Chalkbeat

Brown v. Board of Education turns 65 today. These students are still fighting for integration in NYC schools.

2019-05-17T11:00:09+00:00

A full 65 years after Brown v. Board of Education was unanimously decided, New York City schools remain among the most segregated in the country.

To mark the Friday anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, those most affected by its unfulfilled promise — students — are demanding action.

Teens in every borough are taking to the streets to spread the stories of their own experiences with segregation. At City Hall, teens will sit down midday with top decision makers to push for changes to the high school admissions process.

“We can’t just ignore it,” said Joaquin Soto, a high school junior in Brooklyn and advocate with IntegrateNYC. “Real action needs to take place and it’s in the hands of the higher officials in this city.”

Young people in New York City have been a leading voice in a budding grassroots fight for schools that are more diverse and inclusive. Friday’s actions turn up pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio to take more decisive steps toward integration just as he jumps into the 2020 race for the White House, touting his progressive credentials.

One persistent criticism, however, has been his reluctance to take on deeply rooted segregation in the country’s largest school system. His most high profile proposal — to help integrate the city’s prestigious specialized high schools by scrapping the exam that currently is the sole admissions factor — relies on the state legislature to act and has been mired in a legal challenge.

De Blasio also declined an invitation to meet on Friday with the students of Teens Take Charge, who will sit down with some of City Hall and the education department’s most senior officials to lobby for changes in how students are assigned to high schools. The mayor is scheduled to be in Iowa — his first campaign stop after officially announcing his presidential bid on Thursday.

Among the teens’ demands are for the city to provide more access to information for students navigating the sometimes byzantine high school admissions process, tweaking the city’s school assignment algorithm to encourage academic diversity, and making the city’s specialized high schools plan a reality.

“We find that diversity has been discussed and integration has been discussed, but generally that’s the only thing that has happened,” said Tiffani Torres, a high school junior and a member of Teens Take Charge. “We want action.”

While some teens lobby City Hall for changes, others will be hitting the pavement. Advocates with IntegrateNYC are handing out copies of a student-written newspaper during Friday’s commute that chronicles the need for integration from their own classroom perspectives.

They were inspired by an iconic photograph of Nettie Hunt, a black mother explaining the meaning of the Brown v. Board decision to her daughter while sitting on the steps of the Supreme Court in May 1954. In the photo, one arm is wrapped around her young daughter while she holds up a newspaper with the block-type headline: “High Court bans segregation in public schools.”

Sarah Zapiler, the group’s adult advisor, said students were struck by the hope portrayed in the photograph, given that decades later, the headlines aren’t as encouraging. They also felt like their own stories aren’t being told.

“So they were like, let’s make the news,” she said. “Something that’s really important to us is creating and shaping the narrative.”

After fanning out at transit hubs across the city to distribute 25,000 copies of the paper, students will head to the Red Steps at Times Square where they’ll throw a “retirement” party to say goodbye to school segregation.

Leanne Nunes, a high school junior in the Bronx who helped plan the event, says it’s also a way to highlight the progress already being made, even if it’s insufficient. She pointed to community-driven changes to middle school admissions in places like Brooklyn’s District 15 as something to be celebrated.

“This is a way for us to see a more hopeful future,” she said.

How to desegregate New York City’s schools. Now.

2016-07-18T21:25:44+00:00

While the de Blasio administration stalls on school desegregation, New York City students suffer.

The 1966 Coleman Report — widely considered the most important piece of education research of the 20th century — showed that the success of low-income students is tied to whether they attend school with wealthier kids, whose advantages benefit all. Yet a 2016 study showed that nearly all of New York’s black and Hispanic students attend schools where the majority of students are poor. Other research has shown that this isolation isn’t inevitable: many schools are poorer and more racially segregated than their neighborhoods.

This racialized concentration of school poverty creates a persistent achievement gap, and it must stop. Now.

Brown v. Board called for an end to publicly sanctioned school segregation in 1954, after all. The Coleman Report turned 50 years old this month. And while the issue has been growing in prominence recently, the mayor and Chancellor Carmen Fariña have paid scant attention. (Fariña recently called it “the elephant in the room,” as if no one else had noticed.) As City Councilman Brad Lander concluded, the city Department of Education has provided “nothing approaching systemic action or even a coherent plan.”

Before becoming a professor, I practiced desegregation law. I know that addressing this problem hasn’t always been pretty. But people know how to do this — and they’ve been doing it at least since the Brown decision.

So what should such a plan look like?

New York City needs a dedicated, professional staff of outreach workers, educators, demographers, lawyers, and planners who can assemble data and fan out across the city to engage the public. Parent involvement is key, but so is more general input, since all will benefit from desegregated schools.

They should consider all of the strategies available to address the problem. Some schools are already using “set-asides,” meaning they hold a portion of seats out from general enrollment lotteries so spots are assured for specialized populations like low-income students and those living in shelters. Broader “controlled choice” plans could help distribute high-needs students.

Many districts around the country simply change school attendance zones — even repeatedly — as population shifts dictate. (This is part of what the city is now looking to try on the Upper West Side.) Older children and siblings are often grandfathered in for their own and their parents’ convenience.

And while there are many reasons city officials might not want to try desegregating schools, legal concerns shouldn’t be one.

The Obama administration has released guidance suggesting many permissible routes to integrate schools that have all been vetted to avoid race-based legal entanglements. One option is using permissible proxies for race, like income and residence. But the door also remains open — if only a bit — to consider race and ethnicity outright.

Parents Involved, the last Supreme Court case on K-12 voluntary integration, contains a concurrence by Justice Kennedy that provides for the possibility of districts creating race-based integration plans. Changes in the Court’s makeup over the next several years may further improve the chances of progressive challenges to the status quo.

It would thus not only be foolhardy but wrong to assume that legal impediments will forestall efforts at racial desegregation.

All of this can be done in a way that is sensitive to families’ needs. In New York City, elementary, middle, and high schools need to be considered separately, given their different enrollment systems and transportation considerations. The final look of schools’ integration numbers will vary, too, from neighborhood to neighborhood and across district lines. And considerations of diversity should not be confined to race and income but extend to students’ multitude of ethnicities, languages, and special needs. Desegregation is no longer black and white; set quotas an impossibility.

Squarely facing the political realities of desegregation is a tall order for any administration. Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignored the opportunity, and Mayor de Blasio has thus far squandered it. But putting off the issue is irresponsible and a disservice to the people of New York.

It is time for the mayor to proclaim, “Desegregation now. Desegregation forever.”

NYC to restore a controversial admissions boost for Manhattan students, Banks says

2024-05-03T19:04:48+00:00

Schools Chancellor David Banks intends to bring back a controversial admissions bump for Manhattan eighth-graders at some of New York City’s most sought-after high schools, he told parents this week.

The rule, which was scrapped by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2020, gave students from Manhattan’s District 2 first crack at a half dozen selective schools in the district, including Eleanor Roosevelt, NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, and Millennium High School. The district spans much of lower and midtown Manhattan along with the Upper East Side and is one of the city’s most affluent.

School integration advocates lauded de Blasio’s move. They argue that, in conjunction with other reforms, removing the district priority has significantly increased the share of Black, Latino, and low-income students at several of those schools.

But other parents have been forcefully pushing to restore the priority, saying that without it, district students have less of a chance of getting into coveted local schools and that some frustrated families are pulling out of the public school system altogether.

Banks, who has final say over school and district admissions policies, said at a raucous District 2 town hall Thursday night that he met with a group of those parents, including members of the local Community Education Council and the pro-screening group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, known as PLACE, on Wednesday.

“They shared the effects of removing the priority to District 2 families,” he said. “And we are committed to granting D2 some kind of priority. I’m looking at various models as we speak,” he said. Details will be finalized before the start of the next admissions cycle this fall, he said. Applications are typically due in early December.

The announcement drew immediate plaudits from supportive council members at Thursday’s raucous town hall meeting, as well as boos from some members of the audience.

“I think that’s a huge win,” said Craig Slutzkin, a parent on District 2′s Community Education Council and PLACE member who met with Banks earlier this week. “It shows he understands the needs of District 2 families.”

The announcement set off alarm bells for school integration advocates, who worry reinstating the admissions priority could roll back significant progress diversifying some competitive high schools.

“It’s extremely frustrating and concerning and sad to hear that he meets with this really small group of constituents and then decides to reverse a policy that was extremely effective at opening access and opportunity for some of our most marginalized student groups in the city,” said Nyah Berg, the executive director of Appleseed NY, a group that advocates for school integration.

“For me, it’s fundamentally just not sound policy.”

Banks rolls back pandemic admissions reforms

The reinstatement of District 2 priority would represent another reversal of a de Blasio pandemic-era admissions reform meant to chip away at racial and economic segregation in the city’s stratified public middle and high schools.

Banks halted a de Blasio plan to phase out separate elementary school gifted and talented classes, and he allowed local superintendents to bring back selective screens at middle schools, which were banned during the pandemic.

Banks’s announcement about District 2 priority came the same day that New York’s appellate division ruled a lawsuit filed by student integration advocates could proceed. The suit claims that the city’s segregated school system denies Black and Latino students their constitutional right to a sound, basic education.

The District 2 admissions priority, which school officials introduced in the 1990s as an effort to keep middle class families from fleeing public schools, has long attracted intense criticism from integration advocates.

In general, the city’s system of high school choice aims to give students from across the city equal access to high schools. There are some schools that grant borough preferences and others that prioritize students from the surrounding neighborhoods, but the District 2 priority was unique in giving a district-wide bump at some of the city’s most-sought after schools.

In practice, the rule virtually guaranteed that students outside of the district would not have a shot at getting into a handful of coveted high schools, no matter how stellar their academic records.

Eleanor Roosevelt offered 100% of its seats to District 2 students in 2017, while Baruch College Campus High School was 98% District 2 students, Chalkbeat reported in 2018.

In the months leading up to de Blasio’s 2020 decision to scrap the District 2 priority, several principals of schools included in the policy spoke out against the practice.

“The lack of diversity among students, faculty and staff is a disservice to our community as a whole,” Eleanor Roosevelt principal Dimitri Saliani wrote in a 2020 email to parents, according to the New York Times.

Removing District 2 priority, in conjunction with broader changes to the admissions system for selective high schools and initiatives from individual schools to set aside more seats for underrepresented students, has made a significant impact at several schools.

In the span of a single year, Eleanor Roosevelt went from sending 1% of its offers to students outside District 2, to 62% after the district priority was removed. The share of offers going to low-income students jumped from 16% to 50%.

Over time, the changes have profoundly shifted the demographics of schools like Roosevelt, which is now 27% Black and Latino and 37% low-income students. The school was 12% Black and Latino and 19% low-income students in 2019.

The NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies jumped from 14% Black and Latino and 28% low-income students in 2019 to 20% Black and Latino and 43% low-income students in 2022. A similar change happened at Baruch College Campus High School.

At Millennium High School in lower Manhattan (which gave priority to students living or attending school south of East Houston or West Houston Street) and School of the Future in Gramercy, the numbers of Black and Latino and low-income students have stayed relatively flat. And at the NYC Museum School in Chelsea, the share of Black and Latino and low-income students decreased.

District families have mixed reactions

Slutzkin cited intense demand from district parents to bring back the rule, saying he heard from roughly 1,000 people in support of a petition to reinstate it.

He also pointed to the fact that only 55% of District 2 students got an admissions offer at one of their top three high school choices last year, the lowest rate of any district in the city, according to Education Department data.

“No families should be forced to have excessive commutes to go to schools that meet their needs,” he said.

But Gavin Healy, another parent on the local education council, said the relatively low rate of top choice matches for District 2 students likely has to do with families disproportionately selecting a small number of highly-competitive schools on their application.

“Manhattan has room, it’s just not at the schools that some of the families in the district want,” he said.

Slutzkin argued that schools with open seats in Manhattan may have low graduation rates and would not meet the needs of high-achieving students, saying it’s “incumbent upon the Education Department to work on those schools and get them to be schools that are desired.”

Proponents of the D2 admissions priority have also argued that some district families are pulling out of the public school system and enrolling in private school because they’re not getting into their top choice public schools.

One Manhattan principal of a school that formerly offered District 2 priority wasn’t surprised that officials plan to reinstate the policy.

“I get the sense that the battle to keep students in the public schools for financial reasons is a big one,” said the principal, who spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press. “They need to put up dams, and this is one way.”

Healy said he was “not worried about the threat of people leaving,” adding that the district is also seeing an influx of new students, including asylum seekers.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school admissions is overwhelming. It rewards parents like me.

2023-01-30T19:30:00+00:00

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Just before midnight, attempting to make the deadline for extra materials required for admission by some of New York City’s most selective public high schools, I sat watching the upload time for my 13-year-old’s video extend from six minutes to 11 to 15.

I’d been trying to upload it for two hours. I’d cleared my cache, rebooted my computer, toggled my Wi-Fi, and checked the Applying to High School in NYC Facebook group. According to the city website, I should rename the file, make sure it was less than 500 MB, try a different browser. When the upload failed for the eighth time, I was struggling not to cry.

The only thing left was changing the file format. With my husband peering over my shoulder, I frantically found a free file converter online. It was 12:15 a.m., but, miraculously, it worked.

Afterward, as I lay in the dark, adrenaline still coursing through my body, I thought about how this step might have gone for someone who didn’t have a computer or Wi-Fi at home, whose data limits on their cell phone plan couldn’t handle eight failed upload attempts, who didn’t have an adult who could spare two hours trying to figure it out, who didn’t speak English.

It was yet another hurdle in a high school application process that, according to Chancellor David Banks, aims to increase access for “communities who have been historically locked out of screened schools” while also rewarding students who’ve earned high grades. In practice, it rewards parents and caregivers like myself who have the time and resources to navigate an incredibly complex system.

Even as someone who has advocated for integration and equity for years, I got sucked in by the Hunger Games mentality that the system seems designed to provoke. I felt compelled to play along because my son really wanted a high school that might be more challenging after a middle school experience that often felt too easy. I struggled to find a way through the ethical compromises. Meantime, the process, perhaps by design, kept me so busy and overwhelmed that I had little opportunity — or incentive — to dwell on the inequities.

To start, caregivers and parents must sift through 700 high school programs while trying to wrap their heads around five different admissions methods with varying additional requirements (entrance exam, art portfolios, auditions, essays, and videos). Then you must try to secure a spot for school tours that can get snatched up quicker than a Taylor Swift ticket. Once you begin to narrow the selection down to the 12 choices a student can rank on their application, you are left to calculate the impact of a student’s academic tier, priority group, and 32-digit lottery number alongside each school’s applicant-to-seat ratio to determine their chances of being matched with a school by an algorithm so complex it took a Nobel Prize winner to design it.

It’s no surprise that the process spurred a Facebook support group of 4,000 members, with parents sharing “decision trees” and spreadsheets to keep it all straight. I dutifully made my own spreadsheet, hustled to secure my son spots on tours, and scoured the posts for intel on “hidden gems.” It felt more and more unfair that he should get a leg up simply because his mother had the time, energy, and privilege to master the system.

Throughout the process, I saw some parents with privilege perceive the system as working against them. They pointed out their disadvantage as many selective high schools participate in Diversity in Admissions, which allows schools to set aside a portion of their available seats, ranging from 12 to 88%, for families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, are English Language learners, or share other criteria.

Principals sometimes fed into these feelings. At a tour of one selective high school last November, a principal reassured a mostly white audience they “shouldn’t worry about” the DIA set-asides, because those seats don’t usually get filled. The school supported DIA, he went on, “as long as they could maintain their academic standards.”

And yet I’m heartened by how some of my peers in the Facebook group have come to recognize the high school application process’s inordinate demands. Parents volunteered to do research for overwhelmed parents, inspiring me to offer my help to other parents in my son’s grade, with a few of them taking me up on it. Members shared articles about the inequities of the system, encouraged parents to consider schools outside “the usual suspects,” and checked racially coded comments about a school’s climate. The group administrators created documents to simplify the process for DIA families and English language learners, though these parents represent a small portion of the overall group.

As the application deadline loomed, an anonymous poster who identified themselves as a DOE employee asked members what could be done to make the process more equitable. The suggestions came pouring in: get rid of academic screens and essay requirements, provide more translation services, offer open houses at different times and in different languages, encourage middle school guidance counselors to bring students on high school tours, bring back the printed high school directory, provide transportation to high schools, better training for guidance counselors, and work to combat the scarcity mentality that pits student against student and creates the impression that there are only a few high-quality choices.

Spending time researching the hundreds of school options does reveal that New York City high schools offer something for everyone: flight simulators to study aerodynamics; a planetarium to study the stars; a chance to work on sailboats or airplane engines or for fashion brands; certificate programs in plumbing, construction or coding that sets up students for high paying jobs that don’t require a college degree; professional-level training in drama, dance, music, filmmaking, and art; recording studios and 3-D printers; internships at hospitals or restaurants or research labs; options to study Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, or sign language, and an opportunity to learn alongside classmates who bring different lived experiences to the classroom discussions.

As for me, I’d quickly abandoned my spreadsheet and lost my energy for scouring school websites and attending tours. I got tired of playing along. It was hard enough to get my son to write his application essays. When I filled up the bottom of his list of 12 high schools with choices we never visited or even knew much about, picked mostly because they didn’t have additional requirements, I felt a pang of guilt that I was failing him.

It’s possible it won’t matter. He could get an offer from a specialized high school, another admissions process – based on a single test – that can hardly be described as equitable. (The ethical questions don’t end, despite my efforts to start an afterschool test prep class at my son’s school, open to all.) While I think his academic drive and easygoing nature will help him succeed wherever he lands, I also know that if it turns out to not be a good fit, I have the resources to find something better for him next year.

While the city fiddles at the margins to “increase access,” big changes to this process seem unlikely. Each of us, then, is left to muddle our way through and help one another. I hope parents and caregivers can continue to shift our mentality from high school Hunger Games to one where every student can win.

Bliss Broyard’s journalism focuses on racial and economic justice and has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the New Yorker, among other publications. She’s the author of the award-winning memoir, “One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life–A Story of Race and Family Secrets,” and is at work on a sequel. You can find her on Twitter @blissbroyard.

As NYC eyes more mergers, one Upper West Side middle school navigates a newly combined community

2024-02-15T18:18:45+00:00

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Walking through the halls of Lafayette Academy, an Upper West Side middle school, Principal Brian Zager greeted each student by name.

The building on West 93rd Street was especially quiet that November morning, with seventh graders out on a field trip to Central Park.

In classrooms, eighth graders worked on finishing their high school applications. On the third floor — a space shared with the Manhattan School for Children — students in the dual language program practiced their French.

Lafayette Academy, where Zager has served as principal for the past decade, has prided itself on its small school community, allowing students and staff to develop close bonds. This year, the school saw its student body grow by roughly a quarter to about 200 students as Lafayette merged with West Side Collaborative, a small progressive middle school serving higher shares of students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. The move spurred ample protest from both school communities last year, even as officials said it could shield them from the negative effects of shrinking enrollment.

But in the halls of the newly merged school, that tension was no longer palpable. Each class has a mix of students from the two former communities, Zager said.

Lafayette Academy has about 200 students after its merger with West Side Collaborative.

Leadership at the school has remained optimistic about the outcome of the merger, praising the benefits of bringing staff and students from disparate communities together. But some families expressed concerns over whether the city’s Education Department provided adequate funding to support the larger and more diverse student population, while others continue to protest the decision to merge the schools at all. Some West Side Collaborative families remained unhappy that Lafayette kept its building, principal, and name.

Morana Mesic, a parent and former PTA president of West Side Collaborative, transferred her son to another school after the merger was approved — calling it a closure.

“We’re at a point where we wish that we never stepped into West Side Collaborative,” Mesic said. “Because it hurts that much more to be back in the same old public school system.”

Trying to stave off enrollment losses before a merger is needed

As the city continues to grapple with steep enrollment losses suffered during the pandemic, officials have warned more school mergers may loom ahead. At least half a dozen more proposed school mergers will be considered by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy over the next two months, according to its website.

“It’s hard to figure out how people can run a full comprehensive high school with 80 kids as your entire school,” schools Chancellor David Banks told Chalkbeat in November. “And we have schools with those numbers.”

West Side Collaborative had just 75 students last year, less than half of Lafayette’s roster. About 46 of its students moved into Lafayette’s building this year along with eight staffers, making up about a third of the newly merged school’s employees. (Others from West Side Collaborative’s 20-person staff were transferred to other schools or retired, according to the city’s Education Department.)

Despite its dwindling size, West Side Collaborative fostered a passionate community over its years in operation. Amy Stuart Wells, dean of the Bank Street Graduate School of Education, said there was a disconnect between outside perceptions of the school and the quality of education it provided.

Despite the enrollment losses the school was facing, it had strong support for students and a robust project-based, student-centered approach to learning, said Wells, who studied West Side Collaborative as part of a project on diverse public schools. Wells worked with the school to help shift the narrative by developing promotional materials like brochures, but she said it can be challenging to combat outside perceptions.

“In the school choice processes, sometimes schools get labeled as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ particularly in the parent networks,” she said. “It’s hard to change that narrative and that framing, even if there’s some really, really good work going on within those schools.”

With time, the losses became especially steep. In the five years preceding the merger, West Side Collaborative had seen a 58% decline in enrollment.

Still, community members sought another solution. In the months leading up to the merger, parents and staff at West Side Collaborative fought against the proposal, arguing that its approval would in effect see their institution closed.

The school served overwhelmingly Black and Latino students, with more than 80% of students living in poverty, according to city data. Some community members felt uneasy about merging with Lafayette Academy, a school with a higher share of white students and fewer students from low-income backgrounds.

In some ways, the merger served a goal that has proved elusive in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. It provided a path toward further integration in District 3, which encompasses both schools. The district is one of a handful in the city that has remained focused on integration. Last year, the school district won a federal grant to help foster diverse schools.

Meanwhile, some parents at Lafayette expressed concerns over the lack of concrete details on how staffing and other decisions would shake out.

Despite the pushback from families at the time, Superintendent Kamar Samuels said he viewed the schools as a good fit to merge because they shared “a student-centered approach” to instruction.

“Both schools had staff that cared deeply about the progress of all students, but in particular, the most marginalized students in the school,” he said.

Finding a balance when schools join together

The Upper West Side merger isn’t the first time two demographically distinct schools were joined together. In 2020, for example, the city approved a proposal to move the Academy of Arts & Letters, a disproportionately white school in Fort Greene, into P.S. 305, a majority-Black school in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Pilar Ramos, principal of the merged school, said it took time for the two communities to come together as one, particularly as the onset of the pandemic turned classes virtual. To avoid privileging one school over the other, the communities worked together to come up with a new name, referring to themselves as “Arts & Letters 305 United,” Ramos said.

“When people feel like they’re going to be included — that we’re together for something that’s going to be greater than what it was on its own, I think that’s an important part of a merger,” she said. “We’re not going to be just one school or the other, or just as good as one school or the other. We’re going to be better than both of them.”

At Lafayette, Zager said his work began even before the merger was approved. He met with parents and students from West Side Collaborative before the vote and in the months leading up to the school year, trying to alleviate any concerns or anxieties they might have about the move.

Families from both schools were afraid of losing their school identities, he said. But months into the school year, Zager noted the students haven’t had trouble acclimating. A few former West Side Collaborative students were even elected to student council, he said.

“When it comes down to the kids, there’s this innocence that just finds its own way to fly,” he said.

Although it was controversial, the merger also created more integration in District 3 by bringing together the two school communities.

To Shawn West, a dean at Lafayette, the small school environment has allowed the merged community to develop bonds quickly.

“We feel like we’ve known these kids for two years,” he said.

Staff came together ahead of the school year to build team cohesion, swapping best practices and working to align their approach for the coming year, Zager said. He’s hoping to incorporate further elements from West Side Collaborative into the school, pointing to student-led conferences as one example.

“It’s been a great experience,” Zager said. “When it comes to it, I now have more children, and I have more staff, all of which I love. I think they are great additions to the community.”

But some parents at the school raised concerns over whether the city’s Education Department had allocated enough resources to properly support the newly merged community, and alleged communications at the time of the merger had been misleading.

Last spring, district officials indicated the merged school might be eligible to receive federal dollars to support low-income students, depending on its combined enrollment. But this year, when parents learned the school didn’t qualify — and that the federal funds were allocated based on enrollment numbers as of October in the prior school year — they questioned why district officials hadn’t made it clear from the outset. Parents also argued those figures didn’t account for newly arrived migrant students that both schools had taken in during the year. (During the last school year, West Side Collaborative qualified for the federal funds, but Lafayette didn’t.)

One parent at the school, who requested anonymity, praised the principal and his staff for “working hard with everyone to make both student bodies feel as one,” but worried the school might not have sufficient funding to support its increased enrollment, particularly as the city’s Education Department faces significant budget cuts.

“The challenges come with the fact that there are now larger classes, and more students at more diverse levels from both communities,” the parent said. “What I’m concerned about is that the DOE has taken the approach that once the merger is approved, they can move onto the next agenda item.”

Mesic, the former West Side Collaborative parent, transferred her son to West End Secondary School, though she said it has paled in comparison to the community they lost. She also helped other families navigate the transfer process, as unhappy parents sought to leave the merged community ahead of the school year.

In total, about 17 students from the former West Side Collaborative did not enroll in the merged school this year — or about a quarter of the incoming seventh and eighth grade classes.

Despite the challenges in the months that led up to the merger, Samuels believes it has been successful so far. He noted his office is in the same building as Lafayette, meaning he can watch students and staff interact each day.

“In a perfect world, we’d have had more time to engage,” Samuels said. “But the process and the outcome that we have had has really been a model for other people possibly to look at.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

New lawsuit targets program to diversify NY’s college STEM majors

2024-01-17T22:11:19+00:00

A prominent conservative legal foundation is backing a new lawsuit challenging a New York state program that seeks to increase the enrollment of “historically underrepresented” students in college science and technology programs on the grounds that it excludes some white and Asian American students, according to legal filings.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is taking aim at the state’s 39-year-old Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP), which offers eligible students in seventh through 12th grade extra summer courses at local colleges and admissions help.

The lawsuit claims the program violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause by making Black, Hispanic, and Native American students automatically eligible, regardless of their family income, according to the federal suit filed Wednesday in New York’s Northern District. White and Asian American students are only eligible if their families fall below the income threshold.

“All students of all races should have equal rights based on their merit to participate in programs like New York State’s STEP,” said Wai Wah Chin, the president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and a plaintiff in the case, in a statement.

Plaintiffs and lawyers in the new case say their argument fits squarely with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down race-based admissions at the college level.

The court “reaffirmed that racial discrimination in admissions is unacceptable, and ‘eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,’” added Chin, who is also slated to speak Thursday at a New York City event for Moms for Liberty, a parent group that’s sought to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum.

The program in the crosshairs of the new lawsuit is a nearly four-decades-old initiative codified in state law to offer extra support to “students who are either economically disadvantaged or minorities historically underrepresented” in the STEM fields. The law leaves it up to the Board of Regents to define which students fit in those categories.

Fifty-six colleges and universities across the state got state money during the 2021-22 school year to offer extra summer courses, counseling, and research and internship experiences to more than 12,000 qualifying middle and high school students. More than 80% of the program’s graduates said they planned to attend college, according to the state Education Department.

The plaintiffs argue that the racial criteria unfairly discriminates against white and Asian American applicants who are above the income threshold.

“The Hispanic child of a multi-millionaire is eligible to apply to STEP, while an Asian American child whose family earns just above the state’s low income threshold is not, solely because of her race or ethnicity,” the suit states.

Yiatin Chu, a parent activist and plaintiff in the suit, said her seventh-grade daughter wants to participate in the NYU STEP program this summer, but is ineligible because she doesn’t meet the race or income criteria, according to the suit.

The state Education Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit or how the eligibility criteria was determined.

