving or simply timing out. When bright kids are not challenged because the slower kids require more time and energy to understand basic material, the bright kids suffer.
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@Law Feminist If you have 70% of the class with reading skills way below average, the teacher's time and efforts will naturally be spent trying to bring them up to speed, leaving less time and effort available for the 30%. It's just math.
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Seems premature. If the goal is to increase positive educational outcomes, how can this already be labeled a success? This seems to feed more into the position that diversity equals success. But what will the headline be if educational outcomes fall on average?
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The bigger challenge I see is in the classroom. How does the teacher manage a hugely academically diverse group of kids in the classroom. Teach to the lowest level, I guess. So then the kids who are academically strong have to slow down. What happens of those kids then? Or then separate the kids who are strong academically from those who are not. So segregation occurs once again! Something like an g&t class and non-g&t class in some of the other schools like Wagner, Baruch, etc.?
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As a special education teacher, I teach in a classroom with a mix of students with special needs and general education students. I can assure you this is not how this works. Our education and training is heavily focused on how to make the same material accessible to students at varying levels.
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@Chris, my wife is also a special education teacher and she modifies lesson plans and provides accommodations, but that requires a level of staffing that is not likely to be provided.
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@kierz We pulled our child out of public school for exactly this reason; a bright child who was not challenged and needs were not met. We were fortunate to have the choice and the means. He thrived when classes were taught at a level appropriate and challenging to him.
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So by letting the parents decide this should work. Instead of forced integration the parents have skin in the game. Good luck!!
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We’re watching you NYC from here in California! Excited to follow in your footsteps soon! Thanks for taking the lead on this essential action.
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"Also, more high-achieving children will enroll at low-performing schools that have typically been shunned by some middle class parents."
Not if their parents care about them. If I owned an NYC private school I would mail a gift basket to the parents who lobbied for this subsidy to my school.
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@HS
I suspect as a reader of the NYT you shake your heads when you see the angry parents shouting at students integrating schools in the sixties. I suspect you tsk tsk when you read about all the private schools that developed when the schools were integrated. But some how today is different when you assume the academics would need to be dummied down.
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So much for the American dream... equal opportunity. This is the new American dream.. opportunity to those with money.
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@HS
ROTFL! Aren’t you from Texas? The same state that has re-written history? The state that teaches children that slavery was immigration?
The segregated public school system in Texas hasn’t worked either! For decades, Texas’ public schools have ranked in the high 30s to 40s. It’s ironic that the most diverse districts in cities like Houston and Austin have the best performing schools.
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If you can’t feel, learn, and live diversity in New York - where can you?
Kudos to parents who promote this approach. It’s the right thing to do.
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