White Parents, Privilege and School Tours

Has the author ever actually gone through the public school selection process in NYC? It's not the harsh mystery she's making it out to be. Middle schools hold workshops to help parents learn the ropes, often with translation services. They have help available in guidance counselor's offices and all public libraries. There are free online resources like InsideSchools.org as well as the school profiles on the DOE website and each school's own webpage. If you missed school fair or open house notices from your child's current school's parent coordinator, you probably got one from the Parents' Association. There are umpteen online parents' groups where one can ask and answer questions about the schools and the process. All of this is free. We in NYC have the opportunity to choose schools that really fit our children's needs and interests, and I appreciate that.

This article has the same problem that the original one did--it uses a click-bait headline to stoke outrage and implies that the parents who paid $200 to stand in line early for the Beacon tour somehow ensured that their child will now be admitted to Beacon, when nothing could be further from the truth. Beacon does not care if your child even attends the open house, let alone give priority to anyone who walked through its door "first." I wish we got an article on how the My Schools app regularly froze this year, meaning parents had to devote way more time than they should have to, just trying to get into the program to review offerings. It was tough for me to navigate, and my child goes to a school with a guidance counselor who could help me. I cannot begin to fathom what the experience was like for families who do not have English as a first language, or do not have a good guidance counselor helping them, or who work several jobs and have limited time. I wish we got an article on how the DOE hid the high lead-level results that came out this summer and still has not committed to ensuring that our children go to safe, lead-free schools. And if Eliza Shapiro only wants to focus in Manhattan-based schools (which seems to be the case), I wish we got an article on why D2, one of the wealthiest districts, is allowed to have 3 very desirable high schools: Lab, Baruch, and Eleanor Roosevelt , all set aside for their neighborhood, while other districts do not get this option.

$200 and a few hours in line is not a lot of money or time for your kid's future. And these parents should be praised. They're putting their kids first. There is nothing more important in life than raising the next generation well. Parental expectations drive student achievement.

The NYC Dept of Ed has always demonstrated a breathtaking degree of arrogance. They have always assumed they knew better than any teachers, parents and students. But they don’t. They ignore two basic tenets for excellence: 1. Innovation always comes from below. 2. If you b Beacon HS was started about 25 years ago by two teachers who had taught in the highly regarded Computer (middle) School on the Upper West Side. They felt no existing high school could continue their students’ rigorous and creative education. So they started one. They worked tirelessly, devising classes and programs .They recruited likeminded teachers. Every student had art classes, drama classes, some form of team sports. In order to graduate, all seniors had to submit a yearlong project based on a compilation of every class taken, present it to a panel of teachers and submit to tough questioning, much like a ph.d examination. Then John King, NYS Commissioner of Education, ruined this by insisting on Regents Exams, standardized tests, for all NYS students in order to graduate. Beacon’s rigorous, challenging form of alternative assessment had to go. Beacon fought hard to maintain control, but lost. Yet it still is what those two visionary teachers hoped to create: an excellent free public high school for students who relish real educational opportunities. My youngest son was a Beacon graduate. He was astonished when he got to college and discovered how much better educated he’d been than his peers.

"went down West 43rd Street, across 10th Avenue, up West 44th Street, across 11th Avenue and back up West 43rd." I really did not know this in-demand school was the school right here down the block. Really, it always seemed strange to me that the students lined up at the Dunkin here on 44th and 10th seemed more interested in school than I'd recalled from Brooklyn mid-1970s. I never realized these weren't "typical" 2019 students.

In all of these articles the blame is seems squarely put on the shoulders of supposed elitist (implied racist) parents seeking a better outcome for their kids and running to best schools in and out of their area and messing up the ideal racial makeup of a school district. But where is the onus on the school administration to turn out a better product across the board? That is never questioned or pursued with any seriousness. When was the last time the NEA proposed a serious standard for teachers or cultivated excellence amongst their own ranks? When I read things such as Mr. Blasio wanting to revamp the admissions at the elite high schools became too many Asians are getting in, that is mind blowing. I am aghast. Let’s admit, the main ingredient in a child’s success always has been, is, and always will be parental expectations backed up with an great deal of parental oversight and support in those K-12 years.

This article has done nothing to remedy the fact that the first article was embarrassingly misguided, erroneous and stoking an agenda...and I’ll add lacking experiential perspective. This has been blown so out of proportion. The process is daunting, but it’s manageable—that is, if you want to put the time into it. The number of schools to choose from is finite. Each school has a web site where there is information dedicated to tours and admission requirements. And, this year, as a family researching schools we’ve taken advantage of the MySchools account set up by the city, which has surprisingly good information about the rubrics for screened schools and stats. Should anyone need additional help, there are guidance councelors and libraries. Maybe do some helpful reporting about why the city isn’t investing in new schools and programs in all boroughs.