The state’s definition of “underrepresented” groups in STEM majors and careers appears to align with both state and national data. As of 2015, both Asian American and white workers in New York were overrepresented in STEM jobs relative to their share of the population, while Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents were underrepresented. That pattern also holds true nationally, according to a 2021 report from the National Science Foundation.

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to block the state from using any “racial classifications or criteria” as a part of the STEP program.

The suit isn’t the Pacific Legal Foundation’s first attempt to block New York’s efforts to diversify selective institutions.

The group previously filed a lawsuit against the Discovery program that offers admission at the city’s specialized high schools to disadvantaged students who scored just below the cutoff on the admissions test and complete a summer course. A federal judge ruled against the plaintiffs in the Discovery suit in 2022.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

$30 million federal grant to create 6 magnet high schools across Manhattan and Bronx

2024-01-12T22:22:23+00:00

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New York City has won $30 million in federal funding to create six magnet high schools across Manhattan and the Bronx, Education Department officials announced Friday.

Over the next five years, the city’s goal is to create an “innovative, theme-based program that provides college access, rigorous instruction, and enrichment activities” at six existing schools in hopes of attracting a more diverse group of students, according to the department’s two grant applications for the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program.

Three schools in the Bronx — the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, the High School for Teaching and the Professions, and the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts — will be turned into magnet schools and serve about 1,800 students in grades 6-12. The schools are in districts that span the Eastchester, Kingsbridge, Jerome Park, Van Nest, and Hunts Point neighborhoods of the Bronx.

The three Manhattan schools that will become magnet schools are Esperanza Preparatory Academy, City College Academy of the Arts, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. The goal is to eventually attract about 1,725 students in grades 6-12 to the schools, whose districts span the Upper East Side, Chelsea, East Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood.

City officials claim it’s the first time they’ve been awarded such grants for high school.

Both applications say the aim is to reduce “isolation among Hispanic students” by “attracting a more racially diverse population through unique thematic programs which offer early college access coupled with career pathways and a strategic, aggressive, and targeted approach to outreach and recruitment.” At City College Academy of the Arts, for example, 95% of its students are Hispanic, according to public data; at the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, 81% are.

New York City has previously been awarded federal magnet grants for elementary and middle schools, but the outcomes haven’t always worked out according to plan. Queens parent Amanda Vender wrote about how a federal magnet grant aimed at integrating her son’s Jackson Heights middle school couldn’t contend with various systemic obstacles, including enrollment-related issues capping students who lived outside of its zone.

Sean Corcoran, an education professor at Vanderbilt University who has long studied New York City’s high school admissions, pointed out that as early as 1992, there’s a study that references career magnet high school programs, though it appears the city didn’t call them magnet schools back then.

Regardless, in some ways, many high schools in the city have actually been “magnets” for decades, Corcoran said.

“What differentiates magnet schools nationally is that they are schools of choice and have a specialized curriculum, such as a theme or career focus,” he wrote in an email. “NYC has universal high school choice, and most of its high schools are themed. So, NYC has long been doing what other ‘magnet’ schools around the country were established to do.”

Magnet schools are “diverse by design,” he said, and began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s to curb white flight from large urban school districts.

“The evidence on whether they accomplished this is mixed, but the principle lives on,” he said. “NYC has also been experimenting with diversity in admissions policies which formalize what magnet schools have been doing for years. Taken together, I’m glad to see the city get federal recognition for its efforts to attract and retain a diverse student population in its high schools.”

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said her organization was “generally encouraged” to see more funding devoted to encouraging diversity and desegregation.

“Magnet programming is an imperfect tool, and oftentimes its intention to mitigate the causes of segregation are lost to other goals or lack of strategies to further integrated learning environments,” Berg wrote in an email.

That, she said, is why leadership on the issue remains important.

“Many of my concerns lie in that our current leadership may not take this opportunity to truly couple their support for rigorous instruction and enrichment with the need to desegregate its public schools,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

A former tutor’s off-Broadway show tackles NYC’s high-stress high school admissions

2023-11-15T19:00:35+00:00

New York City’s high-stakes high school admissions process is taking center stage in a new off-Broadway production.

School Pictures, running through Dec. 3 at Playwrights Horizons theater, draws on playwright Milo Cramer’s experience as a tutor, which often entailed preparing kids for the Specialized High School Admissions Test that determines entry to eight coveted public schools.

Through a series of musical vignettes, all performed by Cramer over ukulele and piano with a lone teacher’s desk in the background, the play offers a portrait — by turns funny, wrenching, and hopeful — of kids navigating academic stress, social pressure, and parental expectations.

While the SHSAT looms large, Cramer’s students also grapple with classroom challenges and applications to other competitive public and private schools.

There’s the aspiring actress whose dad pushes her to dredge up a traumatic incident to craft a better response to an admissions essay prompt about overcoming adversity; the accomplished preteen student-athlete struggling to write an introductory email to a would-be high school coach; the student so anxious about climate change she can’t bring herself to study.

The show also traces Cramer’s evolving understanding of New York City’s inequitable education system, and takes a brief detour into former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s breakfast habits.

Chalkbeat spoke with Cramer, who uses the pronouns they/them, about their experience tutoring, how the show came together, and what they learned about education in New York City.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The show draws on your experience as a tutor for New York City kids. Can you give an overview of what your job was as a tutor, and how that came to be the basis for the show?

I was a tutor for three different companies at different times, which was so interesting, because you travel all over the city. You’re often at people’s homes, but sometimes you go to schools and meet kids in schools. Every one is just so vastly different. You knock on the door, you never know what you’re gonna get.

There’s some very monied environments where there’s pressure. There’s some very monied environments where there’s not pressure, because you’re kind of a servant, and you don’t even meet the parents. And then there’s also contexts where it feels like this is an investment the family decided to do, it’s a significant budget line for them, perhaps, and there’s real hope that you’ll have an impact.

The kids themselves range from children to adolescents, to teenagers. And basically what always happens is, for the student, there’s deep emotional problems, which are often the result of circumstances or family problems.

So we’re working on some assignment, which can feel arbitrary or goofy, or insanely important, like, ‘learn about the Civil War,’ but you only had an hour, my job is at stake, and I need to do a good job. But then also you want to help this child who seems like they are not speaking because they’re so depressed about the world.

It just brought up all of these questions for me when I started doing it. I was so unqualified, and I felt like a fraud. And it was immediately existential.

The show traces your own understanding of the education system in New York and your role in it. What did you come to learn about education in New York City and the role you were playing in it as a tutor?

I’m not a parent, so sometimes I feel like I’m throwing stones because I haven’t gone through the lived experience of having a child and loving your child and wanting the best for your child. But what’s actually best for your child is a humane and just universe. And the New York City school system does not seem so humane or so just. And it’s also dizzyingly complex.

Really what I was doing, people wanted to get into the eight specialized public high schools. And so mostly I was tutoring the specialized high school admissions test to eighth graders hoping to get in, which was very lucrative. And it’s also adorable because you meet sweetheart [kids] and help them do reading. But it’s complicated, because in some ways the test is a segregation mechanism. It’s such a complex thing. It means different things to different communities and families. So I’m hesitant to make sweeping statements.

In the play, I tried to just provide facts, and then provide really detailed stories that are specific and poignant. And to not editorialize so much, because I’m not an expert.

Why did you decide to specifically highlight the Specialized High School Admissions Test? And what role did that test play in the lives of the students who you work with?

It’s mainly what I tutored, the SHSAT. What’s funny is I used to serve Bill de Blasio breakfast every morning as a barista. And there was a moment where [the SHSAT] was in the news a lot. What’s funny is that now, because I’ve been working on the show for six years, it feels like a period piece. It feels like it’s like this time capsule.

Parents are often really stressed out [about the SHSAT]. And they really determine the family culture. And so often it loomed large for them. And for students, it’s like OK this is another test, another hoop I have to jump through, I really want to go play Minecraft. Some students are anxious about it, because they sense that it’s important, but there’s just so much you don’t understand when you’re told.

One really interesting framework that I learned from one of my tutoring companies was: There’s students who are moving with the world, students who are moving away from the world, and students who are moving against the world. That just seems true to me. And all three of those are wonderful ways to be. But they are different from: Are you good at math and reading comprehension?

A number of the students you worked with were in middle school, and a lot of what comes up in the show is just what it means to be going through that time of life. So what did you learn or relearn about what it’s like in middle school?

It seems very brutal. Especially if you are a girl, it seems brutal, although boys are learning a lot of weird things, too.

One thing is in major media high school shows, teenagers are so sexy, and so powerful, and have so much freedom. And in real life, adolescents, their days are full. A lot of them were just very overscheduled. In a way you are trapped inside different adult-managed spaces. The world is about completing homework assignments on time.

So the biggest thing I found myself coaching was something I need help with, which is just normal executive functioning. Like, I have to send an email, I have to send it by noon. And then I also have to remember to pack lunch. That is so hard, I think, for a lot of adults, just basic, consistent, healthy behavior.

There are some really heartbreaking moments of parents kind of adding to the stress that their kids are experiencing, but also some very touching moments about them being there for their kids and helping relieve that stress. I’m curious through all that, how you came to think about the parents of the students you worked with.

I remember when I was a freshman in college, my impulse from high school was to stay up until I finished my homework. And then I was dating a person who was like, ‘Well, it’s 10 p.m., we have to go to bed.’ And I was like, ‘We haven’t finished our homework.’

They were prioritizing health, self care. We didn’t have that word then. But I think that’s just interesting, those are two different types of people, somebody who’s gonna go to bed no matter what when it’s time to because that’s important, and the person who is going to stay up, even if it’s unhealthy and crazy and a product of bad time management to get it done. Both are good and bad.

And I would see that in different families. People just have such different relationships to money to work, to ambition, and to school. There’s academic success and failure, wealth or not wealth, if you’re driven or not, if you value process or product, it’s so infinite, the complexity of human stuff.

Being a tutor I just had so many fascinating windows into these different kinds of case studies. Parents often want what’s best for their kids, but it can be too intense.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

High school match day: NYC’s eighth graders get offers 3 months earlier

2023-03-10T00:06:43+00:00

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New York City’s eighth graders were awash in jitters and excitement Thursday as they awaited their long-anticipated high school admissions offers.

The annual rite of passage for the city’s 13-year-olds caps a notoriously complex, monthslong application process that requires students to select 12 top choices from a list of over 400 high schools across the city.

Thursday’s notifications arrived three months earlier than they did last year, as part of a series of reforms under schools Chancellor David Banks meant to simplify the process and tighten access to some coveted selective schools.

The city’s education department didn’t immediately release data on the percentage of students who received their top choices, or the demographics of students admitted to the most competitive screened schools, which have historically enrolled disproportionately small shares of Black, Latino, and low-income students. Offers to the city’s specialized high schools, which use a separate admissions process based on a single test, were also sent to families Thursday, but officials didn’t immediately share acceptance data.

Paulette Healy, the mom of an eighth grader in Brooklyn, spent much of her day “anxiously refreshing” her MySchools account to see if offers had been posted. The notifications eventually arrived in families’ accounts around 4:30 p.m., and Healy found out her daughter got matched with her second choice school, the Digital Arts and Cinema Technology High School.

“She is excited,” Healy said. “She and her group of friends have been texting back and forth…There are some that are celebrating, some that are lamenting.”

At Urban Assembly Institute for Math and Science for Young Women, a school with grades 6-12 in Downtown Brooklyn, students were a bundle of nerves and joy as they awaited high school decisions.

“It’s mostly a fun day for folks,” said Jen Cusa, the school’s director of culture, who oversees admissions, but “sometimes they’re really sad.” The school had at least one moment of pure happiness when two close friends, who got early notice they’d be attending the same high school next year, locked arms in a caught-on-camera hug.

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Some families experienced frustrating technical glitches that delayed their notifications, while others got a sneak peek at the results when offers were briefly mistakenly posted online Wednesday.

Queens parent Adriana Aviles got a message that the site wasn’t responding when she tried to check. But her frustration quickly turned to relief when she learned her son was accepted to Townsend Harris High School, a selective school in Queens.

New timeline gives families longer to weigh offers

While many features of this year’s high school offer day were familiar, there were also changes stemming from tweaks to the system last fall.

The earlier offer date is part of an effort to move up the timeline to give families longer to weigh their options. Applications opened in October this year and closed Dec. 5, earlier than throughout most of the pandemic, but on par with pre-pandemic timelines.

Healy said she appreciated finding out her daughter’s match earlier in the year, but pointed out that there are also drawbacks to having the application process earlier in the year, when families are still dealing with the start of school, and high schools may have less bandwidth to put out information to families.

“I really feel like the application process this year was way too soon. Even high schools were caught off guard,” Healy said. “That was very chaotic and very stressful for a lot of families.”

The education department also standardized the criteria for qualifying for screened high schools and centralized the calendar for school open houses to make the process more transparent.

Before the pandemic, screened schools were allowed to choose their own criteria —including grades, test scores and attendance for selecting students. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio scrapped that system amid pandemic disruptions, instituting a system where students who scored an average of 85 or above got equal priority at screened schools. That shift drew fierce criticism from families of top-scoring students, who argued their kids were disadvantaged by getting grouped with lower-scoring kids.

For this year’s admissions cycle, Banks opted to keep the group system based on grades, but tightened the score needed to qualify for the top group — a change that significantly narrowed the group of kids with priority access to competitive screened schools.

“If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” Banks said at the time. “You should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

Education department projections from last fall indicated that fewer Black and Hispanic students than last year would likely get priority to the most coveted screened schools, though the numbers would remain higher than before the pandemic.

Burden on schools to market themselves

At the Institute of Math and Science, Cusa felt that this year’s grade groupings — with their strict numerical cutoffs — were helpful for giving students a realistic sense early on of which schools they were likely to get into and which were bigger reaches.

But she added that there are still significant barriers to increasing the representation of low-income students of color in selective schools. For one, patterns of where students apply can be deeply entrenched and difficult to break. The complexity of the admissions process can also favor families with more time and expertise, she said.

“You really see and understand how savvy and connected and aware you really need to be to make a very informed decision,” she said.

The parent advocacy group PLACE NYC, which pushes for more academic screening and accelerated programs, described this year’s changes to screened admissions as an improvement over last year, but said the changes don’t “go far enough,” and pushed for the reintroduction of test scores as an admissions metric.

High schools will begin outreach to students who received offers right away and hold information sessions and virtual events. Students who received multiple offers have until April 5 to accept one.

Students are automatically added to waitlists for schools they ranked higher than the one they were matched with. They can also manually join waitlists for other schools.

Cusa, who also oversees admissions for the Institute of Math and Science’s high school branch, said high schools face significant pressure to retain students who received offers to shore up enrollment, which is tied to funding.

“Now I have to be a marketing campaigner,” she said. “I need to capture these people, and they need to be stoked.“

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s ‘gifted and talented’ application timeline moves up

2022-11-30T22:27:34+00:00

Families vying for kindergarten spots in New York City’s “gifted and talented” program next fall will submit applications and receive admissions decisions earlier than in previous years, under changes announced Wednesday by the education department.

In a departure from the past timeline, applications for the coveted gifted and talented seats are slated to open Dec. 7, at the same time as applications for traditional kindergarten programs. Families will have until Jan. 20 to select gifted programs on the same online application as other programs.

Admissions decisions will be released in April, education department officials said.

The city expects to have 2,500 gifted seats for next year’s rising kindergarten class, with preschoolers selected through teacher evaluations instead of the pre-pandemic practice of testing 4-year-olds.

“This process may be a family’s first interaction with our schools, and it’s important we get it right and make it welcoming and easy,” said education department first deputy chancellor Dan Weisberg in a statement. “This year’s changes to the kindergarten application process will increase access to gifted and talented programming and make the process easier for families.”

The application process changes are the latest in a series of reforms to the program that has attracted fierce criticism for its segregating effects. In 2020, only 11%% of students who received offers to gifted programs were Black and Hispanic, compared to 66% of public school kindergarteners citywide.

The pandemic threw gifted admissions into disarray, with a stunning vote in January 2021 by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, a supervisory board that approves education department expenditures, that canceled the contract for the entrance exam given to 4-year-olds. That move forced the city to shift gears.

Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city switched to an admissions system based on teacher recommendations and a lottery, with plans to eventually phase out all separate gifted and talented classes altogether.

When Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks took office, they reversed de Blasio’s plan, opting to preserve and expand the separate gifted and talented track, but did not bring back the entrance exam.

Banks added 100 seats to the kindergarten program and 1,000 seats to a separate gifted program that starts in third-grade, and selects students based on their second-grade marks.

Banks argued at the time that adding the seats and ensuring that every geographic school district had options would “provid[e] more opportunities for accelerated learning to more families, while providing an equitable, fair process to identify the students who will excel with accelerated learning.”

The shift to a teacher recommendation and lottery-based admissions system noticeably shifted the demographics, more than doubling the share of Black and Hispanic students admitted for the 2021-2022 school year compared to the prior year.

Officials did not immediately provide demographics of students who received offers to the program this year.

Families have pushed for years to move up the timeline for the admissions process to gifted and talented programs, which aims to place students deemed to need accelerated instruction in separate schools and classes.

Prior to the pandemic, when admission to the program was determined by a single entrance exam, students typically sat for the test in January, got the results back later in the spring, and then submitted applications. Admissions decisions typically came in June, weeks after the city sent out general kindergarten offers.

The gifted admissions process has been in flux over the past two years because of pandemic disruptions and reform efforts, further pushing back the timeline.

Education department officials said they heard feedback from families asking to move up the timeline to make it easier to plan for the coming year.

Applications for middle and high schools, which are run through a separate process and are not related to gifted and talented applications, are due Thursday.

‘School Colors’ bonus episode event: Join us to hear more about a derailed integration plan in Queens

2022-11-30T18:34:31+00:00

A few months before the pandemic hit, New York City’s education department began an uphill battle to integrate middle schools in Queens, one of the most diverse corners of the nation.

The backlash was swift — even before a plan was created. Families expressed outrage across District 28, where a north-south divide along race and class shaped schools in these Queens neighborhoods for generations.

Season 2 of the “School Colors” podcast offers a clear-eyed and nuanced look at the district’s “Mason-Dixon Line” separating Forest Hills on one end and Jamaica at the other and how the history of housing patterns laid a foundation making it difficult to build a bridge.

No middle school integration plan ever came to fruition. When COVID hit, the education department’s planning process for integrating District 28 fell by the wayside.

What could happen next? What should happen next?

Be part of the conversation on Dec. 15 at Queens Public Library when Chalkbeat and THE CITY are hosting a live podcast event with School Colors creators Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman, featuring schools Chancellor David Banks as a special guest.

Though COVID cut short the city’s initiative to bring families together to discuss the problems and possible solutions, Winston Griffith and Freedman filled that role, in a way, bringing to the fore the voices on all sides of the debate.

If you haven’t listened to Season 2 of School Colors, now’s your chance to binge-listen to it on the podcast’s website.

It’s also your chance to send in questions to podcast creators Winston Griffith and Freedman about what they learned in talking with more than 120 people and collecting more than 200 hours of tape to make this season’s nine episodes. And if you have questions about it for Banks, please let us know, too.

Though the process for integrating District 28 middle schools rose and fell before Banks was at the helm of the nation’s largest school system, the chancellor has a personal connection to the area, having attended Hillcrest High School in the early 1970s, after an integration fight sparked there.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

New York’s Teacher of the Year says he’s a ‘rebel with a cause’

2022-09-26T22:24:33+00:00

On a recent Friday morning, a group of freshman students flagged down their chemistry teacher, Billy Green. Students were in pods, tasked with completing math equations related to physical chemistry and then presenting them to Green for points.

After several failed attempts, the group of students at Harlem’s A. Philip Randolph Campus High School finally felt ready and threw up their hands.

But when Green walked over, the students hadn’t decided who would present, and then they began doubting their conclusions.

“So, I’m gonna stop you — why do you think? Y’all not ready to present,” Green said. “Even if it’s wrong, you gotta be confident in your work. I’m moving away because guess what, I have 30 other students, so y’all lost your turn, so now y’all better get it right.”

Green gave them a clue about how to fix what turned out to be incorrect work. “Are you serious right now?” one irritated student said as Green walked away.

Training students to work together, especially under pressure, is at the core of how Green, recently named New York State’s Teacher of the Year, teaches. He reminded his class that “science is about collaboration, discussion, discovery” — and revealed that it was a practice activity that wouldn’t be graded that day.

Green’s pathway to teaching was rocky, a point that was highlighted when he was recently honored for the state award. He grew up living in poverty and navigating homelessness, often squatting in abandoned buildings, while his mother battled a drug addiction. Still, he fell in love with school and education at an early age, and with the nudging of his mother and help from a trusted high school teacher, Green enrolled in college.

A few years into his first teaching job at High School For Environmental Studies in Manhattan, Green, who was untenured at the time, said he was fired for showing up late on multiple occasions. (Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, confirmed that Green was “discontinued” as a teacher in 2007 and began teaching full time again in 2009, but said he couldn’t provide further details about what happened.)

Green said he made those mistakes because he was not raised to know that time management was important — one of several skills he hopes to pass on to his students, hence the time restrictions on the group activity on Friday.

He’s taught at six schools over his 20-year career, including a program on Rikers Island. Asked why he’s moved around so much, he said that he intentionally leaves after a few years because he feels that other schools that predominantly serve many low-income students could benefit from his teaching methods.

Multiple former students shared glowing reviews of Green, saying that he inspired them to come out of their shell. But Green acknowledges that his teaching style and his focus on culturally responsive education are not universally loved, pointing to a recent New York Post article critical of his approach. While his former and current principal both agreed to nominate him for Teacher of the Year, he also noted that, just like any job, he didn’t always see eye-to-eye with former bosses. That earned him the nickname, “Rebel With A Cause.”

Green wants his mostly Black and Latino students to feel connected to science, a field that is still dominated by white workers. That means finding links between what he’s teaching and their backgrounds, such as introducing them to prominent scientists who look like them, or batting down stereotypes.

“What stops Black and brown people from studying mathematics,” he told the class, “is that somebody told you that you can’t make a mistake.”

Chalkbeat sat down for a brief interview with Green. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have been talking about this collaborative model. What informed that? Is this how you’ve always taught, or is this an evolution of your teaching methods?

So I went to one of the most difficult schools in the country, Williams College … And you set the bar so high, that even the smartest that think they’re the smartest and the weakest that think they’re the weakest have no choice but to work together.

So one of the greatest models I learned from Williams College was that in order to succeed in corporate, in order to succeed in the world, you needed to know how to collaborate with different people and different places, things, communities. Part of that was always: Set the bar high, don’t stress too much about intelligence or smartness, and more so, who’s collaborating with who and who’s building each other up?

How do you sort of take how you grew up and bring that into the classroom? One of your former students mentioned that he knew where you came from, he knows your back story, and so do you talk about that in the classroom? And how do you let that inform your teaching?

I can’t wake up and take off my identities, right? So I was always taught by my mother [to] never to hide who I am, right? Always present my authentic self. So I’m Puerto Rican, like I said, Black, Italian, gay, [Williams]-educated … I learned a lot on how to survive in these environments. So, what I teach my kids is that survival, right?

And there are many moments in my subject, right, that I’m able to tell them a story, or things that I have been through because my subject, chemistry, relates to the world. I do a project called Chemistry in the City that a lot of the kids love, because every unit, they have to go out into their communities or their cultures, and bring something back that’s related to the content of chemistry, I then become a learner. Right? It’s the reason why I teach the way I teach it, because my teachers affirmed me and I know what that affirmation is like when you are a marginalized person or a marginalized identity. So, I want all students to feel that in these spaces.

At the end of class, you were talking about why Regents exams aren’t everything and then you specifically called out Black and brown people. (He said, “What stops Black and brown people from studying mathematics is that somebody told you that you can’t make a mistake.”) Can you tell me more about that?

There is a stereotype that Black and brown people hate math. They’ll tell you, “Oh, I don’t like it.” Right? They have phobias of this. There are many stereotypes that Asians perform better, or whites perform better.

I build their self esteem back up. I get them to work together to let them know that it’s okay, there’s a big misunderstanding between Black and brown people just saying, ‘We’re crabs in a barrel.’ I know this. I live in Black and brown communities. So it is my job to let them know you are not crabs in a barrel, we will uplift each other. Don’t claw each other down.

What do you feel like are the challenges of this school year?

So, the challenge that I think that the students are facing — and is the only challenge I’ve always faced in these types of schools — is the lack of knowledge of what is next. So the goal of my teaching is to teach them what they can’t get in the books, right? And that is connecting their science to their community, connecting their science to their cultures, connecting science to a career, connecting science to literacy, right, I want them to do those things. And the challenge becomes, when not everybody’s on the same page, right? Educationally, you push for certain things, and then curriculums detour you the other way.

They’ll say, ‘No, we’re not doing this,’ or, like, ‘Don’t do too much,’ like what they’re saying in the [recent New York Post] article right there. Some people just don’t get that you have to incorporate student voice, student cultures, students’ living into curriculum. They should not come in here and be robots and controlled, overpoliced. You know, that’s not what education is about. So the big thing for me, like I said, is just creating spaces that emancipate, liberate, and educate.

What comes next for you?

That’s the saddest part of this award. That everyone asks me, ‘So now you’re going to be the superintendent, the chancellor? When are you going to leave the classroom?’ Are you kidding me? My love, my passion is in the classroom. My power with these youth is in this classroom. I am going to do this for the next 80 years. I hope to live to 120 so they can see what a 120-year-old teacher can come into the building and do.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC kindergarten applications open, more schools try to bolster diversity

2021-12-08T23:07:21+00:00

As kindergarten applications opened Wednesday, a group of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Manhattan neighborhood schools — some of which are among the city’s most coveted — are trying to increase the diversity of their student bodies.

The education department’s “diversity in admissions” program gives priority to students from low-income families, English language learners, those living in temporary housing or in the child welfare system. The program, which launched in 2015 with seven elementary schools, will expand to 31 elementary schools citywide next year and all of the schools in Manhattan’s Lower East Side/East Village District 1 .

Research shows that students benefit academically as well as socially when their classes are racially and socioeconomically diverse.

Where students live generally determines where they attend kindergarten. But there is some amount of choice, and families have until Jan. 18 to submit up to 12 ranked choices. Changing admissions priorities is one way the city hopes to address its status as one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

Schools with new admissions policies

Among the dozen schools joining the“diversity in admissions” program for the 2022-23 school year are five in the northern corner of Brooklyn’s District 15, where an annex built for P.S. 32 in the Gowanus/Carroll Gardens area triggered the city to redraw the boundaries of several area elementary schools. The process tipped off debates not only in Brownstone Brooklyn’s predominantly white schools of Carroll Gardens’ P.S. 58 and Cobble Hill’s P.S. 29, but also in the largely working-class neighborhoods of Red Hook and Gowanus, where parents felt excluded from the process.

The education department put the rezoning on hold and turned to a different engagement process — participatory action research, or PAR— which trained and paid members of the affected communities to talk to their neighbors about the changes. After the community members created recommendations for the education department, the city decided to shutter Red Hook’s P.S. 676 and turn it into a new middle school.

Then six of the schools in this part of the district — P.S. 15, P.S. 29, P.S. 32, P.S. 38, P.S. 58, P.S. 261 — agreed to join the diversity in admission program. They’ll set aside 30% of their seats for students in an attempt to diversify their student bodies, which skew whiter and wealthier.

There are also two schools in Manhattan’s prestigious District 2 that will be part of the city’s diversity admissions program: TriBeCa’s P.S. 150 will set aside a quarter of its seats for students from low-income families, and Greenwich Village’s P.S. 41 will give priority to certain students once its seats are filled with children living within its zone. Staten Island has four existing schools that are tweaking enrollment to foster diversity — P.S. 9, P.S. 59, P.S. 65, and P.S. 80 — along with a new school opening in September, P.S. 84.

Additionally, District 24, which includes the Queens neighborhoods of Ridgewood, Woodside Elmhurst, Corona, Long Island City and Sunnyside, won a state diversity grant that will enable the launch of a science, technology, engineering and math program for it’s classes that mix general education students and those with disabilities at its predominantly low-income schools.

“High-quality early education sets our students up for success and we encourage all families to explore their kindergarten options and get their applications in before the deadline,” education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to offer more diversity in admissions programs than ever before this year and can’t wait to welcome a new class of some of our earliest learners to schools in September.”

Kindergarten options

Most children apply and get into the neighborhood schools they are zoned for. Roughly a third of students listed a school outside of their zone as their first choice, according to an analysis of 2016-17 data released by the Independent Budget Office last month. The rates differed along racial lines, with Black students applying out-of-zone at the highest rate at 47%, while Asian American students had the lowest rate at 27%, the report found.

While 97% of the students who ranked their zoned school as No. 1 got their first choice, since preference is given to students living within a school’s zone, roughly 29% of students who ranked out-of-zone schools highest got their top choice, according to the analysis, which also found that Black, Latino, and Asian American students were less likely than their white counterparts to receive an out-of-zone offer if their first choice school was high-performing.

The way schools manage their waitlists, however, has changed since the IBO’s report, said Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn-based admissions consultant who runs NYC School Help. Previously, individual schools managed their waitlists, but now the waitlists are managed centrally. The move has made waitlists more transparent, she said, but gives schools less wiggle room on who to admit.

Often, the “squeaky wheels” got preference if there were any open seats in the fall, she noted. “It wasn’t about your privilege or race. It was about your tenacity,” she said. Often that may have correlated with race and class, she said, since there are more barriers in terms of time and transportation to get to schools outside of one’s neighborhood.

Szuflita predicts there will be less movements off of waitlists in general for the coming school year since there is not expected to be a gifted and talented program. Offers for those 2,500 G&T seats would often touch off a domino effect at local schools that suddenly had open seats.

“Now that G&T is not a factor outside the building — which I’m very happy about — the waitlists just aren’t going to move,” she said.

But there could be other wild cards, namely how enrollment dips might affect whether students can get into schools they’re not zoned for. As school enrollment has dipped, particularly in the younger grades, and especially at some of the city’s highest performing public schools which have lost families to the suburbs or private or parochial schools, out-of-zone students might have more of an opening this coming year at some schools.

Last year’s kindergarten enrollment was down 10% from the previous year, according to education department data. The city’s education department declined to provide this year’s kindergarten enrollment figures, saying that audited numbers were not yet available. But applications for this year’s incoming kindergarten class fell by 12% compared to the year before.

Correction: This story initially omitted P.S 15 from the District 15 schools participating in the diversity in admissions program based on information provided by the education department.

NYC school segregation legal battle continues despite proposed changes to gifted test

2021-10-15T20:23:30+00:00

New York City’s gifted and talented program helps perpetuate “a racist caste system” in the city’s public schools, according to a lawsuit filed in March that continues to wind its way through the state’s court system.

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement last week that the city plans to end the practice of testing 4-year-olds for the gifted program, the plaintiffs in the case are still challenging other admissions policies they believe contribute to the system’s segregated schools.

“I feel like it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said plaintiff N.N., a Bronx high school senior who asked to be named by his initials, the same way he is named in court documents, to protect his identity.

The gifted exam is seen as the first of several policies excluding Black and Latino children from coveted programs: They fill only 14% of gifted seats, but account for nearly 60% of kindergartners citywide. But both middle schools and high schools that base admissions decisions on test scores, including eight of the nine specialized high schools, can be exclusionary along racial lines, the student said.

Only 9% of offers for specialized high school seats, based on test scores for this year’s incoming freshmen, went to Black and Latino students.

“Until there’s amends to those kinds of admissions, I can’t say the system is fixed,” N.N. said.

N.N. is among more than a dozen NYC public school students who, along with nonprofit organization IntegrateNYC, filed the lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court nearly seven months ago. Named defendants in the suit include de Blasio, Chancellor Meisha Porter, and the state of New York.

Though de Blasio is named in the suit, the next mayor will likely determine the fate of the city’s gifted program. Eric Adams, the Democratic mayoral nominee and presumptive winner, said on CNN on Friday that he would keep the city’s gifted program and expand it. He has previously expressed support for keeping the test in place, and on Friday noted that students should be able opt out of it rather than the current opt-in practice.

Even if the gifted test is eliminated, it is unlikely to have a direct impact on the outcome of the case, according to some legal experts.

Plaintiffs’ argument that the state and city deny students their state constitutional right to a “sound, basic education” is built upon a series of points, only one of which relates to the gifted test.

Still, Michael Rebell, an education attorney and executive director of the Center for Educational Equity at Columbia’s Teachers College, believes the plaintiffs are facing an “uphill battle” in the ongoing lawsuit. He questions whether the court will agree with plaintiffs’ interpretation of “sound, basic education.”

“The Court has never applied [sound, basic education] to an integration context,” he said. “They’ve never interpreted the phrase the way the plaintiffs would like them to interpret it. So you might say this is a test case to see if the courts are willing to expand the concept of what sound basic education is.”

Both the city and state are seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. Another group, called Parents Defending Education, has filed a separate motion to dismiss the case.

The group, a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Va., bills itself as a national grassroots organization seeking to “prevent the politicization of K-12 schools.” The organization was incorporated in January, according to court documents, and has filed multiple civil rights complaints against school districts that are vowing to tackle racism and white supremacy in their schools. On its website and in op-eds, leaders of the organization raise concerns about critical race theory and “toxic” curricula entering classrooms across the country.

The group successfully intervened as a defendant in the IntegrateNYC case, arguing that members who have children in NYC public schools would be harmed if school admissions policies are changed. Such members are not named in legal documents and are instead noted as “Parents A-F.”

They say their children intend to apply to the city’s most selective public schools, including the prestigious specialized high schools, precisely because they are selective and rigorous.

Parents Defending Education called school admissions policies “race-neutral” and said there is no legal basis to change them.

Neither Parents Defending Education nor the attorneys representing the group responded to requests for comment.

The group’s filing frustrated Sarah Medina Camiscoli, a former Bronx public school teacher who founded IntegrateNYC. “This is not a lawsuit against parents,” she said. “This is a lawsuit against the city and the state of New York for running a school system that essentially starts to function like a private school system.”

In addition to admissions policies, the lawsuit charges that by failing to maintain a diverse workforce and by allowing schools to teach a “Eurocentric” curriculum, the public school system perpetuates racism.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, 17-year-old N.N. recalled a memory from his ninth grade world history class at University Heights High School in the Bronx. His teacher, a Black man, randomly divided students into groups representing different continents, then asked them to flip through their textbook, and identify the chapters associated with that particular part of the world.

“Needless to say, the kids assigned to Europe found their chapters in a heartbeat,” said N.N. Meanwhile, students assigned to Africa, Asia, or South America struggled to find relevant content between the many pages devoted to European history, he recalled.

He said he believes textbooks and literature used in history classes and English classes need to more accurately represent “the diversity of New York City” — a feeling that helped motivate him to join the lawsuit.

Currently, plaintiffs are working on their response to the multiple motions to dismiss the case. Mark Rosenbaum, lead attorney on the case, said plaintiffs plan to file their response by mid-December.

NYC to eliminate ‘gifted’ test in overhaul of segregated program

2021-10-08T13:46:07+00:00

Starting this fall, New York City will no longer test rising kindergartners for entry into its gifted and talented program, which has long attracted controversy for enrolling starkly low numbers of Black and Latino students.

Instead of having a specific gifted program sorting a small number of children, all kindergarten students attending the city’s 800 elementary schools next September will receive “accelerated” instruction, city officials said Friday. Starting in third grade, all students will be screened to determine if they should continue to receive accelerated instruction in specific subjects.

“The era of judging 4-year-olds based on a single test is over,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “Every New York City child deserves to reach their full potential, and this new, equitable model gives them that chance.”

At least, that’s the mayor’s plan. It is an open question whether the changes will ultimately get implemented.

De Blasio has about three months left in his term and Democratic candidate Eric Adams is widely expected to replace him. Adams has offered a much different vision for the coveted gifted programs, proposing instead to keep the admissions test and add more gifted classrooms in communities across the city.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Adams said he would act independently, if elected.

“Eric will assess the plan and reserves his right to implement policies based on the needs of students and parents, should he become mayor,” said Adams campaign spokesperson Evan Thies. “Clearly the department of education must improve outcomes for children from lower-income areas.”

Current landscape

Under de Blasio’s proposal, children currently in gifted classes will continue in the program until they finish elementary school. City officials did not immediately say what will happen with the five citywide gifted schools, like Anderson and Nest+m, which enroll only children who have tested into the current gifted program.

Currently, about 2,500 kindergartners a year score seats in 80 schools to the highly selective program, with many families — with and without means — spending time and money to prep their preschoolers for the exam. Many advocates and parents have blasted the test, which is administered one-on-one to children when they’re about 4, for resulting in a system that largely excludes Black and Latino students. They fill only 14% of gifted seats, but make up nearly 60% of kindergartners citywide.

Meanwhile, more than 70% of gifted seats go to Asian American and white students, who make up less than a third of the city’s overall student population.

The classrooms are segregated in other ways. Just over a quarter of students come from low-income families, compared with almost 70% citywide. There are few students with disabilities or who are learning English as a new language in gifted classrooms.

Proposed changes

Under the new model, the city would train roughly 4,000 teachers and hire additional teachers already versed in accelerated learning to work in neighborhoods with historically little to no gifted programming, city officials said Friday. The new program, called Brilliant NYC, would start in the fall of 2022 and be phased into first and second grade the following years.

Third graders who have been screened for accelerated instruction in certain subjects would remain in general education classes, but might be pulled out for small group work or given additional assignments tackling real-world problems using robotics, coding, or community organizing. Keeping children in mixed classrooms would solve an issue currently seen in many schools with gifted programs, where classrooms within the same school building are racially segregated.

Officials did not specify how third graders would be screened — which could be crucial when it comes to creating a program that is more representative of the city’s enrollment.

Why it might — or might not — work

Frank Worrell, a professor of education and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, said it’s encouraging that the city is proposing to do away with a single test for admissions, opting instead for a program that provides “universal access.”

That could help catch up students who enter school behind their peers, and put those children on a more level playing field when it comes time to select students for differentiated programs.

“If this is done well, what that should do is actually help those who in fact are coming from less resourced environments, environments with less education capital — but who have tremendous potential — to realize that potential before they are then doing the screening,” he said.

Worrell said that the shift would likely require more, well-qualified teachers in the classroom.

“You need an adult-rich environment. Curriculum is necessary but not sufficient. You need the individuals who understand differentiation,” he said.

Doing away with separate classes is likely a hard sell for parents, especially in New York City. No other school system screens as much, with entire schools reserved for students based on their prior academic record.

“I don’t see how it will work to have an accelerated program for all kindergarten students. Some children know how to read entering kindergarten. Some know how to do their math. Some don’t,” said Lila Benayoun, a Manhattan mom of four. Three of her children (kindergarten, first and third grade) attend NEST+m on the Lower East Side, her other first grader is in a gifted program housed at Chelsea’s P.S. 33.

Even within the gifted program, she sees disparities in the level of performance expected. At NEST+m, which required a top score on the test for admittance, her first grade son has more tests and higher expectations set by the school than in his twin sister’s gifted class. She’s not getting grades and only has weekly spelling tests, her mom said.

Scott Peters, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who studies gifted education, said that school systems like New York City’s have to strike a balance: to create more opportunities for students who are currently missing out, while ensuring that other parents don’t feel like a benefit is being taken away from their own children.

“You have to be able to document how their kid, with their level of readiness...how they’re going to have their needs met in the new paradigm,” he said. “Too often, there’s waving of hands, or, ‘Yeah, yeah the teacher is going to take care of that,’ and that is not convincing to parents.”

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank The Century Foundation who has studied New York City’s gifted programs, offered a more optimistic take. She thought the city’s plan for training teachers “feels doable” since it focuses on a single grade per year.

City officials said they would hire seven borough-wide teams of experts to help guide schools.

Politically explosive

Changes have been politically explosive and slow-coming. After appointing a task force in 2017 to propose ways to better integrate New York City schools, which are among the most segregated in the country, de Blasio spent the last years of his tenure ignoring recommendations for sweeping reforms for gifted programs.

The programs are often seen as a way to keep middle class and white families in the public school system. Meanwhile, many Asian American families and other parents of color rely on them as a ticket to higher-performing schools that are often in short supply in their neighborhoods.

The COVID pandemic forced major, but temporary changes last year. In a surprise vote, and a major sting to the mayor, the Panel for Educational Policy rejected a contract that would have allowed the city to continue testing for gifted admissions.

Officials were left scrambling to set up a new selection system, ultimately deciding to allow parents and teachers to nominate students and then assign seats based on a lottery.

The city has not shared figures on whether that resulted in a more representative group of students being admitted or accepting their slots in the program.

Far from certain

Unveiling the plan on Friday, the mayor and chancellor referred to it as a “blueprint” that could change based on community feedback. They promised to roll out an “engagement plan” in every school district.

“This is an absolutely coherent, full plan. We’re going to go out for two months and get input from communities and perfect it and revise it accordingly,” de Blasio said Friday on WNYC public radio.

The listening sessions are slated to wrap up in November — when the city heads to the polls to select its next leader. That leaves the incoming mayor to decide whether and how to implement any reform.

It seems clear, however, that admissions will be upended for a second year in a row. Without a testing contract in place, it would be difficult to go back to the old system in time for rising kindergartners.

Applications for this year’s incoming kindergartners were due on Jan 22. By that time next year, a new mayor will already be in office, sworn in on Jan. 1.

Amy Zimmer contributed reporting.

Where is NYC’s plan for ‘gifted & talented’ admissions?

2021-10-05T22:49:25+00:00

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appears to be dragging his feet again when it comes to making reforms to the city’s starkly segregated gifted and talented programs — and comments made Tuesday by schools Chancellor Meisha Porter at a state senate hearing made it even more unclear when any changes might be announced.

De Blasio promised last month to present “a very different approach” for gifted programs, saying changes would be announced by the end of September.

That deadline has come and gone. On Tuesday, Porter suggested the timeline may get stretched out further, saying the city would be starting a process to engage with the public about any changes.

“We look forward to centering engagement as a part of our plan forward, and look forward to beginning and launching more information around the engagement process soon,” she said in response to questions from lawmakers at the hearing, which was called to discuss how districts are spending COVID relief money.

Meanwhile, time is ticking for anxious families. Usually, the test for the program’s 2,500 kindergarten seats is given in January, and many parents spend time and money prepping their 4-year-olds for it.

Education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon did not answer questions about when the city would announce the admissions process or other changes to the gifted program this year, or whether the reforms would be delayed to collect more feedback from parents and others.

“The best plans are made when everyone has a seat at the table. We are listening to our families and will offer more opportunities for community conversations,” O’Hanlon wrote in an email.

With only about three months left in de Blasio’s term-limited tenure, Sen. John Liu said the city should wait until a new mayor — and, most likely, a new chancellor — is in place to usher in reforms.

“There’s just not enough time to truly engage, unless the Department of Education and City Hall has some preconceived notion that they were going to try to steer people [to],” he said. “It’s too late.”

Porter said she disagreed.

“I think that, while the next administration is going to absolutely guide the ship forward, as it relates to gifted and talented, I think that it’s never too late to engage families in the process and in a conversation, or in recommendations that will inform the next administration,” she said.

New York City’s gifted programs have been a lightning rod of controversy.

Classrooms are deeply segregated and the focus for reform. While Black and Latino students make up almost 60% of all kindergartners citywide, their enrollment in gifted programs is only 14%.

The greatest share of students in gifted classes are Asian American, at 43%. White students are also overrepresented at 36% of enrollment. Just over a quarter come from low-income families, compared with almost 70% citywide. There are almost no students with disabilities or who are learning English as a new language in gifted classrooms.

Admission has long been determined by a test given to rising kindergartners when they’re about 4-years-old, which many blame for driving segregation. Most academic experts agree that tests given to such young children aren’t likely to measure a student’s abilities, but are more likely to reflect a family’s advantages, economic and otherwise.

De Blasio’s pledge for reform came after he sat for years on recommendations for making the programs fairer, made by a committee he appointed in 2017.

He promised to make changes after a pause in the typical admissions process last year that de Blasio said would be temporary. The city was forced to admit students based on a lottery, after a citywide panel refused to extend a contract to give rising kindergartners the admissions test typically used.

Officials at the time had promised to present more permanent reforms and kick off a public engagement process — which some parents who are worried about potential reforms say never formally happened.

Critical race theory debate hits New York City public schools

2021-07-13T18:30:14+00:00

Maud Maron was taken aback during her son’s recent fifth grade graduation when school administrators took a moment to acknowledge that the school building sits on land once taken from Native Americans.

“I was like, ‘yes, that is true,’” Maron recounted. “But, as it turns out, for the better part of human existence, we have stolen land from each other.”

Maron, a public defender who this year ran an unsuccessful campaign as a Democrat for New York City Council, is part of a growing contingent of parents and educators who are speaking out against the ways race, ethnicity, and diversity are addressed in K-12 schools nationwide. (Maron is still running as an independent.)

“There’s this incessant fixation on white guilt and using the terms ‘colonial’ and ‘settler’ to describe white children who are in a classroom,” said Maron, a Community Education Council member who has four children in New York City public schools. “There’s movement afoot that is changing the way our children are being spoken to.”

The changes Maron is concerned about range from discussing racial justice in academic classes (she says this takes away from time that should be spent on academics) to acknowledging that the country violently forced Indigenous peoples from their land (she finds such mentions unnecessary).

These concerns and others are often bundled together under the banner of critical race theory, a more than 40-year-old academic framework for studying institutional racism. Once only taught in higher education, CRT has become a political flashpoint, dominating headlines and school board meetings ever since the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo claimed that CRT had infiltrated the federal government and public schools, leading President Donald Trump to issue an executive order barring racial sensitivity trainings from the federal government.

While criticisms of CRT are loudest in states with conservative legislatures — some 26 states have followed Trump’s example and sought to limit the teaching of CRT, racism, or ethnic studies in public schools — the conflict has made its way to New York City.

The education department maintains that CRT is not taught in the city’s public schools, but some parents disagree. Maron, who learned about CRT while in law school, argues that the concepts from the framework are influencing the way teachers educate their students.

As an example, she pointed to a friend’s high school-aged son who was recently in a precalculus class on Zoom that discussed how the city’s subway system is implicitly racist.

“Five years ago or 10 years ago, I don’t think you would have had all of this discussion about racial justice,” she said.

Critical juncture for New York City schools

In March, New York private school parent Bion Bartning launched a national nonprofit organization, Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, or FAIR, after he learned that Riverdale Country School, where his children attended, had developed antiracist initiatives. Upset by the school’s new “orthodoxy” about race, Bartning pulled his children out of the school. FAIR has since lobbed criticism against CRT and broadly advocates for a “human first” mindset — something critics liken to an “All Lives Matter” mentality. (All Lives Matter was a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It sought to delegitimize the notion that Black people have been systematically discriminated against in the U.S.)

FAIR has chapters across the country, including one in New York City co-led by Maron and Yiatin Chu, a public school parent and member of the Community Education Council covering Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village. Both Maron and Chu also lead PLACE, or Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, an organization that formed partly in protest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to overhaul admissions to the city’s specialized high schools, which enroll few Black and Latino students.

Although CRT is not taught in NYC public schools, the city recently pledged multiple efforts to create a culturally responsive curriculum. Last week, city officials announced a $202 million effort to standardize English and math instruction through its universal Mosaic curriculum, which is meant to represent the diversity of the city, and the City Council this year approved $10 million in funding for an “education equity action plan” that calls for the creation of a K-12 Black studies curriculum. The education department also released a curriculum supplement in the spring that centers LGBTQ voices.

The conflict over CRT comes at a critical juncture in New York City’s education system. In September, students will return to classrooms after more than a year of disruption and chaos during the COVID pandemic. And come January, a new mayor will take control of the nation’s largest school system, managing a massive infusion of COVID relief funding and addressing the racial and socio-economic disparities that the pandemic brought to the fore.

As tensions flare over racial justice nationally, the city must likewise grapple with how race will figure into the path forward for public schools. For some parents, like Maron, extended classroom discussions on race feel unnecessary, even counterproductive, to student success. Others believe that examining the nation’s history of oppression is integral to engaging the city’s nearly 1 million students, more than 80% of whom are students of color. The fight has become so polarized at times that it has left little room for civil discourse, preventing parents from hearing each other’s point of view.

The rise of critical race theory

About two months ago, Zakiyah Ansari was sitting on her couch watching television when she heard the newscaster mention critical race theory. Over the next few weeks, she saw the phrase pop up more frequently, on MSNBC, in emails with parents, and on social media. She did not know exactly what CRT was, she admits, but she knew it was something to watch.

“My ears perked up because I’ve been doing this work for so long, and I knew people were coming after something that is centered in justice,” said Ansari, advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education, which has been pushing for antiracism in education.

While Ansari learned more about CRT, she began to see that it was being used as a catchall term to define some of the work she had been doing for years to uplift marginalized voices. She saw criticisms of CRT as an attack on recent efforts to integrate anti-bias training and racial justice initiatives into education.

In 2018, after several years of advocacy on the part of parents and others like Ansari, New York officials allocated $23 million to support anti-bias education for the city’s teachers. Now, the city is investing $200 million to create a culturally responsive curriculum expected to be used in the city’s roughly 1,600 schools by the fall of 2023. And last month the city approved a budget with $10 million set aside for a K-12 Black studies curriculum along with a professional development program to implement it.

Amid these changes, those critical of bringing race into the classroom have become louder, with many taking on leadership positions. During the recent Community Education Council elections, a slate of candidates endorsed by PLACE won seats. These parent-led councils have the power to change or create school zones, and they are a primary mode of bringing parent voices to the attention of the schools chancellor. Several of them have also led integration efforts, something that PLACE has historically not supported.

“What we are hearing from some of these new parent leaders [endorsed by PLACE] is that we need to stop talking about race and talk about academic excellence, as if those are not the same thing,” said Ansari. “That’s a problem.”

The crux of the conflict

Ansari’s comment points to the fundamental disconnect between people who are lambasting CRT — or something they are labeling as CRT — and those who are pushing for a culturally responsive education. While the former view anti-bias training and curriculum changes as a distraction from academic rigor, the latter say it is a necessary ingredient to drive student success.

At a press conference announcing Mosaic, Porter said “students are more engaged when they see themselves in the lessons and the curriculum. [Mosaic] will be a comprehensive curriculum that accelerates student learning and prepares them for success in school and in life.”

While some groups, such as the Coalition for Educational Justice, lauded Mosaic as a critical step in standing against racism and oppression, others decried the investment. PLACE leader Chu tweeted in response: “What excuses will be left after we spend ‘historic’ $$$$ w/CRSE [Culturally Responsive & Sustaining Education] standardized curriculum and half of NYC kids still do not read at grade level?”

In a statement, PLACE referred to “including and affirming” as “a nondescript platitude that, while perhaps well-intentioned, does nothing to improve academic outcomes.”

Chu and others argue that NYC schools are failing their students: Less than half of third grade students scored proficient on 2019 state math and reading assessments. PLACE believes that fixing the city’s failing schools requires redoubling efforts on academics — creating rigorous curriculums for all students and investing more money in gifted and talented programs.

PLACE also denies that systemic racism contributes to New York City’s underperforming public schools. “To say that students aren’t performing because our schools are racist is just too blunt and not true,” Chu said in an interview.

Meanwhile, proponents of culturally responsive education say that schools are disproportionately failing students of color, a problem that stems from structural racism. Creating a culturally responsive education, they say, is necessary for students to succeed.

“We can’t improve education, rigor, and all the other things that we’ve been talking about if we have structural barriers in the way,” said David E. Kirkland, executive director of the NYU Metro Center, which researches solutions for issues facing public schools. “We have to have these courageous conversations.”

“One of the main reasons that we see inequity is because our children don’t know who they are and where they came from. They don’t understand their history,” said City Council member Adrienne Adams, who championed the education equity action plan.

Recent research suggests that student engagement is higher when classes include conversations about racism and bigotry. For instance, one study found that Black boys who took a class focused on Black history and culture were less likely to drop out from high school. And another study in Tucson found that a Mexican American studies course boosted test scores and high school graduation rates.

A story of racial division or racial triumph?

Last month, FAIR released a set of learning standards meant to provide guidance for teaching and learning about the history of people from diverse cultural backgrounds in the United States. The standards, called “pro-human,” include specific grade-level outcomes, or expectations, for student development on “humanity,” “diversity” and “fairness.”

For instance, students in grades 3-5 are expected to be able to “discuss specific people from history who drew power from their humanity, culture, and American ideals to fight racism and intolerance.” And high school students are supposed to know how to “treat each person’s life and story as irreducibly unique.”

Maron pointed to the learning standards as evidence that FAIR is not against teaching the history of Black people or Indigenous peoples; what they are against is reducing individuals to their race.

Although Maron could not confirm whether the learning standards were shared with the New York City education department, she said their purpose is to address parent concerns by helping guide conversations on diversity.

But for critics, the standards symbolize the political right’s push to gloss over the less forgiving parts of American history.

“If students ask questions about racism and discrimination, they will say that in the past, things happened at an episodic level, not at a structural level,” Kirkland said. “And that the story of America is not a story of racial division but of racial triumph.”

“It’s not that we are not a human race,” Kirkland continued. “It’s that the country was constructed on the idea that there are people of different races, with whites on the top and Blacks on the bottom. And that narrative continues today.”

‘The pendulum always swings’: After NYC education councils led on integration efforts, new members sweep elections

2021-06-11T18:15:16+00:00

The makeup of New York City’s local Community Education Councils will shift significantly in some corners of the city — with potentially long-lasting consequences for school diversity plans, according to election results released this week.

Though largely advisory, these councils wield power when it comes to changing or creating school zones, and they have been at the forefront of the city’s integration plans. These efforts recently helped spur the creation of an advocacy group called Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, which has pushed to preserve many of the same admissions policies that others blame for exacerbating segregation. PLACE promoted certain candidates for the elections, and made inroads on a number of the councils.

“A lot of these parents were afraid to speak out because you’ll get called racist, this whole ‘cancel culture’ online,” said Lucas Liu, co-president of PLACE. “So these parents who were afraid to speak out, they spoke with their vote, and this is the result.”

The education councils, often referred to as CECs, have become a place where bitter school politics have played out. The fights have been ignited by demands to change the city’s competitive admissions systems and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s clumsy attempt to overhaul admissions to the city’s coveted specialized high schools, which enroll few Black and Latino students and are majority Asian. Lately, the councils have reflected polarized national debates around issues like teaching about racism, and reopening school buildings amid the pandemic.

Coupled with a change in voting this year, groups on all sides of these hot-button issues mobilized to push their agendas for the council elections. And PLACE — which has advocated to keep the current admissions test at the specialized high schools and whose members have described talk about white supremacy and race in schools as “nonsense” — made significant gains.

‘It’s not going to be like the previous term’

Liu was reelected to the council in Manhattan’s District 3, which spans the Upper West Side and Harlem. He will be joined on the nine-member council by at least three other members who are aligned with PLACE’s stances, such as calling to address stark racial disparities in the city’s competitive middle and high schools by expanding access to gifted programs in an effort to prepare more students to meet the entrance criteria for those schools.

“There was a big enough shift that it’s not going to be like the previous term,” Liu said. “I think PLACE did have an influence on the outcomes, but at the same time it wasn’t like PLACE went out and convinced people to take a position. It was already out there.”