The Times needs to rethink its approach to NYC education stories if it wants to retain the respect of readers. I am sick of this endless stream of stories about supposedly privileged Whites, victimized Blacks, and Asians who for the purpose of these articles don't count as people of color because they're too successful in gaining admission to the Specialized High Schools and blow the Times's thesis about the nature of the problem. The story in question acknowledges deeper down that the tour of Beacon High School, a selective high school, not a Specialized High School, confers no advantage in admissions. Without a doubt, the Department of Education should be making the process of navigating school applications easier for parents. Schools like Beacon should offer more tour days and post a video online, as many people have suggested. But how this is all the fault of White people is ridiculous. Nobody should have to pay $200 for a newsletter, but per the article, there are only 500 subscribers. There were a lot more than 500 people on that line. In addition, the schools are not segregated. Language matters. Many of them are extremely non-diverse for reasons related to residential patterns, but parents can, with effort, send their children to schools outside their immediate neighborhoods if they are dissatisfied with the quality of the local school. The goal of course, should be excellent schools in every neighborhood.

This writer made the same mistake that Eliza Shapiro made in her reporting of the line at Beacon. "They paid $200 and stood on line for two hours in the rain. And they were the lucky ones." The parents who did not pay $200 came late, stood in line for less than two hours, and still received the same tour at Beacon. There is absolutely no mention in the entire article that those who lined up later weren't able to tour. The premise of this article is as absurd is believing that standing in line 2 hours early for a concert or show with assigned seating somehow means that you will have a better seat! It doesn't. You get the same seat you purchased whether you are in line first or last. Do you or Eliza Shapiro have any evidence that parents don't get the same tour whether they waited in line 2 hours to be first, or waited in line later? If not, the entire premise of this article falls apart, and it should have been about why parents are being scammed into paying $200 for information that is rather useless.

Eliza Shapiro's reporting should be on the Opinion page. She has demonstrated through her "reporting" that she has an agenda and is interested in "reporting" only one side of this complex issue. The NYT is rapidly losing credibility for the transparent agenda of its reporters on this issue.

No one has to register for the Beacon open house. All you have to do is show up and get in line, and no one is turned away. And Beacon posts information about its open houses and application process on its website. It isn't a secret and no one has to pay for it.

I never liked the language of privilege because it encourages a cursory assessment of people's lives and can be dismissive, insofar as no one's life can be encapsulated by the simple word "privilege." It's just way too superficial. We don't know anything about any specific person's life story, their advantages and disadvantages, and I would have never presumed there was anything privileged about the people at the school tour, regardless of their race. Outside of knowing they were waiting on line and might have spent $200 to learn from an educational consultant, nobody knows what struggles it might have taken for them to be on that line, and on that day.

This same phenomenon can be true about academic enrichment in general (such as summer internships and academic camps) and specifically college applications. For a period of about 6 years, I viewed myself somewhat as my child's private secretary. Beginning in middle school I investigated hundreds of extracurricular opportunities, such as coding camps or astronomy retreats. No way could a kid stay on top of all the deadlines and paperwork require to access these opportunities, not to mention the fees involved. Yes, I have white privilege (I guess), but we are definitely not wealthy. It also helps if you only have one or two kids. My experience was that most parents in my same milieu were shocked and naive about how complicated and competitive admission to selective colleges has become, and about how much they would have to pay to attend. I saw so many kids who thought, in their junior year, that they stood a good chance of getting into Brown or Stanford. Lots of disappointment.

I read the article as trying to raise awareness of the many forms white privilege assumes Understanding the valuable information $200 can buy is just one example of white privilege. Another example is the wealth gap which relies largely on inheritance, wealth passed from one generation to the next. That wealth often comes in the form of property value. When white families are able to accumulate wealth because of their earning power or home value, they are more likely to support their children into early adulthood, helping with expenses such as college education, first cars and first homes. The cycle continues. My husband and I, a retired construction worker and teacher benefitted from our white privilege with the help of our working class parents, and we continue the cycle with gifts to our children and savings accounts for our young grandchildren. On the other hand a more subtle effect of white privilege is my son’s nanny, who has to take time consuming public transportation in the suburbs to get to and from his home, which leaves the nanny with less time to prepare healthy dinners and help her own daughter with homework.

Blame schools where their middle school children attend for not knowing when the open house was or knowing how competitive the admission process was. Middle school guidance counselors are in positions to help parents and students with the HS application process. Blame the city for not creating more better schools around the city so families have to travel far to seek for high quality education for their children. NYTimes has a tendency of blaming private citizens who care for their children‘s education as a sin or labeling them as people of privilege. However, the reality is NYTimes articles are not free for all. Readers who care about reading the news have to pay a not-so-cheap fee to have the full access of the content. Readers who pay for the full access have the opportunity to have more information provided by NYTimes. It is the same thing for private citizens who pay for more information about the HS admission. NYTimes really should shift the blame to the public system that fails to inform people who don‘t pay or cannot pay for the information.