In 2018, District 3 became the first in the city to win approval for a districtwide middle school integration plan. CEC member Kristen Berger, as head of the council’s middle school committee, was instrumental in making it a reality. She did not run for reelection partly because her child is entering high school, and high schools have a separate, citywide parent council.

Berger said she wasn’t surprised by the election outcomes. The middle school plan was contentious, and it came on the heels of a rezoning in the district, which shifted attendance boundaries around some sought-after elementary schools partly in an attempt to spur diversity.

“Politically, the pendulum always swings. So when there’s a policy change, the people who are activated and motivated are those affected by the policy — and usually those most upset about the policy,” she said.

Now she’s worried that progress will stall when it comes to integrating middle schools. The integration plan, she said, “was really thought of as just a starting point and that it could expand from there.” Intentionally modest from the outset, given intense push back from some parents, the goal of the plan was to look at data and learn from family experiences each year. Along the way, the council hoped to tweak the admissions standards to open up more schools to more students.

“So I would be very disappointed if it doesn’t get that opportunity because I think that would be so much better for the students and the schools in the district,” Berger said.

With the elections shifting the makeup of CECs, Berger said the mayoral election is crucial to advancing efforts like the one in District 3, since the next mayor and chancellor ultimately decide whether they will follow the advice of the councils.

Liu said electeds would be wise to heed the CECs. As gifted programs have increasingly become a target for significant reform, the new CEC in District 3 includes a parent from the Anderson School, one of the city’s most competitive gifted schools. Another is from P.S. 163, which is phasing out its gifted program.

“These elected officials and these candidates, they better pay attention. Parents are starting to push back,” he said. “I think that’s what these elections showed.”

‘There’s asymmetries in access’

But Robin Broshi, who was reelected to the council in District 2, which stretches from Lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side, questioned how representative the election results really are. PLACE candidates swept the election in the district, leaving Broshi as the sole council member who has opposed the group’s agenda.

When it came to voting this year, Broshi worried that many families may have not been able to easily navigate the online ballot. She also pointed to the advantage that some larger schools may have had in getting candidates elected.

“There’s asymmetries in access,” she said.

The voting process this year changed significantly, expanding to all parents with children in city-run public schools — rather than just a handful of Parent Teacher Association leaders, as was the case previously.

The aim of the changes was to make the elections more democratic by opening the ballot box to more parents. Yet it came in the midst of a crushing pandemic, when many families’ attention may have been elsewhere. The CECs are relatively obscure bodies, and parents had to sift through an overwhelming roster of more than 100 candidates in some districts. Most voting happened online, which could disadvantage those with limited access to technology or the internet. Some of the city’s districts with the highest shares of low-income students — areas that also have been hard-hit by COVID — cast significantly fewer ballots.

In District 3, Liu was the top vote-getter with more than 700 votes. In East New York’s District 19, which includes roughly the same number of students but has more than double the poverty rate, the top vote-getter garnered 39 votes. The education department did not respond to repeated requests for voter data broken down by the school that the parent’s child attends.

“Turnout in general was so low, but where was turnout so high?” Broshi asked. “It’s easy to rally a group of people around their anxiety that they’re losing access to a benefit for their children, or an advantage for their children.”

Broshi acknowledged it’s important to listen to formal institutions like the CECs, or organized bodies like PTAs, but said she hopes the education department will also consider “who doesn’t end up at the table.” She was concerned that could include parents who feel targeted by the harsh rhetoric that has become commonplace at CEC meetings, which have become bruising and full of personal attacks from the public and fellow council members.

Broshi suspects that parents who sought appointments to the council from the borough president, who can install two members, will withdraw themselves from consideration given the shift on the CEC in District 2.

“It’s going to remove people from the conversation, I think, from the CEC level because of the toxic, vitriolic rhetoric,” she said.

At some coveted Manhattan high schools, admissions changes dramatically alter incoming freshman class

2021-05-21T18:55:21+00:00

Admissions to New York City’s high schools veered from the usual script this year: The education department eliminated geographic preferences that allowed one Manhattan district — which includes some of the city’s wealthiest ZIP codes — to maintain its own set of elite high schools.

The local stronghold on those six coveted and highly selective schools in District 2, spanning areas such as TriBeCa, Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side, appears to have been broken for next year’s incoming freshman class.

At the Upper East Side’s Eleanor Roosevelt High School, roughly 62% of the offers were made to students outside of the district, according to education department data released Friday. The year before, only 1% of teens outside the district received offers to the high performing high school. At Baruch College Campus High School in Gramercy, 42% of seats went to students outside of the district, up 2% from the previous year.

With offers being made to students who live farther afield, the number of students from low-income families also increased. It tripled to 50% at Eleanor Roosevelt, and rose from 36% to 66% at Baruch. Across the district, offers to students eligible for free or reduced lunch rose from 47% last year to 60%, according to the education department. (Citywide, roughly 72% of students are from low-income families.)

“This is a pretty remarkable change, but not altogether unexpected,” said Sean Corcoran, a Vanderbilt University professor who has researched New York City admissions. “The District 2 high schools are some of the most desired in the city, and the number of potential applicants beyond District 2 far exceeds the number of applicants within District 2.”

When it comes to race and class, New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country, a status driven partly by its admissions practices. The city is home to a higher share of “screened” schools that base admissions off of academic records than anywhere else in the nation. The competitive and complicated process of applying to these selective high schools favors families with the resources and savvy to navigate the system, which often means they tend to enroll fewer Black, Latino, and low-income students.

District 2’s high schools are especially segregated, with almost quadruple the enrollment of white students compared to the citywide average. The district has been mired in a fight over the fate of preserving the geographic priority of these schools, with some principals calling on the city to eliminate it, while some parents have mounted efforts to fiercely guard it.

The high school application process was designed to open access to students regardless of their ZIP codes, but nearly 50 schools give priority to students based on whether they lived or attended a middle school within a particular district. The city permanently changed that this year. Other geographic priorities that give admissions preferences to students within the school’s borough, for instance, will be eliminated in the coming admissions cycle.

The sought-after high schools in District 2 and elsewhere across the city, however, did not eliminate other selective criteria. Since many of the measures these schools typically use for admissions were upended by the coronavirus pandemic — such as state test scores, grades, and attendance — the city allowed them to rely on academic records from before the health crisis struck.

Families still struggled with the application process this year, and many observers said that information about changes was confusing and hard to come by.

“Every student should have access to every school in the city,” said Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411, helping parents navigate their options. “But the way the DOE made drastic changes mid-season, with no advance notice to affected families added even more stress and anxiety to an already chaotic season.”

As students awaited their high school offers, another glitch occurred, similar to what happened with middle school admission, where some placements were erroneously posted to the city’s online portal, and then quickly pulled.

That only frayed nerves even more, Stein said.

Overall, nearly 78,000 eighth graders applied to high schools, which was essentially flat from the year before. The dip in kindergarten applications was much steeper at 12%, and applications for middle school — where academic screens were eliminated for this year’s admissions cycle — dropped nearly 6%.

Roughly 73% of high school applicants received an offer to one of their top three choices, the data showed, holding steady from the previous year.

NYC parent council elections reflect bitter school integration divides

2021-05-19T19:19:17+00:00

New York City’s Community Education Councils have emerged in recent years as an instrumental platform — and a battleground — when it comes to changing admissions policies in attempts to integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

So when the election process changed this year for these parent-led councils, advocates on all sides of the integration fight seized the opportunity to gain power.

As the electorate for the normally under-the-radar elections expanded from only a handful of PTA leaders at each school to all public school parents citywide, the races became mired in some of the same divisive politics that have consumed the country and a new level of rancor and politicking emerged. In the end, the votes of about 22,000 parents — just 2% of eligible families — could have long-lasting consequences for the city’s school diversity plans.

Now some advocates who fought to expand the voting process for the nine-member councils are anxiously awaiting results, due any day now. They fear that momentum for integration will slow, or grind to a halt, as a group of parents hoping to maintain selective admissions policies, which are often blamed for exacerbating segregation, pushed to win seats.

“I’m a little bit worried,” said Shino Tanikawa, a longtime parent advocate who lobbied the state for the voting changes and has also supported efforts to reform the city’s admissions policies. “I think for this round of elections, it’s tipping the scale for more privileged parents who are going to vote for protecting the system and the status quo.”

She is concerned that the pandemic affected turnout, especially in areas hardest hit by COVID-19, where parents had priorities other than reading through the platforms of more than 1,700 candidates — a record according to the education department. Though there were some in-person voting sites, ballots for the 36 councils were cast mostly online, which may have been tricky for those who aren’t tech savvy or have less access to stable internet connections.

Lucas Liu, on the other hand, is hopeful the elections will help make inroads for parents aligned with him.

He’s co-president of the advocacy group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, which formed last school year partly in protest to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s push to change admissions to the city’s prestigious specialized high schools, which enroll strikingly few Black and Latino students. PLACE members argue that the way to make competitive school programs more reflective of the city’s diversity is to expand access to accelerated instruction by, for example, opening more gifted and talented classrooms. Those approaches, however, have so far done little to move the needle.

PLACE homed in on the races for the councils as a way to further its agenda. The group issued recommendations for about 100 preferred candidates running for more than 20 different councils — sometimes with explicit suggestions for the order that parents should rank them. Families got one ballot per child that allowed them to vote for up to three candidates.

“I hope we’ll get more members who listen to parents,” said Liu, who is also running for reelection in Manhattan’s District 3, covering the Upper West Side and part of Harlem. “Everyone wants diversity and equity. ... It’s more how we get there that people disagree with.”

Getting integration efforts off the ground

Throughout de Blasio’s tenure, attempts to reform admissions have been met with fierce resistance, especially when it comes to the city’s specialized high schools and gifted classes. Both enroll starkly few Black and Latino students, and are seen as a way to draw white and middle-class families to public schools. But the programs are majority Asian, setting up a complicated and polarizing debate around race, class, and what it means to integrate schools.

Echoing national trends, tensions have also flared over whether the curricula in schools is reflective of the city’s non-white students. Throughout the pandemic, parents have battled over grading policies, COVID-19 testing in schools, and requiring teachers to head back to classrooms. These divides have trickled down to the education councils.

The parent-run CECs launched in 2004, essentially replacing 32 local school boards when the city transitioned from having a Board of Education to mayoral control, putting the mayor in charge of the school system. Though they don’t have the budget and policy power that the boards had, the CECs have been a place where parents have tried to clawback influence in a system where most decisions fall on the mayor to make.

Their presence has been felt in the push to diversify schools, getting integration plans off the ground in the face of little willingness or support from the education department and the mayor.

In Manhattan’s District 1 on the Lower East Side, the CEC led the charge for the first district-wide integration plan during de Blasio’s tenure, securing changes to how elementary students are assigned to schools. In District 3 on the Upper West Side and Harlem, the CEC cobbled together support for changes to middle school admissions. In both districts, parents organized information sessions, solicited feedback in surveys, demanded data from the education department, and eventually convinced the city to change its policies.

Even before the most recent elections, some of the councils had already become deeply divided. In District 2 — spanning TriBeCa, Chinatown, and the Upper East Side — PLACE members and others with opposing views on the CEC spent much of this year mired in dueling resolutions calling for symbolic changes, such as calling on the education department to drop the use of attendance records in competitive middle school admissions.

At the height of the pandemic, the arguments grew so bitter that conservative news channels took notice, decrying “wokeness” and liberalism run amok. One member posted another’s home address on Twitter, and the council voted to demote the former president — a co-founder of PLACE.

Advocates on all sides watching these developments saw the elections as an opportunity.

Along with an expansion in voting this year came a raft of new rules around campaigning. Candidates are prohibited from soliciting or accepting endorsements or running with other candidates on a slate. Parents who pushed for the new voting structure said they hoped the rules would help level the playing field and attract a wider swath of parents to run. In the end, however, the rules often felt confusing and limiting while trying to mount a campaign.

In addition to PLACE’s endorsements, a progressive caucus of the teacher’s union called MORE did the same. The caucus stands in staunch opposition to many of the policies endorsed by PLACE, blasting the city’s reopening plans as unsafe and supporting admissions reform.

MORE’s involvement sparked complaints that education department employees were inappropriately meddling in the local elections. Meanwhile, some criticized PLACE’s efforts, especially as many members of the group were running for CECs. (Liu said the members who compiled the candidate lists were not running, and the group’s website said they did not directly talk to candidates to make their list.)

Candidates say they received sternly worded emails from the education department warning that rule violations could result in “private or public censure, or disqualification.” Some rushed to delete posts, others questioned whether they were even allowed to speak to fellow candidates.

The education department would not say if any formal complaints were filed, or whether violations were issued — leaving some wondering what good the regulations are without enforcement.

National flashpoints filter down

Previously, CEC candidates did little more than attend a forum and answer questions from PTA members about school zoning and budgets. But as voting this year moved online, campaigning did, too. And some national flash points — such as school reopenings during the pandemic and teaching about structural racism — have filtered down to local school politics and injected some ugliness into the process.

One Black mom from District 30 in Queens decided to run for the education council after attending some anti-bias workshops put on by the council. She’s now second guessing her decision to run.

The mom, who requested anonymity because she fears retribution, said she campaigned on support of policies she feels are anti-racist — issues important to her since District 30 spans luxury apartments in Long Island City and the mammoth Queensbridge public housing complex.

But she soon found herself caught up in Facebook groups and Twitter posts that often veered into blatant racism, with parents suggesting that Black students are underrepresented in gifted classrooms because their families don’t value education. Other parents seemed to worry that a rezoning of a handful of local elementary schools under consideration in District 30 could bring more poor students into higher-income neighborhoods.

“I can’t believe people get away with saying stuff like that publicly,” she said.

It’s likely that the CEC races would have gotten polarized even without the change in voting structure this year, given the tensions that have been building in the city throughout de Blasio’s tenure and throughout the country. Whether the councils can hold onto any momentum of influence they’ve managed to build will ride on who gets elected as the next mayor.

De Blasio’s term is up this year, and it’s widely expected that the next mayor will install his or her own chancellor. Candidates have been repeatedly asked about their stances on the specialized high schools, admissions for gifted programs, and whether middle and high schools should be allowed to use competitive admissions screens — all issues that tie back to segregation in the city’s schools.

“If you have a new mayor who comes in and really values the voice of the CECs, it could be influential,” said NeQuan McLean, a longtime parent leader in Brooklyn’s District 16, covering Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Liu, the PLACE co-president, said he “absolutely” thinks the CECs will be a force to be reckoned with.

“We can certainly rally parents. We can certainly speak out. We can certainly make noise,” he said. “Our job is to advocate.”

Big changes to this year’s middle school admissions process yielded modest demographic shifts

2021-05-11T20:26:37+00:00

More than 66,000 New York City fifth graders found out Tuesday where they got into middle school after going through an admissions process unlike any year.

For the first time, the city dropped academic screens at all middle schools. Integration advocates had long called for such changes, but Mayor Bill de Blasio hesitated until the pandemic forced his hand. He paused academic admissions screens at middle schools this year, as some of the measures used — including grades, test scores, attendance, student interviews, and auditions for performing arts programs — were upended since the coronavirus swept through the city last March.

Overall, the number of applicants dropped nearly 6%, echoing the larger trend of the school system losing students this year.

Removing screens moved the needle a bit when it came to economically disadvantaged students going to highly selective school programs, according to the admissions data. The city’s 50 most selective school programs offered an average of 48% of its seats to students from low-income families, up from 41% the previous year, according to Katie O’Hanlon, an education department spokesperson. Students learning English as a new language received an average 7% of offers at those programs, compared to 3% last year.

“Let’s not exaggerate this — these are modest improvements,” said Stefan Lallinger, a fellow at The Century Foundation think tank, who leads a nationwide initiative to encourage school integration. “But what it does indicate [is] that in many cases for some of the most selective schools out there, you have students and families who had wanted to attend certain schools and they were perceived off limits for them — and those families were able to take advantage of the new enrollment for this year.”

New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the nation, due in part to its admissions practices. The roughly 40% of middle schools that screened students before this year’s pause switched to a lottery if they had more applicants than available seats. (“District priorities,” giving preference to students living within a certain district, remained in place.)

Lottery systems alone don’t tend to significantly boost diversity at schools, especially in districts that are not socioeconomically or racially diverse, Lallinger said. Integration is more successful in places with explicit goals for enrolling a more diverse group of students — such as the system in Brooklyn’s District 15 which three years ago dropped admissions screens for a lottery system giving preference to students from certain disadvantaged groups.

Additionally, while more families had access to schools they perceived as “off-limits,” many may have become accustomed to applying to the same set of schools, Lallinger said. They may not have had access to the information they needed to navigate changes in admissions — already a complicated and stressful process in New York City, but especially during a pandemic.

“You have families in New York City who have so many other preoccupations in a year of COVID-19, that seeking out detailed information on the way in which the admissions process has changed has not been on the top of the list,” Lallinger said.

Still, demographic changes for incoming sixth grade offers were more pronounced at some of the city’s most selective middle schools, according to the education department.

Students who are eligible for free and reduced priced lunch received 52% of offers at Manhattan’s Professional Performing Arts School — an increase of 30 percentage points. At Brooklyn’s Mark Twain intermediate School for the Gifted and Talented, 46% of offers went to low-income students, compared to 35% last year.

Children who are learning English as a new language received 16% of offers at Brooklyn’s coveted Christa McAuliffe School, compared to just 5% last year. Just 5% of English learners were offered spots at Brooklyn’s I.S. 98 Bay Academy last year, but that increased to 12% this year.

Families have been eagerly awaiting middle school offers. Parents grew frustrated when, in late April, some students’ offers were mistakenly posted to the city’s online portal, which were quickly pulled.

Of the 66,516 fifth-graders who applied for middle school, 89% percent of them received one of their top three choices, compared to 87% last year, according to education department figures.

Changes could be in store again. Just over 60% of students are still learning remotely full-time. Not only were these students not required to go into school buildings to take state tests this year, but also in-person students had to opt in to the exams. That may mean significantly fewer children are taking this year’s tests.

Middle school admissions to selective schools often rely on fourth grade state test scores, among other measures.

City officials are “evaluating and will continue to assess” what admissions should look like next year, said O’Hanlon.

Once again, few Black, Latino students admitted to NYC’s prestigious specialized high schools

2021-04-29T18:15:35+00:00

The number of Black and Latino students admitted to the city’s vaunted specialized high schools dipped this year, a blow to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s long-running and largely unsuccessful goal of making the schools more reflective of New York City’s diversity.

Black and Latino students, who make up almost 70% of the city school system, received 9% of offers for the 2021-22 school year. That is down from 11% the year before, according to education department data released Thursday.

Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter held up the results as another reminder that state law requiring an entrance exam as the sole basis of admissions — the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT — should be repealed and replaced with a “more equitable” process.

“I know from my 21 years as an educator that far more students could thrive in our Specialized High Schools, if only given the chance,” Porter said in a statement. “Instead, the continued use of the Specialized High School Admissions Test will produce the same unacceptable results over and over again, and it’s far past the time for our students to be fairly represented in these schools.”

Just 3.6% of offers went to Black students, while 5.4% went to Latino students. Last school year, Black and Latino students received 4.5% and 6.6% of offers, respectively.

Only one Black student was admitted to Staten Island Tech’s incoming freshman class.

Almost 54% of offers went to Asian students and just under 28% went to white students. White students make about 15% of the school system, while 16% of all students identify as Asian.

Eight of the city’s specialized high schools — including Stuyvesant, Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn Tech — require a top score on the SHSAT for admission. Many opponents blame the test for the schools remaining largely white and Asian. The schools are considered some of the most prestigious in the country, but studies have shown that students with similar qualifications who attend other high schools earn comparable SAT scores and college offers.

De Blasio has spent much of his two terms proposing reforms that have done little to budge the needle when it comes to admitting more Black and Latino students. The coronavirus pandemic may have further contributed to the lack of representation in this year’s class. Amid an overall drop in the number of test-takers this year by about 4,000, to roughly 23,500 students, the vast majority of the decline was among Black and Latino students.

Education officials suggested that fewer students took the test because city schools lost roughly 43,000 children across the board, as families left the public school system at higher than usual rates.

The dip in test-takers, however, also likely resulted from major changes in how the test was administered during the pandemic. First, it was given in January, months later than is typical. To account for social distancing, it was offered at every middle school as opposed to a handful of sites, as usual — causing big logistical challenges for principals, whose school buildings were shuttered at the time amid a spike in COVID-19 rates. They had to administer the high-stakes test in person to eighth graders, who were learning exclusively from home this winter.

Black students made up an even smaller share of test-takers this year, down roughly 1,200 students, or almost 1.5 percentage points to 18.5% of all test-takers. The share of Latino students who took the test dipped even further, and was down by almost two percentage points, to 22.8%. Roughly 1,500 fewer Latino students sat for the test.

Meanwhile, even though Asian students had the highest rates of fully remote learning, the share of Asian test-takers grew by about three percentage points, to 34.7%. The overall number of Asian test-takers dropped by about 560 students, but as in past years, Asian students remained most likely to take the SHSAT. Nearly 430 fewer white students sat for the exam this year, but the share of white test-takers grew slightly, from just over 17% to 18.4%.

While advocates for more diverse schools had hoped that the city would press pause on administering the test during the pandemic, de Blasio did not directly answer whether he made any attempts to lobby the state to waive the admissions requirement this year. Other cities have pivoted in response to COVID-19. In Boston, for example, the city decided it wasn’t safe to administer an in-person test for admission to its prestigious exam schools, and will temporarily admit students based on a combination of a student’s grade point average and their ZIP code.

To diversify the schools, de Blasio proposed three years ago to scrap the exam and admit the city’s top middle school students based on a combination of their state test scores and report card grades. But the test is required under state law, and de Blasio unsuccessfully lobbied state lawmakers to consider changes. The movement to keep the test is backed by wealthy benefactors, who also called for creating more specialized schools and expanding subsidized test preparation.

De Blasio also faced fierce pushback from some white and Asian families, who felt the changes would unfairly undercut their chances for admission. The mayor has admitted that he failed to engage enough on his proposed changes with Asian New Yorkers, many of whom are recent immigrants who see the schools as a way for their children to get into a top college.

Last year, buoyed by a national reckoning over racial discrimination, some state lawmakers took a different approach by proposing to repeal the 1971 law associated with the test, instead of changing it as de Blasio had proposed. The original law, which took away the city’s power to change admissions, was passed just as the chancellor at the time announced an investigation into whether the test was discriminatory against Black and Latino students. That repeal bill has not gained momentum.

The de Blasio administration has also tried to change the makeup of the schools by tweaks to the Discovery program, a summer course that offers admission to students who just miss the cutoff score on the SHSAT. Education officials said that 800 seats will be set aside for incoming ninth graders through the program. Discovery has not resulted in notable changes in demographics at the schools, and the program is the subject of a lawsuit that is still winding its way through the courts.

This year’s admissions season has been especially stressful for families and students, and the release of admissions offers on Thursday only continued that trend. The education department said that some students would have to wait another day to learn whether they had been accepted to the specialized schools, due to a technical glitch with Microsoft that made it impossible to open emails containing admissions offers. Students who didn’t apply to the specialized high schools should expect to receive their offers in late May.

IMPORTANT: Due to a Microsoft-related issue, some families were not able to open the email with their child’s SHSAT results.
🔹We will send you a new email by tomorrow, 4/30
🔹If you didn't yet receive an email with your child’s results, your email will arrive by tomorrow, 4/30
— NYC Public Schools (@NYCSchools) April 29, 2021

Also on Thursday, a separate snafu led to some students’ middle school acceptances being posted to the city’s online portal. The information was then quickly removed. The education department said the offers are valid but that they were accidentally posted early — middle school admissions results aren’t expected until early May. Only about .3% of students were able to access their offers before they were removed, according to an education department official.

Meisha Porter’s NYC agenda: Bold summer school plans, enrichment for all students

2021-03-11T18:11:04+00:00

Incoming New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter promises to make clear and frequent communication her hallmark.

The Queens native and veteran Bronx educator — who will be the first Black woman to become New York’s schools chancellor — aims to kick start planning for next year as soon as she officially assumes the helm of the nation’s largest school district on March 15.

But before she tackles September, she’s working out the details for summer school, and is hoping to do something more ambitious than the city has seen before: opening it up to as many students as possible, not just those who have fallen behind academically.

“Every single student in New York City lost out on their school year, so we need to think about all of our learners,” Porter said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We absolutely need to prioritize students who have special needs. We need to prioritize students who have significant loss, but we also need to think about how every student hasn’t been in a classroom.”

The city will likely see an infusion in cash to help with such programs from the federal pandemic relief package passed this week. As a high poverty school district, New York City may see more than $2,500 per student. States are also expected to get billions to help schools address learning loss and create after-school and summer school programs.

Porter is now working on a plan to address gaps in learning caused by school building shutdowns and remote learning challenges, and may be looking at gifted programs for inspiration.

“My philosophy leans in on acceleration and enrichment for all students,” Porter said.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

> First let’s talk about your leadership style. We’ve heard from advocates and families that you show up in person to events that officials in your position don’t normally show up to. Why do you make it a point to be present?

When I was a principal, I probably didn’t do my work of the day until after 3 p.m. because I thought it was super important for me to be visible for students, for families, for my teachers. So I was always out. I think people have stepped up in ways that I’ve asked them to because they know I’m going to step up with them.

> Based on what you’ve been hearing from school communities about how this year is going, what is your top priority for the remainder of this year? We still have a third of the school year left.

The thing I hear most from folks is that they want to know what’s going on and what’s happening. And there’s a lot of things changing every day. So, I just think it’s important to communicate regularly, communicate clearly, to be a part of conversations because most of the concerns people have are about what they don’t know or about what they want to know.

> Speaking of what people don’t know, let’s talk about summer school: When is there going to be a plan about summer school, and when is it going to be communicated to families?

I really want this summer to be a holistic program, that we address academics, that we address social emotional needs, and that we address enrichment opportunities for students. What I believe about this summer, and I think everyone would agree, it cannot be like summers past, just like the school year can’t be like school years past. We really need to dig into creating a holistic summer school opportunity for students that really kickstarts the school year for them and gets them excited for coming back.

We’re in the planning process now, and I hope to unveil something really soon.

> And do you have any sense about whether it would be in person?

Yes, some of it will absolutely be in person. As much of it as we can do in person is going to be important, but we also know there will be some families and some things that we need to do remotely.

> Will it only be for kids who have incompletes or are behind or will it be a wider thing that anyone can opt into?

We’re still planning. But for me, it absolutely should be a wider thing.

Every single student in New York City lost out on their school year, so we need to think about all of our learners. We absolutely need to prioritize students who have special needs. We need to prioritize students who have significant loss, but we also need to think about how every student hasn’t been in a classroom, so what are the opportunities we’re creating?

That’s a space where we can really partner with our city agencies, our community-based partners, nonprofits to think about how are we expanding summer opportunities across the city. I think so many people want to wrap themselves around our babies, and this is a good time to partner with them on that.

> Is summer school going to be part of the regular school year?

I know there’s been talk about extending the school year. We’re still figuring it out.

> I do want to talk about this trust issue. How do you hope to address the families who have been afraid to return to campus? Seventy percent of families stayed home — that’s a lot of people.

I’m a parent, too. I had to make the same decision, and in my house, it was a split decision. My husband was ‘stay home,’ and I was ‘go to school.’ And my goddaughter, who’s in 10th grade, was like, ‘I gotta go to school.’ We made a decision as a family that we thought was best for her as a learner. I will always lean into that because I will always really honor that conversation that is happening at home among families.

But I want families to be encouraged: the data speaks for itself. Our [coronavirus] positivity rate is incredibly low.

> Like you said earlier, people want to know things. It’s March, and people want to know what’s happening next year. The mayor has said there’s going to be a remote option next year, but no one knows what that’s going to look like. Is it going to be something that’s centrally run or that individual schools will run?

Yes, schools need to know. Families need to know. Right now, I don’t have the answer.

What I can say is that the goal is to get as many students in person five days a week as we can and as many that want to. The remote option we’re still grappling with what that will look like. We have to lean into conversations with principals, with teachers and with families around what they need from us.

We started this conversation off with: communicate more, communicate often — that’s what I intend to do. Because I know how long it took for some decisions to be made, but it was also because we were in a very different place a year ago than we are today. We are in a much more promising space now. So I think we will be able to make decisions quicker and communicate sooner. The union partners, [for principals and teachers], are ready to jump into planning forward. That’s how I plan to kick off my official start week, with beginning to plan forward for September.

> Talking about the COVID-acheivement gap, whatever that is, we’re seeing people advocate for different approaches, like remediation versus acceleration. What’s your philosophy for catching kids up?

My philosophy leans in on acceleration and enrichment for all students. I’m a Bronx girl, I led in the Bronx —there are definitely communities that continue to be disproportionately affected and we need to lean into those spaces, but we can’t forget all of our students in New York City.

> There’s always a tension between education department decision-making coming out of Tweed and individual school decision-making. So, for example, the federal government is setting aside 20% of education funding for learning loss. In terms of making those plans, is that going to be a school-level decision or will Tweed come up with a menu of options?

More to come on that. But what I will say is that I will always lean into my experiences from the schoolhouse to the district office to the chancellor’s office. I know how important it is — how decisions made at Tweed affect all those places.

> You mentioned all the different issues kids are facing. What’s your opinion on state tests and whether kids should take them this year?

I think we have to have a way of assessing where our students are academically. I don’t know if it’s just the state test. I think there are a lot of ways to do that.

> Let’s touch on segregation. New York City’s schools aren’t just segregated by race but also segregated by academic ability. Chancellor Richard Carranza previously said screening is “antithetical” to public education. Do you agree?

I think that segregation is real in New York City and real in our school system. I’m not going to shy away from the really hard conversations that we need to have around increasing access and opportunities to students in New York City. There are gifted students across this city and we need to make sure that we are addressing and creating opportunities for acceleration for all students. G&T is going to be something I jump right into.

I also want to honor that we have to communicate with families around this conversation and we have to have a plan that is inclusive and acknowledges all of our communities.

> That makes me think of differentiation, which is just good educational practice, but this year more than any other year, teachers have to differentiate even more because people are learning from their homes and home lives are different. The need for differentiation has amped up. It feels so difficult right now to be a teacher.

I want to shout out all the teachers across the world, but of course definitely in New York City. I come from a family of teachers and I know how hard it is in this moment. But I would also acknowledge that we have learned some things remotely that we’re going to bring in our classrooms around identifying individual student learning needs and really being able to support and identify individual gaps that students are having, and how we leverage that learning and bring that back into our new school year is going to be important.

> Do you have anything more specific on how remote learning has been able to help identify where the gaps are?

In the remote world, as crazy as it feels, there’s been more one-to-one interaction, more small group instruction, so teachers have been getting directly in with students. There’s been more direct communication, and I think our students have felt more empowered to communicate what they need from their teachers.

I also will add that parents have been a bigger part of the classroom because the classroom is in the living room or the dining room or the kitchen, and so mom and dad are hearing. How we make those connections bridge into our new school year is going to be important.

> A school safety question: Do you think the school safety division has the correct number of officers? Would you advocate growing it or shrinking it?

I need to think more about that. I will say that in my relationship as a principal, the school safety officers were always amazing and part of my team. So I think having clear relationships with school staff and school safety officers is going to be important, so I’m looking forward to what we’ll do in that area.

> Which of the system’s inequities do you think is most overlooked?

I think we’re addressing a lot of things: we’re addressing enrollment, we’re addressing screens, we’re looking at G&T. I think we have to address curricula and how students see themselves and show up in the curricula they experience everyday.

Here’s how NYC will admit students to ‘gifted’ programs for 2021

2021-02-18T00:59:43+00:00

New York City will not test rising kindergarteners for admission to gifted programs, the education department announced Wednesday. Instead, students will be evaluated by their pre-K teacher or sign up for an interview.

Students will then be referred for admission and enter a random lottery for one of the 2,500 seats. There are 65,000 incoming kindergarteners, and typically about 15,000 vie for spots in gifted programs.

The change is for students entering school in fall 2021 only. It comes after the education department was left scrambling to devise a new admissions system for next school year. In a surprise vote last month, a citywide panel rejected a contract that would have allowed the city to continue testing preschoolers for admission to gifted programs, amid concerns about racial disparities in enrollment and the safety of administering an in-person test in the midst of a pandemic.

The education department did not share what criteria students would be evaluated on, which could raise questions about how students with different abilities, such as those who are learning English as a new language, might be judged.

The now-canceled admissions exam has long been blamed for driving segregation, with critics charging that tests for 4-year-olds are more likely to measure a family’s advantage than a student’s giftedness. Black and Latino students make up almost 60% of all kindergartners citywide, but only 14% of enrollment in gifted programs. At 43%, the greatest share of students in gifted classes are Asian. White students are also overrepresented at 36% of enrollment. Just over a quarter come from low-income families, compared with almost 70% citywide.

A memo written by education department officials this summer stated that sticking with the test this year would likely widen disparities because of the health crisis, which has fallen disproportionately on communities of color. Still, Mayor Bill de Blasio planned to forge ahead with the exam for one last year, pledging to scrap it after collecting ideas for reform from parents, advocates, and educators.

But the citywide Panel for Educational Policy, whose members are mostly appointed by the mayor and are largely thought to rubber stamp his policies, threw a wrench in those plans, voting to reject a contract extension that would have allowed the city to administer the exam this spring.

“We remain committed to finding a fairer and more equitable way forward to identify and meet the needs of students who would benefit from accelerated learning and enrichment, informed by a citywide engagement plan,” said education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon. “We believe deeply that wide scale changes are needed to address the racial disparities in who has access to [gifted and talented] programs.”

This year’s changes are no guarantee that admissions will be any more fair.

Parents will have to opt-in to consideration for the program, which could disadvantage families with little information or resources about how to navigate the application process.

If a student is enrolled in the city’s universal pre-K program, then the pre-K teacher will complete a questionnaire to determine whether the student should be referred for gifted admission. There are wide racial disparities in which students have been attending school in person this year, with white students overrepresented. Those with more time in the classroom with teachers could be at an advantage for referrals.

Students who aren’t in a pre-K program can sign up to be interviewed by staffers in the education department’s division of early childhood. With pre-K enrollment down by 13% this year, that could include a significant number of students. Interviews will happen remotely, opening up challenges for families who don’t have reliable access to internet or electronic devices.

M. Rene Islas, former executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children, said he was unaware of any empirical support for identifying such young students for gifted programs in a remote setting. In addition to issues with access to technology, he said that allowing evaluators to peer into the homes of young children could also introduce biases if, for example, a student is living in a crowded apartment.

“I’m really worried about that,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to help with equity.”

Both parent nominations and teacher referrals for gifted programs have been shown to result in underrepresentation of Black, Latino, and low-income students. However, those disparities are basically erased for Black children when they have a Black teacher — and many pre-K classrooms are led by women of color.

“They’re trading one inequitable screen for another,” said Allison Roda, an assistant professor at Molloy College, who has studied New York City’s gifted programs and has advocated for their reform.

Since gifted classrooms are already unrepresentative, another potential knock against the program becoming much more diverse this year is that children with a sibling already enrolled in a school with a gifted program will continue to receive a priority in admissions.

Even this year’s lottery system could have only a limited effect, if the pool of interested families isn’t diverse. In a typical year, the racial and economic breakdown of those applying for a spot in gifted do not reflect the city as a whole. There are ways to try to make lotteries result in more diversity, by giving certain students a preference in admissions, which some schools for gifted students do.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the think tank The Century Foundation and a proponent of reforming the city’s approach to gifted education, called this year’s changes only “marginally” more fair.

“At least it is no longer based on a single standardized test to be administered in-person during a pandemic. But it’s ultimately tinkering around the edges of a broken system,” she said.

New York City’s gifted classrooms are an outlier in many respects. Few other school districts start programming as early as kindergarten, and only about 10% use a model that separates children into completely different classrooms.

Islas said ideally children would have multiple ways to be identified for admission, with multiple entry points throughout a student’s time in school. Many districts start programming around second grade. He said that expanding access to gifted programs in student’s home schools, with support and training for teachers to meet their individual needs, could make the system more representative.

“There should be more investment there, as opposed to creating a few, finite magnet schools where only the privileged have an opportunity to learn,” he said.

O’Hanlon, the education department spokesperson, said the city looks forward “to a long-term transformation” of its gifted programs. In reality, it will likely be up to the next administration to take on that hefty task. De Blasio, who controls the education department, is in his last year as mayor. What to do about gifted programs has already become an issue among the crowded field of Democrats vying to replace him.

NYC high school applications are due soon. Will pandemic changes help or hurt school diversity efforts?

2021-02-12T16:54:53+00:00

The deadline is fast approaching for New York City’s rising freshman to apply to high schools, capping off an admissions season unlike any other.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced major changes this year, some of which were heralded for their potential to help chip away at segregation in the city’s schools. But the challenges of navigating the application process in an ongoing pandemic mean that information is harder to come by. Coupled with a shortened applications period, that could leave behind those who have fewer resources to navigate the system — setting the city back in its push for greater school diversity.

“We’re talking about this application process as if it’s business as usual,” said Yasmin Schwartz, an assistant director at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, a social service agency that, among many other things, helps guide families through the application process. “In terms of the support for the communities that really, really need that guidance and support, it’s not there.”

Sprint to the application deadline

One of the biggest hurdles to bolstering diversity at New York City high schools for next year’s freshman class may be time — or the lack of it. Applications are due March 1 for high school, and Feb. 23 for middle school, after the education department recently extended the deadlines.

The admissions process, which takes about three months in a typical year, has been basically cut in half, said Elyse Mitchell, who works with middle school students through Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics, or BEAM, a program for students interested in pursuing careers in science and engineering. Her organization helps families find the right schools for their applications.

“This is a crucial moment in a student’s pathway in their education. Some high schools in New York City don’t offer calculus,” she said. “If you are a student who wants to be a mathematician when they’re older, they need to take calculus.”

Parents and students had to wait for months to learn whether schools would be allowed to use selective admissions screens this year. The widespread use of these competitive admissions criteria is often blamed for driving New York City’s status as one of the most segregated school systems in the country. The most common screens — grades, attendance, and state test scores for last year’s fourth and seventh graders — were upended last spring.

But the practice will still continue this year, just with different considerations. For example, schools can no longer consider a student’s attendance records.

Mitchell had to sprint to help students tailor their applications around the new entrance criteria. All of a sudden, high schools were allowed to look at academic records as far back as sixth grade. That meant hunting down test scores and report card grades that were not automatically uploaded to students’ virtual accounts, and finding different schools to apply to depending on how those schools are weighing different screens.

“It’s just an array of ways that schools are gauging students, so we have to be very particular about the school recommendations we’re sending out,” she said. “If a school is weighing your sixth-grade grades more, and you didn’t have that great of a sixth grade year but you absolutely knocked it out of the park in the first part your seventh grade year, that’s a bummer for that student.”

Nevaeha Giscombe and her mother, DeQuander Cole-Giscombe.

One of Mitchell’s students, Nevaeha Giscombe, is considering some schools that require application essays and work samples. The 13-year-old and her mom are getting help from BEAM and their middle school; still the process still feels like a maze of virtual tours, application requirements, and deadlines.

“We didn’t realize how intense,” the process is, said her mom, DeQuander Cole-Giscombe. “I feel like we’re preparing for college.”

Grasping for information

Organizations that help families navigate the application process say they are often operating in an information vacuum this year.

“The lack of information is a whole other level,” said Raina Narita, who counsels low-income students through the application process with the nonprofit Breakthrough New York. “As the person who’s supposed to be the expert, it’s stressful. So I can’t imagine how the families are feeling.”

In a typical year, getting to know school options could mean hours spent criss-crossing the city, sometimes during the work day, with fares spent on buses and subways piling up. This year, online tours save families travel time and money, and may offer a better window into a school’s culture, featuring more student and staff voices throughout, said Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who helps parents navigate their options.

But even as school tours have gone virtual, there is no one-stop place to learn about these online events or find pre-recorded informational videos.

There is also no central place to check whether schools have changed their screens — and many have. The Beacon School in Manhattan will no longer use academic grades and test scores, but is instead asking students for an essay and portfolio of work. NYC iSchool has also dropped academic screens in favor of an online survey that asks why students want to attend the school.

Without a resource to check for these kinds of changes, students may have no idea that they could be newly eligible to apply to a school that is, for example, no longer limiting applicants to only those with top test scores.

With middle schools closed since November and not returning until the end of February, nonprofits have to counsel students fully online. Caroline Taveras, director of the Middle School Student Success Center, which is supported by the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, works with about 200 rising freshmen at the Abraham Lincoln campus. In a normal year, she said she might be able to pop into a classroom and share information and reminders with students lagging on their high school applications. Those quick interactions are hard to replicate through the computer screen.

“It’s usually easier to engage with the kids,” she said. “There are some walls that we’re hitting in terms of being able to constantly engage students and constantly let them know, ‘Hey, this is happening.’”

Schwartz, the assistant division director of middle schools at Cypress Hills, said she worried that many students may not even fill out applications this year. Teachers and nonprofits like hers are overwhelmed with pressing issues, including “spending hours upon hours trying to find kids — literally trying to find kids they haven’t seen online.”

Katie O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the education department, said that the city has held more than 20 “very well attended” training sessions for school guidance counselors helping students through the application process. Almost 14,000 families have attended online information sessions about middle and high school admissions this year. Officials also reached out to all of the city’s local education councils to help spread the word to parents about this year’s process.

“This entire school year has been one unlike any other and due to the pandemic, we are operating on a shorter than usual timeline for admissions. This does not mean there are any less resources for families and support for their various needs,” O’Hanlon said.

How will screening affect student diversity?

While some schools have dropped their admissions screens, plenty others have not. There is reason to worry that using academic records this year could worsen disparities, as schools are permitted to look at test scores from even further back in a student’s school career. (All middle schools, unlike high schools, have eliminated screens for this year’s cycle.)

The education department’s own analysis shows that one in six students fared at least one level worse on state tests in sixth grade versus their seventh grade year. In 2018, the year that the current crop of rising freshmen took their sixth grade English state tests, 35% of Black students and 38% of Latino students were rated proficient. For white and Asian students, it was 70% and 69%, respectively.

About 20 high schools have taken steps in recent years to proactively support diversity through admissions policies that give priority to vulnerable students, such as those coming from low-income families. But with roughly 400 high schools across New York City, the initiatives aren’t likely to have a widespread impact.

Will removing district boundaries change student’s decisions?

The elimination of district priorities citywide has the most potential to change student demographics. New York City students apply to high schools in a process that was intended to open up opportunities to attend schools outside their ZIP code. In practice, however, that opportunity was severely limited in some neighborhoods, where sought-after schools gave priority to students who lived in the surrounding district.

Many schools with high graduation rates and enviable course offerings were off limits, even to students with stellar academic records. Schools like Eleanor Roosevelt High School, on the Upper East Side, for instance, gave priority to students living in Manhattan’s District 2. Last year, every single seat was filled by students living in the district, which spans some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

“I cannot wait,” Taveras said of the change to geographic priority. “That opens up more opportunities and options that students can apply to.”

Taveras usually gives her students lists of schools to help narrow their search, focusing on those that are up to an hour away, have high graduation rates, and offer opportunities to take advanced classes. This year, the elimination of district priorities means that list is much longer, with many new options in Queens, where Taveras said some schools gave informal priorities to students living nearby.

“There’s a lot of hidden stuff. That’s where a lot of issues with screened schools and selectivity, that’s the problem,” she said. “It’s not written down. But we’ll go to open houses and they’ll say it.”

Those under-the-radar screens may also disappear for now since this year the education department will take responsibility for ranking students for admission, rather than schools themselves.

While promising, removing district priorities isn’t likely to change much for many other schools: those that can’t compete for top-performing students. The depth of screening in New York City has led to staggering academic segregation among schools, with well-performing students funneled into a tiny number of campuses that also tend to be racially isolated.

In many other schools, most incoming students will start below grade level. Concentrations of vulnerable students can make it harder for them to catch up, especially in segregated schools that lack the resources they need — and the connections to help secure them.

Mitchell called those disparities, which can result in fewer sports teams and clubs, advanced course offerings, or guidance support for students, “the root of the problem.”

“Removing district restrictions isn’t going to magically make the schools more diverse,” she said.

While the changes may open up more opportunities for high-achieving students in neighborhoods with fewer high school options to attend better-resourced schools, the question is how many students and families will take that chance. Students have sometimes faced racism at some of the city’s most selective schools, which are often disproportionately white or more affluent.

“Even though that’s opened the opportunity to put that school on your list and it will be a more reachable option, will that make sense for my student?” asked Narita, who wondered if her students would feel “comfortable and safe” at predominantly white schools. “I think that’s a question we’re going to really need to dig deeper into.”

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NYC education department said gifted testing could widen disparities. But the city forged ahead.

2021-01-23T01:43:33+00:00

Months before New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to move forward with testing for the city’s gifted track, education department officials recommended suspending the controversial exam amid the pandemic.

In a draft memo from July, the Office of Assessment at the education department noted that COVID-19 has hit low-income communities of color disproportionately hard, and administering the test could deepen divides in an already segregated gifted and talented program.

“Testing during this time could exacerbate inequities for an admissions program that is widely known to have disparate outcomes by race,” according to the memo, which was obtained by Chalkbeat. “The difference in performance by racial and/or socioeconomic group could be increased by the impact of the pandemic, as students face loss of loved ones, loss of family income, food instability, etc.”

Education department officials said the memo was “one of many iterations of potential proposals and options considered.” They refused to say whether the mayor, who controls the school system, had seen it.

Earlier this month, de Blasio announced the city would move forward with the test this spring, while promising to explore options for reform in his final year of office.

“We have been clear that this decision involved many stakeholders and subject experts, and was considered carefully over the course of several months as the pandemic evolved,” education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon said.

New York City is one of the only school systems in the nation that grants admission to gifted programs based on a single test given to toddlers before they enter kindergarten. Many blame the exam for the stark underrepresentation of Black and Latino students, who make up almost 60% of all kindergartners citywide, but only 14% of enrollment in gifted programs. At 43%, the greatest share of students in gifted classes are Asian, and many families see the program as a ticket to higher performing schools. White students are also overrepresented at 36% of enrollment, and gifted programs are often credited with keeping white and middle class families enrolled in public schools.

The memo calls the city’s gifted programs “part of New York City’s legacy of opposition to school integration.” It was circulated Friday among members of the Panel for Educational Policy, the board that approves school contracts. The panel is set to vote Wednesday on a $1.7 million deal to administer the gifted exam. Some members have already stated publicly that they would vote against the deal, and the memo “sparked an immediate request” for additional briefings by education department leaders, said panel chair Vanessa Leung.

“I think folks are focused on this piece around, ‘Do we have an alternative option’ for, an ability to apply for a seat at this point,” she said of fellow panel members.

The memo does not offer alternate ways to identify gifted students this year. It recommends extending the testing contract, noting that the city doesn’t have an alternative in place, but that an extension doesn’t limit the city’s decision on “whether, how, or when” to administer the exam in subsequent years.

The memo calls the current test a “valid and reliable measure of students’ abilities.” But it questions whether offering the test in 2021 “accurately measures students’ abilities, as they have been undergoing stress, trauma, and extraordinary circumstances during the COVID-19.” The memo cites research that found students struggled with concentration and feelings of depression in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Funding for testing “could be redistributed to programs providing more essential services to students,” the memo states.

De Blasio has said the city will collect feedback from parents and educators about how to reform the gifted program in the future. O’Hanlon said the city’s plan “seeks to create real, lasting change that acknowledges the inequities of this current system without inflicting a last-minute change for families.”

The memo lays out a possible way forward, calling for universal gifted screening in second grade, using different tools to identify gifted students with disabilities and those learning English as a new language — groups dramatically underrepresented in the city’s current gifted programs. Rather than segregating “gifted” students in stand-alone classrooms or schools, it recommends offering additional services in more integrated settings.

“The underlying assumption of this recommendation is that there are gifted/advanced students in every school in NYC, and all schools should evaluate their own students in order to serve them appropriately,” the memo states.

Panel for Educational Policy member Shannon Waite said the detailed memo made the city’s arguments about the need to continue the use of the exam during the pandemic “disingenuous.” She planned to vote against the contract.

“In briefings, the impetus for this particular [testing] contract amidst COVID has been that… they have not been able to come up with a viable solution or plan,” she said. “And you can actually see from that document that they have a quite detailed plan in place.”

A diverse Brooklyn district aims for more integrated middle schools

2021-01-21T23:31:22+00:00

Middle schools in a diverse corner of Brooklyn will implement admissions changes this year in hopes of creating more integrated classrooms.

At all 10 middle schools in District 13, students who come from low-income families or live in temporary housing will be given an admissions preference that applies to 57% of each school’s seats. That matches the average percentage of those students across the district, according to education department officials.

Since race and economic status are often intertwined, it’s possible the admissions preference leads to diversity when it comes to both race and income levels.

The move comes amid a dramatically changed landscape for this year’s middle school application process. Mayor Bill de Blasio eliminated competitive admissions “screens” across the five boroughs due to the coronavirus pandemic’s toll on children and because typical metrics selective schools use — state tests scores, grades and attendance — were not in play for last spring. Black and Latino students are underrepresented at screened schools, and de Blasio said ending selective admissions would bolster diversity in New York City, home to one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

But integration advocates have pointed out that eliminating screens alone is not likely to shift demographics. Parents still can decide where to apply to schools, and school choice rarely leads to integration. That is why District 13’s move is noteworthy: A lottery system that also reserves seats for high needs students could do even more to integrate classrooms in a district that spans the affluent neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo as well as gentrifying areas including Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“We know that offering greater opportunity and access for all students makes our schools stronger,” District 13 Superintendent Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “This initiative will help ensure our classrooms better reflect the rich diversity of our community and bring us one step closer to a fair admissions process.”

In District 13, white and more affluent families have flocked to just a handful of schools, including Arts and Letters 305 United, a joint elementary and middle school where 42% of students are white and only 22% come from low-income families. (The school was recently merged, a move that could help spur more diversity there.) Others have fled to charters like Community Roots and Brooklyn Prospect for middle school. At Satellite East Middle School, meanwhile, virtually all of the students are Black, Latino, or Asian, and 95% are from low-income families.

The number of white students in District 13 has ticked up in recent years, signaling potential changes on the horizon for the area’s schools. In other gentrifying parts of the city, schools have put admissions preferences in place to help preserve access for families who have historically relied on their local schools.

At The Urban Assembly Unison School, Principal Emily Paige said she has seen growing interest from families of different backgrounds, and Unison has intentionally worked with local elementary schools to create a more diverse pipeline of applicants. But she also wants to make sure that changing demographics don’t result in some communities getting pushed out.

“We don’t want to see that,” she said. She highlighted her school’s motto, “Where everyone has a seat at the table.”

“It feels amazing to be, now, in a district where we can say in this coming year every child will have a seat at the table across all of our schools,” Paige said.

New York City is home to the greatest share of schools that use selective admissions, or “screens,” to filter out students. Roughly 40% of middle schools use academic records, such as report card grades or test scores, to admit students. In District 13, all but two middle schools have relied on academic screens in previous years.

To get into many competitive middle schools, 10-year-olds and their families dive into a time-consuming, convoluted application process that involves touring and ranking schools — and, in previous years, submitting portfolios, taking exams, or doing auditions. The process favors families with the time and savvy to navigate the system and is blamed for driving segregation.

The city positioned its removal of screens as a one-year pause, and it’s not clear whether District 13 will continue the practice after this year. But there is precedent forgoing screening altogether. Neighboring District 15 moved to a lottery system for last year’s incoming sixth graders. Admissions figures from that inaugural class showed many schools in that district, which includes well-heeled areas like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, as well as more working-class neighborhoods like Red Hook and Sunset Park, are making progress towards a more diverse student body.

The education department has encouraged individual schools to pursue diversity plans on their own, but integration advocates have argued that school-level approaches won’t change much. Paige said that District 13 parent and school leaders have been working on diversity issues for years, including looking at resource inequities with local PTAs, district training for teachers, and efforts at the local Community Education Council to help schools recruit.

“The power here is doing it together,” she said.

Next challenge for NYC middle school principals: administering the SHSAT in a pandemic

2021-01-21T01:04:08+00:00

New York City middle schools will open their doors next week for the first time since November, but students won’t be returning for in-person learning. Rather, they will be sitting for a controversial exam that some school leaders urged the city to cancel amid the pandemic.

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT, is typically given at a handful of sites to the roughly 30,000 students who register to take it. This year, to account for social distancing, every middle school will be required to administer the test to eighth graders who sign up. Given most years in October, the postponed SHSAT will now be offered beginning Jan. 27. That presents a major logistical burden for principals, who say that, especially now, time and staffing are in short supply.

While many families are eager for their children to snag a coveted spot in one of the eight specialized high schools that use the test as the sole admissions criteria, some school leaders question the resources it will take to give a test that many blame for driving racial segregation at specialized schools.

“During such a time, it is hypocritical to put student and staff health at risk and funnel school resources towards a test that is antithetical to the stated mission of creating more equitable schools,” more than a dozen principals wrote in an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. “We implore you to reconsider this decision that places an undue burden on already stressed and overwhelmed schools.”

Following years of battling over the SHSAT, and failed efforts to eliminate it, some critics of the test hoped city and state leaders would take this moment to press pause, given the hurdles of administering an in-person test for thousands of students during a pandemic.

Instead, principals have another big challenge on their hands. The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union that represents principals and other school leaders, is worried about the short runway schools have been given to make sense of all the requirements detailed in multiple memos and a 73-slide, two-hour training.

“Under normal conditions, this would be a challenging task for school leaders and their staff,” said union Vice President Henry Rubio. “Given the pandemic, we have serious concerns about the city’s timetable, about the necessary staffing it requires, and the [education department’s] ability to conduct a safe and orderly administration of this exam.”

Principals will now have to coordinate with the shipping company sending the exams, designate a staffer to accept the delivery this week, and recruit extra proctors in case teachers need to quarantine due to the coronavirus. (Over the last seven days, more than 8.5% of coronavirus tests have come back positive, and a more contagious strain of the virus was recently identified in New York City.)

Meanwhile, just finding the space, and setting up socially distanced desks, will take time and people-power. Classrooms can be filled to third of capacity and students with disabilities must be grouped into rooms according to the kinds of accommodations they must receive, such as extra time to answer questions or help filling in bubbles.

“This is the hardest year any educator I’ve spoken to has ever had. And now, to have to do extra for something that doesn’t even serve our school population ... it’s just frustrating,” said Damon McCord, co-principal at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Queens. “There’s got to be a way to administer this test online, or at centralized sites on weekends, that doesn’t jeopardize public health and burden schools that are already trying to do more with less.”

Families have also struggled to make sense of the department of education, or DOE, plans for a test that many see as definitive for their child’s future.

Susana Martinez-Conde selected fully remote learning for her three children this year to avoid the coronavirus exposure and was disappointed to learn that her eighth grade son will have to take the SHSAT in person. The family had decamped to Georgia to live with relatives and is planning to make a whirlwind drive back to New York City for the exam.

“We have been so careful about being in almost complete lockdown since this started and now we have to take a chance for this test to happen,” Martinez-Conde said. “The DOE has put us in an impossible position.”

While the SHSAT is usually given in the fall, it wasn’t clear until the end of December that it would even be administered this school year. Some students study for years in preparation.

Sanjay Soni, the father of an eighth grader in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said he and his wife bought practice books and have been helping their daughter study for the exam. But it’s been hard to keep the teen motivated when it wasn’t clear the test would actually take place. “That increases anxiousness in her,” he said. “What to tell a 13 year-old how to deal with this?”

Originally from India, Soni said he studied intensely for similar high-stakes entrance exams, and credits the opportunities it landed him with paving a better life for his family after they lost everything in partition, when India and Pakistan were cleaved.

“I was able to break through because of this test,” he said.

Since the 1970s, New York state law has mandated the SHSAT as the only admissions criteria for getting into the city’s specialized schools, including Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Technical. (Some have argued that New York City could do away with the entrance exam for five of the specialized schools.) Seen by many as the Ivy League of public high schools, only about 4,000 of the top scorers are offered seats.

Most students admitted to the specialized high schools are Asian, many of whom come from low-income and immigrant families and see high SHSAT scores as a ticket to top-rate colleges and out of poverty. (Research has suggested there is little benefit from attending the selective high schools.)

Meanwhile, starkly few Black and Latino students get accepted into the schools. That lack of representation is often blamed on the single-test entry requirement.

Many other high-stakes tests have been overhauled during the pandemic. The SAT plans to cut portions of the exam, and a slew of colleges that have relied on the test as an entry requirement have dropped it. Even the state’s Regents high school exit exams, in place since the 1800s, were canceled last spring and again this winter.

Education department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said the city considered giving the SHSAT online but decided against it.

“An in-person administration continues to maintain a fair and consistent testing experience for all students. Remote testing may pose new barriers for students, particularly those from underserved areas,” she wrote. “As a high-stakes exam, unknown variables associated with remote testing at this time may alter the test’s validity to determine admissions to a Specialized High School.”

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s public criticism of the SHSAT, he did not answer directly when asked if he lobbied state leaders for a waiver this year.

“When the Department of Education looked at it this year they determined that they could make it happen. It was something they could do logistically, do safely, and that’s why it proceeded to move forward,” de Blasio said earlier this month. “This needs to be re-examined in a very thoughtful process to find a better way for the future.”

It’s not clear if a state waiver could have been given, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo has used vast executive authority during the pandemic to halt evictions and close schools throughout the pandemic.

Alex Zimmerman contributed to this report.

NYC announces sweeping changes to middle, high school application process

2020-12-18T14:31:08+00:00

The coronavirus pandemic will force major changes in the ways students are admitted to New York City’s competitive middle and high schools this year, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza announced Friday.

Middle schools will not use test scores or other academic “screens” to select students, auditions for performing arts schools are going virtual, and the controversial Specialized High School Admissions Test will be administered in middle schools across the city, rather than at just a handful of campuses.

The city will also eliminate a district-based admissions preference that has allowed some of the city’s wealthiest ZIP codes to carve out a set of its own elite high schools.

New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country, a status driven partly by its admissions practices. For years, integration advocates have been pushing the city to revamp the competitive and stressful process for the city’s 10- and 13-year-olds, which often favors more affluent families that have the time and savvy to navigate it.

De Blasio has proved reluctant to pursue citywide reform until, late into his final term, the pandemic forced his hand. An overhaul became inevitable in the wake of the health crisis as the main data points used to screen — last year’s fourth and seventh grade state tests, grades, and attendance — were put on pause or dramatically changed.

On Friday, the mayor provided some of his most forceful comments yet about the need to pursue integration measures.

“If we say the price of a quality education is segregation, well that’s ridiculous. If we say we want everyone in the same classroom together, but we don’t care about educational quality, well that’s ridiculous, too,” he said. “I think we’ve all been sold a false premise. We can actually do both — we can have quality schools and schools where we all learn together.”

Some of the changes take aim at polices that have been seen as instrumental to getting more affluent and white parents to enroll in the public school system. The mayor acknowledged the new plan could be difficult for some parents to accept, but said that he hoped it could eventually build buy-in for more changes.

“We want to work with school communities. We want to listen to educators and parents. But what is clear is that our past involves too much exclusion. Our past includes too much inequality,” he said. “We need to move to a different place.”

In addition to the new admissions policies, the city is opening applications for grants for five more districts to pursue integration plans on their own — bringing the total to 10 districts.

Some of the changes now going into effect could set the city on a path towards more diverse schools. But there are good reasons to be skeptical since the city is not implementing any reforms that explicitly favor integration, and admissions systems based purely on choice have consistently failed to produce more representative schools.

One of the most explosive admissions debates remains unresolved. A decision has still not been made about applying to the city’s gifted & talented programs for elementary schools.

Entry to these coveted programs hinges on a standardized test given to preschoolers, administered one-on-one by a proctor. It could prove difficult to administer safely in the midst of rising coronavirus cases across the city. Moving the process online would raise equity issues, since thousands of students lack access to devices or reliable internet. Currently, enrollment in gifted and talented programs is disproportionately Asian and white.

Now that schools and families know how the process will work, the city must communicate the changes widely and clearly, said Karuna Patel, deputy director of the Feerick Center, which has advised the education department on ways to make the admissions system more fair. Otherwise, families who have traditionally struggled to make sense of the process could be at a disadvantage.

“You can imagine the flow of information, if it’s not coming through DOE well, it’s really going to exacerbate the problems we’re talking about. Who does best in a system where information is king?” she said. “They really need to be thoughtful about how to implement this.”

Sweeping changes for middle schools

The most sweeping changes will affect middle schools.

All middle schools will pause their use of academic screens for one year, the education department said. That includes auditions for performing arts programs and school-based assessments.

Around 40% of middle schools currently accept students based on their academic records. Schools that don’t have enough seats for all applicants will base admissions on a lottery.

There is precedent for such a move: Brooklyn’s District 15 recently eliminated screening at its middle schools in favor of a lottery. The aim was to create more diverse schools, and early data show progress towards that goal. But Brooklyn’s plan includes something that the city’s does not: a priority geared towards admitting students who represent the district’s racial and economic diversity.

It’s possible that a lottery for middle schools does not change school demographics significantly, especially in districts that are not diverse themselves. Without an explicit focus on admitting a diverse group of students, admissions systems based purely on choice often fall short of integration goals. District 1 on the Lower East Side had such a system, and its schools were deeply segregated. Parents recently lobbied to add admissions priorities to the lottery to encourage more diversity.

“Experience tells us that choice alone is not enough to guarantee there will be diverse and integrated schools in any given district. We’ve found there need to be some guardrails,” said Stefan Lallinger, a fellow at The Century Foundation think tank, where he leads a nationwide initiative to encourage school integration.

The education department said that district priorities will remain in place, which give students an admissions preference based on where they live, in order to allow younger students to attend schools closer to home. Schools like those in District 15, which give other preferences that aren’t based on academic records, will be allowed to keep those intact.

The elimination of middle school screens will only be for one year. With Mayor Bill de Blasio term-limited, that could turn school integration and admissions policy into an issue on the campaign trail to replace him. At both the middle- and high school-level, selective admissions practices have been credited with drawing white and more affluent families into the public school system, and many parents who have managed to navigate the system well have fought to preserve it.

Threats of white flight are often leveled against integration proposals, but research suggests that more diverse schools are beneficial for students of all races and backgrounds, Lallinger said. De Blasio echoed that point on Friday.

“You give everyone a chance to learn together, they benefit from it. They gain from it. It’s an education unto itself for people to learn together and get to know each other,” he said. “I understand the emotions of parents who believe there was one particular way to do things and then to see that changing, that for them that can be difficult.”

Middle school applications will open the week of Jan. 11, and close the week of Feb. 8th.

High schools to continue screening

High schools will still be allowed to screen students, relying on academic records from before the health crisis struck. The most notable change is the immediate elimination of district admissions priorities.

New York City’s high school application process was designed to open access to students regardless of their ZIP codes. But some schools across the city give priority to those students living within their own district. Nowhere is it more controversial — and fiercely guarded — than Manhattan’s District 2.

Spanning TriBeCa to the Upper East Side, the district is one of the whitest and most affluent, and students who live there have been given admissions preference at a handful of coveted high schools. Those schools are especially segregated, with almost quadruple the enrollment of white students compared to the citywide average. Recently, principals at four schools that offer District 2 priority called on the city to eliminate it, in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body.

For next year’s admission cycle, the city plans to do away with any other geographic priorities, including admissions preferences given to students within the school’s borough.

The changes may not amount to much when it comes to school integration since schools can still screen students. New York City has a higher share of “screened” schools than anywhere else in the country, meaning many of the most sought-after programs admit students based on their academic records. Getting accepted to these schools is often a competitive and complicated process, and screened programs tend to enroll fewer Black, Latino, and low-income students.

The city is taking steps to make the process more transparent and streamlined: High schools will be required to post their long-shrouded admissions rubrics publicly, and the education department, instead of schools themselves, will be responsible for ranking where applicants fall on acceptance lists.

High school applications will open the week of Jan. 18. The deadline will be the week of Feb. 22.

The SHSAT will go on

Students will take the entrance exam for specialized high schools — widely regarded as the Ivy League of public high schools — at their own middle schools. Registration for the exam begins on Dec. 21 and closes on Jan. 15. The test will be administered starting the week of Jan. 27.

Eighth graders who opted to attend school in person this year will take the test alongside their “cohorts,” the group of children in their classes, to account for social distancing and limit possible exposure to the coronavirus and cut down on the need to travel to take the test. Most New York City students, however, have chosen to learn exclusively from home. Those students will have to test in-person at their schools, the education department said. Make-up dates will be scheduled for students who may be quarantined on their test day.

One of the city’s most heated admissions debates has long centered on the specialized high schools like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, which admit students based solely on the results of a single test.

De Blasio launched a campaign to eliminate the test, which is required by state law. He faced a wave of protest and a lawsuit. Pushback has been particularly fierce among Asian parents, whose children make up a majority of enrollment in the specialized schools.

But many blame the exam for excluding other students of color. The schools enroll only about 10% Black and Hispanic students, who together make up almost 70% of enrollment citywide. Integration advocates have lobbied the legislature to do away with the exam, and argued that the ongoing pandemic makes it unsafe to administer in person.

The city could likely do away with the exam at five of the eight schools that require it (a ninth specialized high school for performing arts requires auditions), though mayor de Blasio has disputed that.

Auditions pivot to online

Students trying out for performing and visual arts programs — including the famed LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts in Manhattan and Queens’ Frank Sinatra School of the Arts — will submit their applications virtually. Students will record themselves singing, dancing, or performing monologues, or take pictures of their work.

Some schools posted about the new online process on their websites, but the education department said at the time that the information shared prematurely and hadn’t been finalized.

‘The time for change is now’: At Lab, Roosevelt and Baruch, principals favor scrapping District 2 priority

2020-12-16T02:44:29+00:00

Principals at some of Manhattan’s most sought-after high schools released forceful public statements on Tuesday supporting admissions changes with the goal of increasing student diversity.

The leaders of NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Baruch College Campus called on the city to eliminate rules that give preference to students who live in Manhattan’s District 2, which is whiter and more affluent than the city as a whole.

“The time for change is now,” Baruch Principal Alicia Pérez-Katz wrote in a letter to her school community, noting that the school cannot live up to its values if it continues to give certain students priority based on their home address.

“Removing the District 2 screen does not mean we lower our standards - rather - we raise them,” wrote Pérez-Katz, who has led the school for 17 years.

New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country, driven in part by the city’s complicated and competitive admissions process. Two of the principals stopped short of calling for an end to the use of screens, which allows schools to select students based on their academic records. But the principals’ push to end District 2 priority is noteworthy after years of limited action from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration on the issue of school segregation.

New York City’s high school choice system was designed to give students an opportunity to attend schools outside of their ZIP codes, but a handful of District 2 schools give admissions priority to students living within its district. That district comprises some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including the Upper East Side and TriBeCa.

District 2 priority is often credited with drawing more middle-class and white students to the public school system, and some parents have fiercely defended it. But the geographic preference is also blamed for deepening school segregation, and in 2019, a citywide task force appointed by the mayor recommended eliminating it.

“Admissions reform that aims to desegregate schools but does not address district-based geographic priority will fall short,” said Karuna Patel, Deputy Director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, which has worked with the education department on ways to improve the city’s admissions system.

The principal at Eleanor Roosevelt, Dimitri Saliani, wrote that while the school has embraced efforts to foster equity and fight racism — making changes to its admissions policies, hiring more diverse faculty and staff, and adopting culturally inclusive curriculum — it hasn’t been enough to overcome the school’s geographic admissions priority.

“[W]e are at a place of stasis,” he wrote.

Real change demands the school “move away from the anachronistic District #2 priority that is a barrier to most students in NYC,” Saliani wrote. “The lack of diversity among students, faculty and staff is a disservice to our community as a whole.”

At NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, Principal Brooke Jackson called it her “responsibility and goal” that her students “receive an education that includes learning with and from a racially integrated student body reflective of NYC.” The high school enrolls almost 60% white students, almost four times the citywide average.

In calling for reform, Jackson said she wanted to support her students of color who are in a “glaring numerical minority.”

“It’s not OK for me, as school leader, to allow the phenomenon of a single Black student in their English course feeling responsible to represent their race and to educate their classmates,” she wrote. “Citywide access would meaningfully shift the racial demographics of Lab.”

Jackson told Chalkbeat she has lobbied the education department internally for years to drop the admissions priority. While principals have latitude to set most of their own admissions criteria, she said her requests have gone nowhere.

On Tuesday, a spokeswoman with the education department did not answer questions about who has the authority to eliminate it.

“I’ve asked all these people, ‘Take it out,’” Jackson said of her conversations with city officials about geographic priority. “And they’re like, ‘We don’t have the authority.’”

In the meantime, she has tweaked the school’s selective admissions criteria and started offering admissions preference to students from low-income families in the hopes of creating a more diverse school. With the District 2 priority in place, the school’s demographics still haven’t budged.

Advocacy from her own students, and this summer’s protests against police brutality and racial injustice, convinced Jackson to speak up publicly.

“I just personally felt very hypocritical,” she said. “The school that I’ve loved so much and invested my whole professional life in stands in contrast to the kind of justice and access that we’re all advocating for.”

In addition to the District 2 priority, Lab, Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and School of the Future use competitive “screens” to admit students. New York City has a greater share of screened schools than anywhere else in the country, and Black and Latino students are underrepresented at those schools.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic the admissions process will have to look much different this year, since some of the most commonly used screens are not available. The education department eliminated the use of attendance, and traditional grades were not issued last year. The state, meanwhile, canceled standardized exams.

But de Blasio has stalled on issuing guidance to school leaders and families about how — and whether — screens will be used.

Many parents have advocated to keep them in place, arguing they benefit high-achieving students. But students and other integration advocates have led a grassroots effort to eliminate the competitive process.

Katie O’Hanlon, a spokesperson for the education department, said the city will share information about this year’s admissions process “soon.” She also emphasized that the city has not expanded the number of screened schools under de Blasio’s tenure.

“We regularly work with school communities to develop policies that reduce barriers and are driven by the best interest of all of our students,” she said.

School of the Future Principal Stacy Goldstein previously told Chalkbeat she’s personally in favor of eliminating screens, but wants to work with her school community before pursuing any specific changes. At Lab, Jackson told Chalkbeat she would back a citywide plan to eliminate admissions screens — not just at her school.

“I am in favor of getting rid of all screened schools and would gladly fall in line,” Jackson said.

While waiting for the mayor to decide what the admissions process will look like this year, Jackson said eliminating the District 2 admissions priority would be a positive first step.

“While we await further guidance on the bigger picture, this is just an easy and very symbolic move,” she said. “My school should not be subject to a geographic screen.”

Meet ‘The Outsiders’: New website aims to support students of color at NYC’s elite public high schools

2020-07-09T22:02:45+00:00

When AnnaBelle Medina first started at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, she felt like an outsider.

As a student of color in a predominantly white school, she recalls experiencing “culture shock.” She also felt less prepared than her peers to navigate her high school, which is one of the city’s eight elite specialized high schools, most of them relying solely on a test for admission.

“I just felt really different from a lot of the students in my school … like I was the only one that didn’t know that we were supposed to start internships and things like that to boost our resumes,” Medina said.

So Medina, who is Ecuadorian, Puerto Rican, and Cuban, and fellow rising senior Aisha Baiocchi, who is Brazilian and Indian, decided to launch The Outsiders Guide. The website is for students attending specialized or competitive public high schools in New York, at which Black and Hispanic students are vastly underrepresented. At Lehman, 59% of the student body is white, according to data from the Department of Education. Only 4% of students are Black, and 10% are Hispanic.

After initially getting the idea for the site in late May, Baiocchi reached out to Medina and asked her to contribute posts. The two have been working through the summer — a summer that has seen widespread anti-racism protests — to create a platform where students of color could share advice and stories with each other. The site went live June 20, and the founders say they’ve gotten positive feedback from students of color and white students alike.

Black and Hispanic students make up roughly 70% of New York’s public school students, but they account for just a small portion of students at its elite specialized high schools. This year, only 4.5% of specialized high school offers went to Black students and only 6.6% went to Hispanic students. These students are also underrepresented at many of the city’s high schools that use selective admissions screens, such as grades, test scores and attendance.

The admissions process for the district’s specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, has long sparked controversy and demands for integration.

The Outsiders Guide includes advice, information, and testimonies from students of color. Topics on the website range from the college admissions process to extracurriculars. The website also features a news section, a culture section, and a blog that is updated weekly with posts from high school and college students.

Baiocchi previously tutored younger students who were preparing to take the specialized high school admissions test, known as the SHSAT. Many of them were students of color. While she was proud that many of them got in, she was also scared for them.

“There’s a huge gap,” Baiocchi said.

She recalled having to learn how to properly take notes through trial and error, while some of her peers had already learned in middle school. Because Baiocchi had to go through that learning process, she didn’t do as well as she could have, she said.

“I remember how hard it was for me to adjust … There’s so much new information that they would have to learn by themselves. I wanted to create some sort of resources that would help them, but also just any other students.”

As protests against racism and police brutality spread throughout the country following the police killing of George Floyd, Medina and Baiocchi have found a deeper sense of purpose in the site. It’s made them want to do even more outreach to ensure students of color are as prepared to attend high school as their white counterparts, Medina said.

The website is “our way of activism in a sense,” she said. “A lot of the reason this had to be created is because there’s a lot of education inequality, and a lot of times that has to do with your socioeconomic status, with your race. … This is a way that we’re trying to fight back against that.”

Baiocchi has realized that her experiences are not unique to her school and exist throughout the district in different ways.

In order to prioritize the needs of students when creating the site, Baiocchi started with a master list of potential topics to include. She then circulated that list to her friends, who added to it. From there, they sought out students to write about topics they felt they were experts in, or about things they wish they had known. For example, one of Baiocchi’s older friends who won the Posse scholarship wrote a post about it.

Baiocchi said that while she wouldn’t call most of the students at her school racist, it was still an adjustment to attend a majority-white school and deal with things like microaggressions. Microaggressions are defined as insults or put-downs toward marginalized groups from people who are often unaware of their offense. For example, teachers often mispronounce Baiocchi’s name despite being corrected. Medina also recalls being called “Maria” by one of her teachers who never learned her real name.

“In some ways, the culture is just really unfamiliar and experiences are really, really hard. It’s really hard to know what to do when you first face those experiences,” Baiocchi said.

The personal experiences shared on the website help make it more than a repository of information.

“We both agreed that it would be super inspiring for younger students to see these people that are super successful,” Medina said, “so that maybe it could inspire them to do similar things or even just help get them through high school.”

Fewer NYC students score gifted and talented seats as more families apply and one Brooklyn program closes

2020-06-15T23:39:31+00:00

Fewer New York City students received offers for gifted and talented programs this year compared to last year, according to education department data released Monday. Competition was higher as more children applied for these sought-after seats, and one Brooklyn school voted to phase out its G&T program.

About 60% of eligible students got a G&T offer, down five percentage points from last year. Roughly 30% got their top choice, down from last year’s 34%.

Just over 6,000 students between kindergarten and third grade applied for the G&T program, up about four percentage points from last year when 5,749 families applied.

The uptick in the number of applicants comes amid growing controversy over the city’s gifted program, which requires that 4-year-olds take a test for admissions into a gifted kindergarten program. The test favors families who have the means to prep their young children, critics say, and the demographics of gifted classrooms are not representative of the school system as a whole. While 75% of public school students are Black or Hispanic, 75% of gifted students are white or Asian, according to education department data.

Members of the School Diversity Advisory Group — made up of academics, students, parents, and advocates appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio — called on the city last year to phase out of the G&T program as a way to disrupt segregation in New York City’s schools.

“Simply put, there are better ways to educate advanced learners,” the group said.

Members advocated instead for non-selective magnet schools or school-wide enrichment models, where all students are considered talented and educators are charged with developing project-based learning based on their interests. The mayor has been mum on whether he plans to pursue that recommendation.

Scrutiny of gifted programs goes back several years. Parents have long advocated for more integration earlier on, as the programs often serve as feeders to New York’s most selective public high schools. A handful of gifted programs now have admissions systems to bolster diversity, setting aside, for instance, a certain percentage of seats for low-income students.

Brooklyn’s P.S. 9, whose gifted program had been part of the diversity admissions program, decided not to take part this year. Instead, the school is phasing out its gifted program and shifting towards a school-wide enrichment model. Students already enrolled in the G&T program at the Prospect Heights neighborhood school can continue until graduation.

“We are proud to offer many high-quality elementary school choices across the city for our students, including our Gifted and Talented programs,” education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon said in a statement, “and we’re excited for the families that received their offers.”

NYC educators demand reforms, and reevaluate their own classrooms, after George Floyd’s killing

2020-06-12T02:49:03+00:00

With so much ground to cover in a typical year, U.S. history teacher Tracy Garrison-Feinberg doesn’t spend much time diving into uprisings that have helped shape the course of the country.

Next year, she plans to change that.

As demonstrations have gripped the nation following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, the seventh-grade teacher at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School in Clinton Hill is thinking about making protests and rebellions her “theme” in the classroom. She wants her students to grapple with the contradictions of the nation’s founders, who pressed for independence while simultaneously oppressing others through slavery and taking indigenous land.

“I know that I want to spend a lot more time being a lot more complicated,” said Garrison-Feinberg.

As protesters — including students and teachers — keep up demonstrations against police violence, many educators in New York City are also calling for a reckoning of how racism shapes what happens inside classrooms. Their demands are sweeping, from eliminating admissions policies that deepen segregation in the city’s schools, to recruiting teachers who reflect the diversity of their students, and reconsidering curriculum to make lessons more relevant to students’ backgrounds.

Shifting such practices could have very real consequences, research suggests. For example, ethnic studies courses can help improve attendance and grades, and integrated schools help reduce bias as well as boost test scores. Much of the change in New York City schools have been piecemeal, with school’s like Garrison-Feinberg’s, which commits to attracting and serving students who reflect the city’s diversity, leading the way. But as systemic shifts within the country’s largest school system inch along, the recent public awakening is inspiring individual educators to overhaul their own classrooms.

“I think that this is going to have a lasting impact on what I teach and how I teach my students,” said Jacqueline Du, an art teacher at M.S. 35 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Jacqueline Du, art teacher at M.S. 35 in Brooklyn.

Virtually all of Du’s students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families living in an area undergoing dramatic changes. White newcomers have flocked in recent years to the historically black neighborhood, sparking fear among some long time residents that the local culture is being erased. The demographic shifts have left the local school district in difficult straits. Enrollment is dwindling in District 16, with many families opting out of the neighborhood schools.

Du is aware of the neighborhood dynamics and is grappling with how to respond in her classroom. She recently thought back to one of the first lessons she did during remote learning. School buildings were closed to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, and Du asked students to give presentations to their classmates about a work of art they were familiar with. What followed was a stream of the expected — Picassos and van Goghs and other European masters.

“It was clear to me that their heart wasn’t in it. They weren’t interested,” Du said.

She has always made an effort to expose students to artists of color, something that Du, who is Asian-American, says she was often lacking in her own education. When young people don’t see themselves represented in their textbooks, “it’s something that I know can be limiting,” she said.

Going forward, Du said she’ll double down, but also bring her lessons closer to home for her students. She wants them to know artists who they can relate to, not just because they are black or brown, but also because they’re making art or grew up in the same neighborhood.

“I’m going to make sure that the content of the artwork that I introduce is relevant to my students present-day, to what they know has been going on around them, and to their personal experiences, and their futures,” she said.

Though teachers feel increasingly compelled to address racism in the classroom, many feel ill-equipped to do so.

“Despite an increasing number of instructors bringing a critical analysis of racial injustice to their curriculum, many report challenges in teaching this content effectively,” researchers at Vanderbilt University wrote in a recent guide to teaching about race.

In New York City, the education department is taking some steps towards more systemic reform and grappling with the fact that the teaching force looks different than the student body. While more than 80% percent of New York City students are black, Hispanic, or Asian, the teaching force is overwhelmingly white.

Last summer, the department made a public commitment to what is often called culturally responsive or sustaining teaching practices — making sure that all students are reflected in what is taught, and how it’s taught. This spring, after facing intense lobbying from parents, the city released a recommended reading list featuring authors and protagonists of color. Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has also made a priority to make sure teachers receive anti-bias training, despite intense public backlash.

For Stephanie Carroll, the principal of P.S. 307 in Vinegar Hill, shifting teaching practices began before the recent protests unfolded. But watching the crowds pour into American streets has unleashed a new resolve — and a feeling of immense pressure — to serve her students well.

“What really scares me is that I could be sitting here having the same conversation five years from now. That can’t be,” she said. “Enough with the words.”

P.S. 307 is no stranger to facing racism head-on, after a bruising battle in 2016 to redraw the attendance boundaries around the school, which has enrolled almost exclusively black and Hispanic children from the nearby Farragut public houses. Today, 10% percent of the roughly 370 students attending are white.

As an integrating school, P.S. 307 has made it a point to engage its parents in conversations about race and class, but Carroll said it’s time for those to become deeper and more explicit.

She also feels a new sense of urgency around developing new lessons that center the contributions of black people. For that, the school has been working with its best-known booster, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a parent there — and the New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer for leading the 1619 Project, reframing the country’s history through the legacy of slavery. Carroll hopes to create a working group of educators within the school, district, and beyond, to get that work going in earnest.

“This has definitely made it one of my top priorities to get that work done over the summer, to be able to engage our students in that rich curriculum,” Carroll said.

Carroll said she has benefitted from the support of the local superintendent and others in the community who have seen the need for more integrated schools, a push that has also demanded that school communities bring race, and all the ways it affects educational opportunities, to the forefront.

“It’s like permission to do this work, and that’s important when working in a large institution,” Carroll said. “Feeling empowered to do that is key. I’m not fighting the fight alone.”

Only time will tell whether individual schools and teachers can keep up their resolve to change their own classrooms after protesters have gone home — or whether the country’s largest school system will commit to more wide-scale reforms. Schools Chancellor Carranza proved early in his tenure that he was not afraid to shine a harsh light on city practices that fall disproportionately hard on students of color.

Now educators are demanding equally forceful action. Hundreds of teachers marched in the streets this weekend, calling for more guidance counselors and fewer cops in schools. Hundreds more of the education department’s own central office employees released an open letter to the chancellor this week demanding the city “build an anti-racist educational system.”

“The time has come for our actions to align with our words,” education department employees wrote. “This is the moment to dissociate ourselves from institutional racism and to affirm that Black Lives Matter.”

How to do anti-racist work with NYC school communities: 5 experts weigh in

2020-06-08T17:21:20+00:00

Takiema Bunche-Smith is busier than she has ever been.

As the leader of the Center on Culture, Race, and Equity at Bank Street College of Education, Bunche-Smith helps educators understand and unravel all the ways racial inequities are baked into education systems.

Since the killing of George Floyd has sparked demonstrations across the country, school leaders have reached out to her non-stop, seeking advice for how to navigate a historic teachable moment.

As protesters continue to march in the streets, students are logging in to virtual classrooms full of difficult questions and raw emotions. While many New York City schools focus on racial justice issues every day — embedding it into what is taught, and how — in plenty of others, principals and teachers find themselves in wholly uncharted territory.

Chalkbeat spoke to academics including Bunche-Smith and school leaders who are helping school communities respond to this moment. They offered these words of advice for teachers and school leaders.

This is part of an ongoing series that includes the voices of parents, students, and other experts to understand what ideas can help us meet this unprecedented moment for school communities.

The responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Takiema Bunche-Smith, executive director of the Center on Culture, Race and Equity at Bank Street College of Education

I am troubled by three things that I’m seeing.

Everyone wants to do something. However, there has to be care and thoughtfulness about how the murder of George Floyd is discussed so that Black children and staff are not re-traumatized by the ways in which the discussion is approached. Also, white and non-Black children of color will receive inappropriate messages if these conversations are not approached with care and from a solid knowledge base.

Takiema Bunche-Smith

This leads to my first point. We have a teaching force in the US that’s close to 80% white and an overwhelmingly Black and brown public school system. Very few educators have had professional development and support to understand these complex topics on a personal level, much less institutional and systemic levels.

I’ve seen some work put out in the last week that has made me cringe. For example: Don’t make children watch videos of Black people being murdered by police. This is not developmentally appropriate for young children, and older children and teenagers will need tremendous support to process the trauma of watching someone be murdered on video. Adults can talk and read about what happened with children, and give space for students to process how they’re feeling and what they’re thinking. And make sure to discuss what actions are happening to make changes to a system that allows police brutality to happen repeatedly.

Secondly, only talking about the murders of Black people will reinforce the negative associations. We need to center the full humanity, joy, culture and strengths of Black people 365 days a year, while highlighting the unjust systems as well.

Thirdly, professional development around race, racism, and racial equity is critical for everyone doing this work with students, so that we are clear about what is being taught, in what order the material is being taught, and what our end goal is when it comes to anti-racist and creating culturally responsive teaching and classrooms. We need to have a major investment of resources to support educators and families to do this well.

Stefan Lallinger, director of the Bridges Collaborative at The Century Foundation

The first and most important job you have as a school leader right now is to create the space for the staff to come together to talk, react, and simply be with one another in an emotionally safe environment. Create the right conditions for people to be vulnerable.

When I was a principal at an all Black school in New Orleans, and my staff returned in 2016 after the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and others at the hands of the police, the first thing we did was gather in a seated circle and have open, emotional discussion. But consider that what some people may need right now is their own time. Give them the time they need.

Stefan Lallinger

Begin by telling your staff how you have been impacted by the things happening around us. That being said, this is not about you, so say your piece – make it genuine, truthful, unguarded, and concise – and return the attention to the group.

Facilitating safe spaces in which people show vulnerability is extremely difficult, and when done poorly, can cause more harm than good. In this moment, you must critically consider your identity, and the dynamic it presents as the leader of your staff and your school. The way I led and spoke as a Black man who had himself been the target of racial profiling should be different than the way you lead, if you identify differently.

You as the leader may not be the best person to facilitate. Know when to step back. You should also have a brain trust, made up of a diverse group of individuals, to run key decisions by, before they are made.

Strong school leadership will focus the attention back on students. Make space for children to organize and take action on their own. In my experience, our students were eager to do their part to make change.

Jeannie Ferrari, principal of Humanities Prep Academy in Chelsea, Manhattan

Educators must recognize the urgency and significance of this historical moment by being flexible and responsive. Embrace process over outcome and allow space for students to release feelings, thoughts, and reactions. Some students will want to share, and others will be exhausted and reluctant to participate. A Google Form survey is a great way to ask students what they most need from their teacher right now.

Jeannie Ferrari

Educators can also integrate art, movement, music, theater and role-playing into their exploration of racial justice in the classroom. Students have different mediums of expression; not all prefer to communicate their thoughts and feelings verbally. Also, offer students the chance to share their ideas, proposals and research with an authentic audience, such as activist organizations, lawyers and legal scholars, and elected officials. But understand that silence itself is a statement. White educators in particular should embrace the uncomfortable, unfinished, and transformative process of engaging in racial justice work alongside their colleagues.

Lastly, educators should recognize that neutrality in the classroom is a myth. Your students need to know that you condemn the murder of innocent Black Americans, the same way they need to know that you condemn the practice of slavery.

Amy Stuart Wells, director of The Public Good Project and the Center for Understanding Race and Education at Teachers College, and Diana Cordova-Cobo, a research associate for the Public Good Project and former middle school teacher

How do we teach anti-racism to children? As we’re in one of the most vexing periods in our nation’s history, students need support in finding answers through a curriculum that provides vivid examples of structural racism and its impact on housing, employment, and education. They also need opportunities to name and critique the anti-Blackness narrative that surrounds them and shapes the way we all make sense of the world.

Diana Cordova-Cobo

One way to do this could be to ask students to interview an elder relative, connecting with someone they live with or remotely, about challenges they have faced in their lives. The Public Good has provided a template for how students can do this with a lesson plan we call “Coming Together Through Stories.”

Amy Stuart Wells

It is designed for upper elementary grade students to seek answers, stories of resilience, and hope in troubled times. This is one example of how to privilege the knowledge, wisdom, and strength of elders in student’s lives and, when shared in an inter-racial context, these stories will also privilege the experience of those families who have been most disadvantaged by the racial hierarchy that has shaped this country since it’s beginning.

Fela Barclift, director of Little Sun People preschool in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Educators are accustomed to working off of a curriculum, a design, or a script that we can use as our template to structure our lessons coherently. In this case, though, there’s no script. We are and will be, for a while, flying by the seat of our pants — and that’s OK.

Start by accepting how much we don’t know, and then do something about it: Begin to fully explore and create the much-needed curriculum designs and safe spaces and conditions to do this work together. Make the decision to be vulnerable. Once the leaders have embarked upon their own journey, they can then effectively, though haltingly, and perhaps ungracefully at first, begin to lead their staff.

Fela Barclift

Know that our children have never questioned whether Black lives or any other lives matter. They take life mattering for granted. Fortunately, righteous indignation and fairness is something that children can understand. They know something big is going on! It’s important to acknowledge that with them, but also to break that big thing down according to the age of the child.

For preschool and up to about age 7, get into your library and find stories designed for their age group that reflect Black and brown people in a completely positive light. Find movies and videos where Black and Brown people are central characters and their stories are fully and well told.

Respectfully connect with and bring in their family. Find out how much and what has been said at home, and how discussions centered around complex situations are handled. Follow the family’s lead.

Build relationships with children so that you know how to organize your explanations of the current situation. A possible conversation after a good session of play and perhaps a story circle about a Black person, could go something like this, ‘Recently a few hard things have happened between a Black person and a policeman, have you heard anything about that, tell us what you know?’ Then listen and follow their cues to know where to go with the conversation.

Finally, laughter, joy, fun, and play are critically important, even in the most difficult of times. They must be guarded, nurtured, and in evidence in every way possible to help ourselves and our children remain strong, resilient, and confident that together we can create a world that is good for everyone.

Building bridges: New nationwide school integration initiative to bring together districts, charters, housing experts

2020-05-18T09:02:00+00:00

Stefan Lallinger had just finished teaching a lesson that traced the fight for civil rights and school integration in the U.S. when a student in his New Orleans classroom posed a question: “So, why do no white kids go to our school?”

Decades after Lallinger’s own grandfather had helped argue the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the Supreme Court, which declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional, he said the boy’s question left him speechless — and still demands an answer today.

“I think as a country, more broadly, we don’t have a satisfactory answer to that,” Lallinger said.

Stefan Lallinger will head The Bridges Collaborative, a new initiative launched by The Century Foundation to spark and support school integration efforts.

Segregation remains rampant in American classrooms, and New York City is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country. Now Lallinger is heading a new effort to address the country’s unfinished business of integrating its schools. He is heading the Bridges Collaborative, an initiative launched Monday by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

The collaborative seeks to fill the gap between research showing more diverse schools can improve outcomes for all students, and the political will to pursue integration. To do that, Lallinger hopes to bring together advocates and policy makers who rarely work together — from charter and district schools, and housing — to learn from successful integration efforts across the country.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the collaborative has delayed plans for meeting in person, but is still laying foundations for the inaugural class of about 50. Applications are expected to open this fall.

Lallinger spent about a decade teaching and leading a New Orleans charter school post-Katrina, in classrooms where virtually every student was black and came from low-income homes. For the last year, he was a Harvard doctoral resident working in the New York City education department on integration issues.

Here’s what Lallinger had to say about what’s still standing in the way of more diverse schools, and what integration should look like in 2020.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe the status of school integration right now?

We know that integration is good for kids and there’s tons of research that backs this up. Yet most people across the country don’t know about that research. In part because folks don’t know about this — and also because of many, many historical reasons — the state of our public schools continues to be segregated.

Nationally, about a fifth of schools across the country have almost no white children. That is to say, they are 90% or greater students of color. And then another fifth of our schools nationally have almost no students of color. So their student bodies are about 90% or greater white.

There’s other data that shows that the percentage of American schools that are intensely segregated along both racial and socio-economic lines has actually increased over the last two decades.

So we’re not headed in the right direction, coming up on the 66th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education.

What kinds of bridges does this collaborative seek to build? Who or what needs to be brought together to advance school integration?

Ultimately, the goal is to build bridges across lines of difference in our schools and in our classrooms, creating environments in which children who come from different backgrounds have the opportunity to learn together. I don’t think we need to look any further than the state of our country today to see why that is needed.

If that’s not good enough, then there’s research to demonstrate that students who go to integrated schools are much less likely to harbor bias, they’re much likelier to have higher average test scores, much likelier to enroll in college.

Our collaborative is also looking to build bridges across sectors. We’re bringing together folks from school districts, from charter schools, and from fair housing organizations. We want to provide a space for folks to be able to have the difficult conversations and engage in the type of collaboration that is actually going to move the needle in communities across the country.

What is getting in the way of that collaboration now?

To start with, charter and traditional school districts, the way things have been set up structurally, there’s often either competition or distrust.

Then, to bring in the housing folks — oftentimes folks who work in housing and folks who work in education speak in different languages. Getting them on the same page to truly understand what the barriers are that each set of folks face is a feat.

Your grandfather, Louis Redding, was a civil rights lawyer who played a role in the landmark school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. How is your personal history connected to your current work?

I always start with my grandfather, a man who was born in 1901 and whose grandmother was a slave. Despite that, he attended Brown University and was one of few African Americans at the time. He decided to move to the South after graduating and went to teach at a school created by freedmen after the Civil War to serve children of emancipated slaves. Then he went to Harvard Law school, where he was one of the first African American graduates of that institution, and decided that he wanted to move back to his home state of Delaware to practice law.

In 1952, he brought two lawsuits against local districts in Delaware, which he won, forcing them to admit black students. When those cases were appealed, they became a part of Brown vs. Board.

I often think about my grandfather and wonder, if he were alive, if he came to tour the school where I was a principal and saw all the amazing things, how proud he would be — and then wonder how long it would take him to realize he was walking the halls of a segregated school, and what he would think about that decades after he won this legal battle.

Why do you think integration should remain a goal of American schools, all these years later?

Research simply shows it’s one of the most cost-effective education interventions you could have, second only in some of the research that I’ve looked at, to quality pre-K.

In the divided society that we live in, research also demonstrates that attending a diverse school helps reduce bias and counter stereotypes. For many of us, this is the most divided any of us have seen our country in our living history, and this is one way we can address that for the future.

Thirdly, this is something that will improve outcomes for students.

How can policymakers begin to overcome skepticism of integration — whether due to racism, from more affluent and white families worried about losing access to ‘good’ schools, or from families of color afraid of sending their children into hostile environments?

Folks by and large don’t have the vision for what a truly integrated school is, and therefore don’t truly know why it’s the best option for all of our students. Additionally, I think a lot of people fall prey to old and stale arguments, and fear mongering tactics.

It’s incumbent on folks who really believe in this issue to make clear, through appropriate communication and messaging, how we might do this in 2020 that’s different than 1960 and 1970, why it’s worth doing, what are the benefits that all students get — that it’s not some social justice crusade on behalf of one group of students, but that it’s truly beneficial to all students.

We have gotten to a place where, when we look at segregated schools, we’ve tricked our minds to think that is a natural phenomenon. That is absolutely not a natural phenomenon. There are specific reasons, and specific actions, and choices that have been made throughout the course of history that have made us believe that this is normal.

How are today’s integration efforts any different from the past?

Matthew Delmont has a great book that talks about the history of busing in this country and the use of ‘busing’ as a phrase, just as a fear mongering tactic — when in fact, students have been bused in this country for decades with few ill effects. Ironically, busing really came into vogue in the era of segregation when white families needed to go to school farther from where they lived.

These are the things that come to people’s mind when, in reality, there are so many innovative ways to think about how we might get a diverse set of bodies into schools.

The things I’m talking about include reexamining district lines that mostly have been drawn specifically for the purpose of segregation, number one. Number two: being more creative about where we place sites for new schools.

Number three: developing innovative programming in schools that might attract different types of populations. Number four: identifying very closely systems of tracking that segregate children within schools. Number five: developing magnet programming and specialized programming that allow students to attend schools away from where they live.

And number six: opening up school choice in the public system, and, in places where choice exists, coming up with innovative enrollment mechanisms that promote diversity.

What will success look like for the Collaborative?

We want districts, and charter schools, and housing folks around the country to see examples of districts and schools advancing the issue in ways that make sense, and in ways that bear fruit, in a way that makes it feel safe for them to try.

To get a little more specific on some of the tangible things that we will be doing, we have engaged with a reputable polling and messaging firm to help us tackle this issue of how do you develop messaging that is compelling and gets across all of the benefits of diverse schools.

In New York City, one of the country’s most segregated school systems, there has been growing local support for integration, but few systemic changes. Why?

One of the things that needs to happen more is a clear articulation of why creating integrated schools in New York City is a strategy for improving our schools. You can’t really define an excellent school without answering the question of how diverse the school is, because a key element of excellence is what kids are learning from one another.

What does integration look like in a system like New York City, where most students are black or Hispanic and come from low-income families?

We have to think of integration more expansively than just black and white, and low income and not low income. New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and it’s not just because you’ve got a lot of white folks and black folks living together. There’s a lot of beautiful and rich diversity within a lot of these blanket categories we use.

There’s a huge difference between a family of four that has a household income of $35,000, and a family of four that relies on public assistance, or a family that has students in temporary housing.

For race, there are schools that are reported as having 95% of their population being black or Latino, and you have Dominican populations, and Puerto Rican populations, and you’ve got Mexican students and you’ve got students from the Caribbean. We need to think more expansively about that.

The last thing I would say is that, what I think a lot of folks who bring up that argument are getting at is that, if we think of integration as necessarily involving a critical mass of white students, that integration of the entire city is then mathematically impossible. Well, that doesn’t mean that any action is futile. It means we need to start by integrating the spaces where we can and those spaces will become richer and better environments because of it.

How has COVID-19 changed or shaped this effort?

I definitely think that COVID-19 has shone a light on the rampant inequities that exist in our system. Some folks have adapted really easily to digital learning, mainly due to their environmental circumstances, and other folks have had a really, really hard time. At a time when these inequities are laid bare and there’s an opportunity to rethink the way we do things, I think the collaborative becomes even more important.

One of the things that we do want to make sure folks think about is that, during this time of social distancing, numerous parents and children have talked about how important the social aspect of schooling is, and how much they get from the interactions they have day to day with folks. Even when folks are not socially distant, where kids are in close proximity in the classroom, there’s so much that they are missing out from when they attend schools that are homogenous. Everybody’s experience would be so much richer if they attended schools with a vast array of beautiful diversity of students.

As fewer families applied to NYC’s free pre-K programs, more got their top choices

2020-05-13T21:40:38+00:00

It was perhaps a little less competitive to get into the city’s free pre-K programs this year: As the number of families applying dipped, the percentage who got into their top choice for the 2020-21 school year increased, according to education department data released Wednesday.

A record 77% of families received an offer for their first-choice Pre-K for All program, the city touted. However, the number of applications has tumbled recently: fewer than 62,000 families submitted applications, down by more than 3,000 from last year.

Most families — 90% — received an offer for one of their top three choices this year.

“Pre-K for All remains a bedrock of this city,” said Josh Wallack, a deputy chancellor at the city’s education department. “I’m so grateful to our dedicated teachers, staff, and providers who continue to make free, full-day, high-quality pre-K a reality.”

The education department gave two reasons for the decrease in applicants: a lower birth rate in 2016, and COVD-19. Uncertainty around the coronavirus was growing across New York City in the final two weeks that applications were due, which is typically when the education department sees a surge in submissions. The deadline was initially on the same day that school buildings closed in response to the crisis.

Parents who missed the application window can still add themselves to waitlists and, depending on availability, could begin to receive offers the same day. To sign up, or for assistance, families can visit myschools.nyc or call 718-935-2009.

Plans to extend pre-K to all 3-year-olds are on pause because of the pandemic. With the city expecting to lose billions, the expansion of 3-K for All into four new districts next year was cancelled.

Even though Mayor Bill de Blasio has made pre-K a pillar of his administration, advocates were quick to point out that thousands of children with disabilities consistently lack access. Year after year, the city has faced a shortage of seats for preschoolers who require services such as smaller class sizes, speech therapy, or accessible buildings.

“We are gravely concerned about preschoolers with disabilities who have a legal right to a preschool special education class but do not have one,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, said in an emailed statement. “Hundreds of preschoolers with disabilities were sitting at home prior to the pandemic and may have nowhere to go to school when buildings reopen.”

Pre-K for students with special needs is primarily funded by the state, but families and advocates point out that the city has promised a seat to every 4-year-old in the city who wants one.

The education department also announced that 38 programs this year changed their admissions process in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body. New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country, and pre-K classrooms have been found to be even less representative of the city than those in kindergarten.

Report: Eliminate middle school screens, make high school admissions more fair next year

2020-05-12T21:40:07+00:00

The coronavirus pandemic has upended New York City’s ultra-competitive admissions process for middle and high schools next year. Some parents are fighting to preserve the use of selective “screens” — like grades, test scores and attendance — while advocates for more diverse schools hope the city will finally take action to dismantle the practice.

A group of experts and advocates convened by the Fordham Law School Feerick Center for Social Justice is calling for a middle ground approach, according to a report released Tuesday.

They recommend an immediate end to selective admissions in middle schools, but advise a more deliberate and gradual approach to eliminating screens in high schools. In the meantime, the city could take a number of steps to make high school admissions more transparent and fair next year by encouraging schools to adopt admissions policies to boost diversity and developing some standard screening criteria.

“During this unprecedented time, a lack of guidance could lead to individual programs developing their own ad hoc criteria, potentially relying more heavily on capricious methods of evaluation,” the report said.

More than 100 New York City high schools “screen” students for admission based on auditions or their academic records — a higher share than anywhere else in the country. The practice helps drive the city’s status as home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country, with screened schools tending to enroll fewer black and Hispanic students, or those from low-income families.

But next year, many schools will not be able to rely on the screens most commonly used to sort through student applicants. Attendance was eliminated as an admissions factor so as not to encourage sick children to show up for class while school buildings remained opened as the city began seeing COVID-19 cases in March. Traditional grades will not be issued to account for the extreme hardship many students face accessing remote learning. The state, meanwhile, canceled standardized tests — that means the student’s fourth and eighth grade test scores cannot be used to sort them for middle and high school.

The process of using fourth-grade academic records to make admissions decisions is incredibly stressful on many families, and the Fordham report calls for swiftly ending screening in middle schools, calling it “fundamentally inappropriate” for such young children.

The report, however, called for more measured action for high school admissions. Next year, at least, the process should be much more transparent — a struggle even in a normal year. City leaders could do that by creating a menu of screening criteria for schools rather than allowing every school to devise its own standards. Schools should make their admissions policies publicly available, which is often not the case, and should explain their use of each screen.

“Once we have those rationales, it brings transparency and it brings more information to the debate,” said Karuna Patel, deputy director of the Feerick Center.

The city should also take the selection process out of schools’ hands by requiring central offices to calculate composite admissions scores for students. In a typical year, many schools are responsible for ranking students for admission.

Eventually, academic screens should be eliminated entirely, the report said, but it raises concerns about moving too quickly. Advocates want to build more public support so that admissions changes stick for the long-term, rather than as a single-year response to the health crisis, said Emma Rehac, a member of the youth advocacy group IntegrateNYC, who helped author the report.

“I want to make sure that these recommendations are not just garnering support in this unprecedented time,” she said. “I also want people to support these recommendations [after COVID-19].”

Education department leaders say admissions guidance is forthcoming. Spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said the city is taking time to hear feedback from parents, students, school leaders, and community organizations.

“We’re committed to an equitable and transparent admissions process,” O’Hanlon said. “While no policies for next year have been decided upon yet, many perspectives will be considered. Every policy adjustment we make balances keeping our students engaged without penalizing them for the trauma they may be experiencing.”

Any new policies should be revealed by July so that families and schools have time to adjust before the next admissions cycle, the report said.

“This is a really high stakes process for students and families, and all the stakeholders involved in the process are going to need time to figure out how to navigate uncharted waters,” said Dora Galacatos, Executive Director of the Feerick Center.

After coronavirus: Admissions for NYC’s ‘screened’ schools could change, possibly spurring more student diversity

2020-05-05T15:04:20+00:00

In Manhattan’s District 2, where getting into a coveted middle or high school is like a competitive sport, hundreds of parents streamed into an emergency virtual meeting last week.

It was the eve before Mayor Bill de Blasio announced schools would toss out traditional grades for students as part of the city’s response to school buildings being shuttered during the coronavirus crisis.

Parent after parent lobbied, ultimately unsuccessfully, for keeping traditional grades intact for elementary and middle schoolers. Without those marks, many wondered, how would their children get accepted into the most selective schools next year?

City and education leaders have yet to answer that question. But it’s clear that applying to “screened” middle and high schools next year promises to be unlike any other. That’s because the city’s response to the coronavirus crisis means the main data points that competitive schools use to admit — and stress out — the city’s 10- and 13-year olds are gone: attendance, state tests, and grades.

What happens next could make the process even more confusing to navigate. Or it could have the surprising consequence of making schools more diverse — if de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza decide to act.

Integration advocates have long lobbied the mayor to tear down or pare back screens, which contribute to the city’s surprising status as home to one of the most segregated school systems in the county. Now, as buildings are closed for about a third of the academic year and more than 1 million city students are forced to learn from their homes, the coronavirus has exacerbated deep inequities across the system.

Pushback to any possible changes is already beginning to emerge, as families who have managed to navigate the city’s admissions maze deftly are upset about the rules changing in the middle of the game.

City leaders have said that new policy regarding admissions is in the works. Sean Corcoran, who has researched screening and segregation in New York City schools, said parents and schools need clear guidance to follow, but that the education department’s next steps should be taken carefully.

“We should be cautious moving forward, and major changes in the way admissions are done could have an impact on the way schools operate,” said Corcoran, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University. “Hopefully, they’ll do it sooner rather than later so parents know what to expect. There’s nothing that makes parents in New York City more anxious than knowing where their kid is going to go to school.”

Next year’s admissions still murky

New York City stands out as having a higher share than anywhere else in the country of schools that use competitive admissions criteria to admit students.

In a typical year, each school sets its own admissions criteria, creating a patchwork of standards and requirements that families and students often struggle to understand. Some may require a minimum grade point average, others can count a single absence against a student’s chance for admissions. Often, schools do not disclose how they weigh applications, making the odds of getting an offer a mystery. Families have a leg up if they have the time to visit open houses, the savvy to guide their children with their applications, and money to pay private consultants to help them decode the process.

Sorting through students can require an immense investment of school leaders’ time — especially now, without data points like test scores that allow for quick distinctions among students. Next year, some schools might decide it’s too much work to figure out new ways to select students, and drop screens all together.

There is precedent for such sweeping admissions changes: Brooklyn’s District 15 recently eliminated competitive admissions standards in favor of a lottery system. Other screened schools across the city have dropped some of their admissions screens as the crush of applications became overwhelming.

On the other hand, schools that are committed to separating students by their academic records could simply double down, creating new entrance criteria. Many of the most coveted schools already use measures beyond attendance, grades, and test scores. Bard High School Early College administers its own entrance tests. Beacon High School requires a portfolio of work.

It’s also possible schools could pivot to use grades accumulated before the shutdown, if those are made available, or test scores from prior school years.

Without a citywide policy in place, the admissions process could become even more confusing and less fair to students, said Corcoran, the Vanderbilt professor.

“If you don’t provide enough structure for screened programs then they will engage in activities that are unequal or perhaps less transparent than what they’ve done in the past — and people have already complained that screens are not transparent,” he said.

One simple solution the city could consider, he said, is requiring schools to share their rubrics publicly. Chalkbeat submitted a public records request in November for school rubrics, and the education department says it needs until June 30th to respond.

What it means for integration

Student activists have been organizing school-wide walkouts, occupied City Hall during council hearings, and have hounded the mayor during public appearances to push for change within the admissions system — to little avail. Now, in the span of a few weeks, the pandemic has forced the potential to usher in reforms.

“It is incredibly frustrating that it took a pandemic,” said Emma Rehac, a high school senior with the youth advocacy group IntegrateNYC. “Now people are looking at all these solutions that we’ve been organizing around. They are always urgent, not just now.”

Diverse schools can boost outcomes for low-income students and those of color — and their white and more affluent peers. Integration efforts have led to lower drop out rates, higher college enrollment, and reduced racial prejudice.

But screened schools tend to enroll disproportionately fewer economically disadvantaged students, or those who are black and Hispanic. Using attendance measures has been shown to screen out those students, who are more likely to suffer from health complications like asthma, or lack permanent housing, and therefore find it hard to be present in school every day. Grades and test scores can reflect that children in segregated schools often don’t have the same opportunities to learn — for example, schools serving mostly low-income students tend to have higher teacher turnover.

The coronavirus has made it more clear than ever what some students are up against: Hundreds of thousands began remote learning without computers or WiFi that would allow them to tune into online classes. Schools had been closed for about seven weeks by the time the city was able to deliver a device to the more than 300,000 students who needed one.

“If they decide to use screens, then they’re not being fair to anyone,” said Lennox Thomas, a high school senior in Brooklyn and member of Teens Take Charge, a youth advocacy group that has pressured the mayor to change admissions standards. “They’re just going to be assessing a students’ access to internet, and that’s obviously not fair because some students can’t afford a computer. Some students don’t have access to WiFi.”

Pushback mounting

Even during a pandemic, the mayor is likely to face pushback if the city radically changes screening practices — especially from middle-class and white parents who often manage to navigate the system well.

Opposition has already bubbled up. A seventh-grader at a competitive school recently launched a petition with more than 1,400 people supporting his call for the city to preserve students’ grades from before schools shut down so they can be used in high school admissions.

“I sacrificed participating in sports at my school in order to do my best in an important year,” he wrote. “This grading policy change will make not [only] me but all of my classmates feel that the effort we put in our first 7 months of school was for nothing.”

Jodie Loverro, a mother of three children in District 2, has one child in fourth-grade and another is in seventh — critical years for admissions. Since applications are due early in fifth- and eighth-grade, schools typically consider the academic records of students from their previous full year in school.

Loverro, who works as a substitute teacher in the district, decided to work part-time this year so she could ensure her fourth-grader made it to school on time everyday — knowing that attendance would play a big role in where she would get accepted to middle school. Her seventh-grade son, meanwhile, put in extra effort this semester to boost his grades above 90%, hoping it would improve his chances for a top high school.

Without knowing what will happen for next year’s admissions, Loverro is thinking about private schools and considering homeschooling. Most of all, she just wants clarity from the education department about what admissions will look like next year.

“It’s confusing. I honestly just feel like this was a lot to throw at people, and they’re already dealing with a lot,” she told Chalkbeat. “You’re putting this in place in an attempt to even the playing field, but you are also hurting the kids that are trying to excel.”

Parents who want to preserve screening often wonder whether schools can serve a broad range of students well and argue that students with top grades should be rewarded with a placement in a coveted school.

“The kids who are high achievers should have a chance to be high achievers. It’s not the most politically correct thing to say, but it’s also true,” said Elissa Stein, a consultant who helps families navigate the application process. “If next year is a lottery and kids end up in schools where they’re not academically prepared, it could make for a very challenging experience.”

It’s up to de Blasio

Whatever happens next year may ultimately be an anomaly rather than result in any structural change, integration advocates believe.

Though the schools chancellor has forcefully questioned the widespread use of screens and heralded the importance of diverse schools, the mayor is ultimately in charge of education department policy. Throughout his tenure, de Blasio has preferred to let individual schools or districts take on their own diversity efforts, avoiding any citywide policy.

The mayor appointed an advisory group that recommended ways to better integrate schools, but he has not acted for eight months on the most controversial proposals — to overhaul gifted programs and eliminate some specific screens.

That was before the coronavirus brought New York City to its knees. Today, schools are meal hubs serving hundreds of thousands of meals to hungry students and their families, as unemployment reaches historic levels. Teachers, while pivoting to online instruction on a dime, have also taken on the roles of social workers and counselors — raising money for their students’ families to help keep roofs over their heads, and attending virtual funerals for those who have lost family members.

All of that could make it hard to argue that now is the time to focus on diversity in schools.

“If there’s any sense that any issue is going to be politically different, I don’t see the desire or the courage from City Hall to really take on those issues,” said Matt Gonzales, who advocates for integration policies at the New York University Metro Center. “I feel pessimistic about what could happen under this administration, but I also know this moment itself calls for decisive and real action.”

Program aiming to integrate NYC’s specialized high schools continues to enroll few black and Hispanic students

2020-05-01T20:33:51+00:00

A program intended to boost diversity at the city’s elite but segregated specialized high schools continued to have little impact on the disproportionately low number of black and Hispanic students offered seats, new data released Friday revealed.

Almost 35% of the roughly 1,350 offers for the Discovery program went to black and Hispanic students this year, up 4.7 percentage points from the previous year. Discovery is a summer program that offers admission to the specialized high schools to low-income students who score below the cutoff on an entrance exam.

Asian students continued to receive the most Discovery offers, at about 50%. That is about 4 percentage points lower than last year.

Asian students already make up a majority at these eight hyper-selective schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Only about 10% of students at the specialized high schools are black or Hispanic, while those students comprise almost 70% of enrollment citywide.

In an effort to address those stark disparities, Mayor Bill de Blasio significantly expanded Discovery, accounting for 20% of all seats at the specialized schools this year, up from 13% last year. He also tweaked the criteria for who is eligible, so that students must come from schools where most of their peers are economically disadvantaged.

The program’s changes have been the subject of a legal challenge claiming that Asian students will be squeezed out of the specialized high schools, in violation of their civil rights. But a judge ruled that the city could move forward with the reforms as the suit drags on.

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test serves as the sole admissions factor for the sought after schools. Only those with the highest scores land a seat. Almost 28,000 took the entrance exam this year. (A ninth specialized school that focuses on the arts accepts students through auditions.)

An ongoing battle has raged over the test, which many blame for shutting out black and Hispanic students. But many Asian families say the specialized high schools have been unfairly targeted, while other selective schools that enroll mostly white students have evaded any admissions changes.

Students have until May 15 to accept their Discovery offer. The city expects that not everyone offered admission through the program will end up enrolling, and have earmarked 800 spots to be filled among the exam schools — an increase from 500 last year. Students received Discovery offers from 112 middle schools where none had received a specialized high school offer through the traditional route, up from 67 the year before.

“This initiative alone does not move the needle enough for our students,” Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement. “As we’ve continued to say, a single test does not capture a student’s abilities and until we change the approach, we will see the same results.”

How should NYC grade students during coronavirus pandemic? City, advocates clash over expected policy

2020-04-24T23:13:52+00:00

New York City education leaders are preparing to reveal a new policy for how students will be graded while school buildings are closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

But parent leaders and other advocates are already pushing back, saying the policy under consideration, which continues with letter grades in high school, does not go far enough to address the challenges posed by an unprecedented public health crisis.

It’s expected that the city will announce that no student will be held back as a result of the pandemic. Elementary and middle school students’ work will be graded as “satisfactory” or “needs improvement,” according to details from the forthcoming policy, reported first by NY1.

High school students, meanwhile, will continue to receive grades in accordance with their school’s own policies — with one notable exception: No student will be given a failing mark. Instead, they will receive an “incomplete,” according to the report.

The education department would not confirm the outlines of the policy. Advocates, meanwhile, said they are still hoping the city will reconsider.

“To adhere to traditional grading at this moment would only serve to perpetuate the real impacts of pandemic-related stress, racial and economic disparities, and the fact that most teachers were not and still are not adequately prepared to provide high-quality instruction remotely,” states one letter, signed by three dozen parent leaders and scores of other advocacy groups.

The question of how to grade students is particularly fraught in New York City, where an unusually high share of middle and high schools admit students based on their academic performance. The most competitive schools use grades and test scores in enrollment decisions, a complicated and often hazy process that many blame for driving the city’s status as among the most segregated school systems in the nation.

The pandemic led New York City to shutter all of its school buildings, forcing more than 1 million students to learn remotely since March 23. Campuses are not expected to reopen this academic year, meaning about a third of 2019-20 school year will have taken place outside of the classroom.

More than 70% of public school students come from low-income families, and more than 300,000 lacked the electronic devices they needed for online classes immediately after campuses were closed. At the same time, students of color and those living in poverty are more likely to suffer from the health and economic repercussions of the pandemic, with death rates and unemployment much higher in those communities.

In a letter signed by the New York Immigration Coalition and dozens of other immigrant rights groups, advocates noted that students classified as learning English as a new language and those with disabilities are at a particular disadvantage.

“Many immigrant parents did not receive access to technology or instructional packets for weeks, and some have yet to receive these supports which are necessary for having a chance at engaging in remote learning,” the letter reads.

Those stark inequities prompted cries from parent leaders, advocacy groups, and teachers to rethink grading policies with a recognition that many students are dealing with trauma or may lack the resources they need to learn at home. Though the education department has pledged to provide devices to every student who needs one, tens of thousands are still waiting to receive a device.

Teachers have been expected to shift to an entirely new model for instruction with barely a moment’s notice, relying on virtual tools to stand in for the classroom. Families, meanwhile, are struggling to log on and keep up.

“No one’s considering what we’re going through,” said Grisel Cardona, a mother of three who is a member of multiple organizations pushing the city to take more dramatic steps. “We have children and families who have lost parents, so they might not feel like logging into Google classroom. And you’re going to give that child an incomplete? It’s just not fair.”

Among the advocates’ asks: the elimination of grades in elementary school, in favor of narrative reports about each students’ academic progress. In middle and high school, they want students to be held harmless, with opportunities for their grades only to improve, not decline. Everyone should graduate from high school, they demanded.

New York City has lagged behind other large urban districts in coming up with a grading plan, and the system’s approach has departed from those cities in its instance that high school students should continue to receive regular grades.

Chicago instituted a “no harm” policy, only allowing a students’ marks to improve. In Denver, students have to opt-in to receive a letter grade. San Francisco has proposed simply giving every student an A.

Aiming for greater student diversity in NYC gifted programs, the Anderson School tweaks admissions

2020-04-24T00:05:31+00:00

The Anderson School on the Upper West Side, one of the city’s coveted gifted programs, will change its admissions policies this year in the hopes of enrolling a more diverse student body.

The education department announced on Thursday that students from northern Manhattan or the South Bronx will receive preference for 30% of seats at the school.

The priority applies to students who live north of 96th Street in District 3, which comprises the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, those who reside in districts 4 or 5 farther north in Manhattan, or in 7, 8, 9, and 12 in the South Bronx. Parents got a peek at the changes earlier this fall, when the new admissions policy was accidently posted to the school’s website.

Brooklyn School of Inquiry is also tweaking its existing admissions priority to include students residing in certain school districts. The school will continue to give priority for 40% of its seats, with half going to students who come from low-income families, and half going to students living in districts 18 or 20 in Brooklyn.

Gifted programs citywide are starkly segregated. At Anderson, 12% of the student body is black and Hispanic, but those students make up almost 70% of public school enrollment citywide. Students from low-income families make up 15% of enrollment at Anderson, compared with more than 70% across the city.

A controversy was ignited last summer, when a school diversity advisory committee appointed by the mayor recommended phasing out gifted programs and replacing them with more inclusive enrichment models. About eight months later, Mayor Bill de Blasio has not acted on the recommendation.

Admission to gifted programs is based on the results of a single test, which is typically taken when children are about 4-years-old.

Many blame this admissions policy for contributing to school segregation. In the absence of action from the mayor, the coronavirus health crisis could force the city to reconsider admissions, said Laura Zingmond, a senior editor for the review website InsideSchools, if students are unable to take a test in person.

“We may have to alter and rethink admissions radically because of the pandemic,” she said. “We may have to confront an overhaul of admissions across the board for the next round. But we don’t know.”

It’s unclear whether the admissions changes at Anderson will have the intended effect, given gentrification in northern Manhattan, and the fact that disproportionately low numbers of black, Hispanic, and low-income students even take the gifted admissions test.

In District 5 in Harlem, for example, only 13 children earned a score high enough to apply to a citywide gifted program, out of 174 who took the test. That’s compared to Manhattan’s District 2, which spans Lower Manhattan and the Upper East Side, which had the highest number of test-takers. Almost 1,600 took the test, and 283 had a score that made them eligible for a citywide program.

Five other gifted programs and schools have admissions policies aimed at integration by offering priority based on whether students come from low-income families, are learning English as a new language, or lack stable housing. They are: P.S. 11, P.S. 77 Lower Lab School, P.S. 15, P.S. 110, and TAG Young Scholars, another citywide school.

Anderson is one of only five citywide gifted programs, meaning it is open to students from across the city who scored at least in the 97th percentile on an admissions exam. But since competition for these seats is so fierce, typically only students with near-perfect scores are admitted.

Other gifted programs are housed within city schools and require a lower score for entry. This year, 28,901 students took the admissions test, and 7,940 scored high enough to be accepted to a program, according to data released by the education department. Families were notified of their scores on Thursday, and those who are eligible can begin applying to programs. Acceptance notifications are expected in June.

“We are proud to offer an array of high-quality elementary school choices, and we join families across the city today who are celebrating their eligibility for one of our Gifted and Talented programs,” said education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon.

KIPP postpones new ‘intentionally integrated’ charter in Harlem due to coronavirus uncertainty

2020-04-10T18:28:54+00:00

An “intentionally integrated” charter school in Harlem that was planning to welcome its inaugural class this fall will instead postpone its opening a full year due to the coronavirus.

In a letter to the hundreds of families that applied for the school’s April lottery, KIPP Beyond Middle School co-founders Joe Negron and Jeff Li said they did not think it was “prudent” to open the school until the 2021-22 school year given the current public health crisis.

“The unknowns and risks associated with the COVID-19 crisis are affecting all schools across our city, including our existing schools at KIPP NYC,” they wrote. “Amidst this uncertainty, we did not think it was prudent to open KIPP Beyond at this time.”

The postponement is an example of how the disruption caused by the coronavirus is beginning to extend from this school year into the next one. It’s also a setback for a school that’s already struggled with community pushback, and it pauses an integration effort in a part of Manhattan where many schools are starkly divided by race.

When the school does open, KIPP still plans to use a weighted lottery to achieve socioeconomic and racial diversity. It’s aiming to reserve 60% of seats for children from low-income families, while 40% of seats would go to other students — a departure for a network that serves largely low-income students and predominantly black and Hispanic children.

Although Manhattan’s District 3 created an integration plan for district middle schools, the parent-led community education council tried to prevent KIPP Beyond from opening at all in the area spanning the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and the southern part of Harlem. Some locals feared the new charter school would interfere with the district’s own integration plan. They also worried it would further stress the district’s already under-enrolled middle schools.

The charter’s founders, meanwhile, believe that they are filling an unmet need in the district and are aiming to enroll a student body reflective of the district’s demographics.

“For well over a year, we’ve been listening to and learning from the community, meeting families in their homes, coffee shops, parks, churches, and libraries,” Negron said in a statement in late February.

Negron, who lives in the district, said the middle school will provide “an option that families want and doesn’t exist in District 3 — a public school that is academically rigorous, unscreened, and intentionally integrated.”

In addition to the core academic subjects of science, English, math, and civics, the school plans to offer music, social entrepreneurship, debate, Spanish, and robotics. Physical education and meditation will take place throughout the week. To support social emotional learning, students will take part in a weekly “community circle.” (Staff will mirror this practice with a regular faculty circle, as well.)

Negron said he received hundreds of applications for KIPP Beyond’s 95 seats before postponing the opening of the school, which will share a building with Harlem Hebrew Language Academy Charter School.

Applicants will now have the KIPP middle school closest to the Beyond campus — KIPP STAR Harlem Middle School, about a 10-minute walk away — automatically added to their applications. KIPP has also extended the deadline for making changes to applications from April 1 to April 10. The network plans to hold the lottery for New York City KIPP locations on April 15 .

District 3’s community education council last year tried to block KIPP Beyond, sending a letter and circulating a petition urging the SUNY Charter Schools Institute to reject the network’s proposal. The parent advisory board — which doesn’t have formal power to block charters — worried the new school would hinder the district’s own fledgling integration plan.

The district set aside a quarter of seats at each middle school for students who are poor and struggle academically. It was the first district-wide desegregation plan in New York City. But it fell far short of the steps taken in Brooklyn’s District 15 and has produced only modest results so far.

Matt Gonzales, who directs New York University’s Integration and Innovation Initiative, believes that District 3’s admissions policies remain too exclusionary, even with their new integration plan. The district still allows academic screens that funnel white and wealthy students into certain schools, he said.

In contrast, KIPP Beyond’s model is “actually more accessible than all of the schools in the district,” Gonzales said. “[That] sends a message to the school community that it’s possible to create diverse and rigorous classrooms.”

Gonzales has long been a critic of charter schools, believing that many charters have oppressive no-excuses discipline policies and that they drain resources from district schools. But he said that he met with KIPP Beyond’s founders while they were conceptualizing their new school, and he expressed cautious optimism about their approach to diversity.

Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, has also offered advice to the KIPP Beyond founders and is a board member of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, which has more than 50 member schools nationwide. She noted that integration has consistently been shown to benefit students of all races.

“We can do something here that is potentially more powerful than resources alone can achieve,” she said.

Kim Watkins, president of the local community education council, acknowledged District 3’s approach to integration has been conservative, noting how difficult it was to reach consensus across the district.

“It is absolutely a valid response to the work that we did as a community that we didn’t go far enough,” she said.

But she didn’t think KIPP Beyond’s opening would address that, and she remained opposed to it, as she does to charter expansion in general.

Still, the new school has shown some flexibility in working with the community.

The community education council opposed KIPP Beyond’s original plan to begin enrolling students in fifth grade, which is standard practice for KIPP middle schools across the country. The council argued this would be disruptive to area elementary schools, given that district middle schools traditionally begin in sixth grade.

The founders of KIPP Beyond ultimately heeded those concerns and plan to start their new school with sixth graders.

As the school remains on track to open after the delay, Watkins believes it’s important to seek common ground, even though her community education council does not have official relationships with charter schools.

“Their heart seems to be in the right place, and they’re good people,” Watkins said of Negron and Li. “[If we] can generate an alliance with any of the charter schools in District 3 in terms of how all of our students need to succeed, it’s a good opportunity.”

She added, “We’ll take it one step at a time.”

But KIPP Beyond’s first steps will have to wait another year. For now, KIPP is helping the 6,000 students it currently serves in New York City with resources for families, including remote lessons and guidance on food pickup and mental health.

Negron said he personally reached out to most of the families who applied to Kipp Beyond to inform them of the postponement.

“We have built strong relationships and interest in the school,” he said, “and while this was not easy to hear for those families, they generally understood the decision and were appreciative of being informed personally as early as possible.”

Only 10 black students offered admission to Stuyvesant, as efforts to integrate NYC’s specialized high schools flounder

2020-03-19T19:30:05+00:00

New York City’s prized specialized high schools will remain starkly segregated as the number of black and Hispanic students offered seats for next year’s freshman class remained stubbornly low, according to education department data released Thursday.

Only 4.5% of offers went to black students and 6.6% went to Hispanic students, virtually unchanged from last year. Citywide, black and Hispanic students make up almost 70% of enrollment.

Once again, a majority of offers went to white students (25.1%) and Asian students (54%).

The figures were a stark reminder that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to integrate the schools — which he’s dialed back this year — have failed to win support. In pushing for admission changes, the mayor unsuccessfully lobbied state lawmakers, who must approve any admissions changes to the city’s three largest specialized high schools, Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, and Bronx Science.

At Stuyvesant, the most competitive of the specialized high schools, only 10 offers went to black students — out of 766 total offers. At Staten Island Technical, only one black student was offered admission, the same number as last year. The number of Hispanic students offered a seat at Stuy dropped to 20 from 33, and at Staten Island Tech, only eight Hispanic students received offers, from 11 the year before.

“Diversity in our specialized high schools remains stagnant, because we know a single test does not capture our students’ full potential. I am hopeful we’ll move towards a more equitable system next year,” Carranza said in an emailed statement.

New York City’s school system is among the most segregated in the country, and some integration advocates say the city could accomplish more by focusing beyond this small subset of schools. But the specialized high schools loom large in the city’s psyche given their vaunted reputations, and a high-profile debate has raged for years over changing the admissions process in an attempt to increase their numbers of black and Hispanic students.

Eight of the specialized high schools admit students based solely on the results of the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT. (A ninth, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, is a performing arts school that admits students by audition.) This year, 27,800 eighth-graders took the test, and 4,265 received offers.

The schools’ demographics could change by the time classes start in September (barring an extended citywide school closure due to the coronavirus). In an attempt to better integrate the schools, the city has dramatically expanded Discovery, and changed who qualifies for the program, which offers admission to students who score below the test score cutoff and attend summer classes. This year, 20% of offers will go to students in the program — accounting for about 800 seats. That’s up from 13% for the current school year.

So far, Discovery has not led to significant shifts in who is admitted to the specialized schools. And the city’s changes to the program have sparked a legal challenge which is still winding its way through the courts, about a year after it was filed.

Efforts to change the state law over specialized high school admissions have failed. De Blasio almost two years ago proposed scrapping the admissions test and instead admitting the top 7% of students at each city middle school. His idea faced massive pushback, including from Asian-American families who felt such a process would unfairly elbow out their children, many of whom are low-income.

Others have argued the answer lies in expanding access to gifted and talented classes, which are also deeply segregated. A multimillion dollar lobbying campaign, supported by activist Rev. Kirsten Foy, has pushed for more gifted and talented programs, more specialized high schools, and more access to test preparation.

This year, the mayor signaled that a new approach was needed after admitting that he had fallen short in reaching out to Asian-American families.

Some lawmakers, who were in his corner, have changed course and instead want to repeal the law that says an admissions test is required for entry into the city’s three largest specialized high schools. Chancellor Richard Carranza has also advocated for repealing that law, but there has been no apparent movement in Albany on that front, either.

Despite the furor over the schools, there is evidence they may not be the springboards that many assume them to be — partly because the students who attend them are already primed for success.

With schools closed through at least April 20 due to the coronavirus pandemic, open houses for the specialized schools have been canceled. The education department said families should reach out to schools to determine whether they’ll hold an alternative event. At Stuyvesant, for example, a message on the school’s website says the open house will happen virtually.

Students vying for a spot at the specialized schools were not the only ones who learned where they’ll be headed next year.

All New York City students must apply to high schools. Overall, more than 78,000 eighth-graders submitted applications, ranking up to 12 choices and then being matched to a school through an algorithm similar to the one medical schools use.

About 46% of rising ninth graders received admission to their first-ranked school, and 73% of students were admitted to one of their top three choices. Those percentages were similar to the year before.

For the first time, there is no second admissions round for students. Instead, students who were not accepted to their top-choice schools will be added to waitlists — though city officials have admitted the change won’t likely lead to many students being accepted to higher-ranked schools.

Almost 44,000 students — who did not land their first choice school — will automatically be added to a waitlist.

Integration efforts kick off in Manhattan’s District 2, home to some of NYC’s most affluent and coveted schools

2020-03-04T20:25:39+00:00

Manhattan’s District 2 is moving forward with plans to better integrate schools across a large swath of the borough, from Chinatown and TriBeCa, to Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and the Upper East Side.

District leaders last week presented the outlines of a pilot proposal to rethink admissions and make schools more welcoming for all students, stemming from a state grant aimed at improving schools by making them more diverse.

But the path toward reform is likely to hit resistance.

The district has one of the highest shares of families in the city who are white and affluent — a constituency likely to fight to preserve access to some of the most sought-after schools in the system. At 27%, white student enrollment is the sixth-highest out of 32 districts in the city, and many families pay top dollar to live in the area. In fact, District 2 spans seven of the country’s top 100 expensive ZIP codes.

But there are wide disparities among schools. At Chinatown’s P.S. 2, more than 90% of students come from low-income families, many of them recent immigrants. At P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village, just 7% of students live in poverty. Across the district, more than half of students in the area’s public schools come from low-income families.

District and state leaders on Thursday held the first of a planned series of public meetings to get feedback from parents, teachers, students and other community members before drilling into specifics about what the proposals will look like. Many of the nearly 100 people in the gym of Union Square’s The Clinton School seemed supportive of addressing the district’s disparities — and said the positive tone contrasted with previous District 2 meetings on the topic of integration.

“Many of us want action,” said Kaena Clark, the mother of two children in the district. “I don’t think this is going to hurt my white kids. I think this is going to help my white kids.”

Maud Maron, president of the local Community Education Council and a member of the team charged with implementing the state grant, said she was “sympathetic” to parents who may find themselves frustrated by ever-changing admissions policies in the district and the city.

“But I’m also sympathetic that if you don’t change, things don’t change,” Maron said.

Here are the broad outlines of what’s under consideration in District 2.

Pilot programs addressing racial disparities in suspension rates

Schools need to move cautiously to avoid unintended consequences, Maron said, pointing to the potential that students of color could face disproportionate punishment in more diverse schools. Advocates across New York City have pushed to reform harsh discipline practices in schools, arguing they can have dramatic consequences on academic performance and whether students end up in the justice system.

“This is hard work to do right,” Maron said. “I’m a public defender. When people talk about the school-to-prison pipeline, I see where that ends.”

Under the grant, she said schools have already begun to focus on what’s happening inside their own classrooms, with pilot programs and teacher training to address racial disparities in suspension rates, and to develop lessons that reflect students’ diverse backgrounds and learning needs.

By doing so, the grant team hopes to increase test scores and reduce chronic absenteeism.

Possible elementary school changes

At the elementary school level, the grant team is proposing to zero in on admissions in Chinatown, where some schools have been struggling with declining enrollment, perhaps due to gentrification and changing immigration patterns.

The grant is focusing on:

P.S. 1
P.S. 2
P.S. 42
P.S. 124
P.S. 126
P.S. 130

Maron said there have been attempts at individual schools to address enrollment issues, but that can have cascading effects on nearby campuses. So the grant team wants to look at all the schools in the area to come up with solutions.

Piloting admissions changes in middle school

The grant team has also come up with the outlines of a proposal that would change the way students are admitted to middle schools, with an eye toward leveling the playing field for students who face certain disadvantages in the competitive process.

The aim is for the changes to be developed by June, affecting next year’s applicants at the following schools:

75 Morton
Wagner Middle School
Baruch Middle School
The Clinton School

The grant team says schools could potentially give extra weight to applications from students who are homeless, have a disability, come from a low-income family, attend a low-performing elementary school, or have low scores on state exams — or some combination of those factors. Which factors would be considered, and how much weight to give each of them, are still under consideration.

Many District 2 middle schools “screen” students, meaning admission is based on competitive criteria including test scores and attendance records. As a result, the most sought-after schools post strong test scores and impressive graduation rates — but tend to enroll few students who have struggled academically, or who come from low-income families, or are black or Hispanic.

At the Clinton School, only about 16% of students are black or Hispanic. Those students make up about 46% of enrollment across the district.

The District’s proposal likely means that schools would still screen students, echoing an approach that District 3 recently took to try to integrate middle schools on the Upper West Side and in Harlem. In Brooklyn, District 15 middle schools recently opted to remove screens altogether, a move that led to more dramatic progress toward integration, according to city data.

No mention of District 2 priority for high school

Segregation is particularly stark in District 2’s high schools, some of which give admissions priority to students who live in the district or have attended other schools there. That admissions advantage is unusual.

In New York City, students are required to apply to high schools, a policy that aims to give students a chance to attend school outside of their often-segregated zip codes. The admissions priority, however, has allowed District 2 — one of the least racially and economically representative in the city — to essentially maintain its own set of local schools. At Eleanor Roosevelt on the Upper East Side, virtually all of the admitted students came from within the district and enrollment is 66% white.

The district’s grant proposal makes no mention of changing the admissions priority. But some schools that give District 2 priority have already tweaked their admissions rubrics in ways that could lead to more academic diversity.

Why is District 2 rethinking admissions?

Across the city, dozens of school districts have received the New York State Integration Project grant. The first phase kicked off in the 2017-18 school year and guided districts through drilling into data, shining a light on the causes of segregation, and beginning to think of ways to spur more diversity.

Now, District 2 and others have moved on to the grant’s second stage, which involves piloting potential solutions. Successful districts will move on to the third and final stage later this year, which will guide officials toward scaling their integration plans district-wide.

The program grew out of the efforts of former state education Commissioner John B. King, in one of his last moves before leaving to join the Obama administration as U.S. education secretary. It had been overseen by Angelica Infante-Green, a strong ally in addressing the state’s status as one of the most segregated in the county before she left to become schools chief in Rhode Island.

Without the grant’s original champions, it remains to be seen whether the state education department stays committed to its goals as districts begin to actually implement what are sure to be controversial changes.

A spokesperson for the city’s education department pledged to support this “important” work.

“We’re thrilled that more communities are having conversations around integration and diversity because we know our schools are stronger when they reflect the diversity of our city,” said Katie O’Hanlon.

Facing backlash, Queens middle school integration plans are tweaked

2020-02-19T22:00:30+00:00

Answering intense criticism from parents, the education department on Wednesday announced changes to the process that officials hope will lead to a middle school integration plan in Queens District 28.

The process will now take six months longer than originally anticipated, wrapping up in December 2020. It will also entail more public meetings — including one at every district elementary and middle school.

Additionally, the city released the names of members of the working group that will guide decision-making for any final plans. Group members had previously been identified only by position or affiliation with local schools and organizations, a point that critics used to blast the effort as shrouded in secrecy.

“This process’s success is dependent on hearing viewpoints from every corner of the district, mutual trust, transparency and clarity, and we are committed to responding to the requests we’ve received,” education department spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon wrote in an emailed statement.

The changes were announced just hours before Mayor Bill de Blasio was scheduled to appear at a town hall meeting in one of the district’s middle schools.

District 28 received a grant from the education department to launch a community engagement process, with the public’s feedback used as the foundation for integration plan for the area’s middle schools. Though the Queens district enrolls a diverse group of students, not a single middle school reflects the local demographics.

Through the grant, the district contracted with WXY Studio, the urban planning firm that led widely heralded public forums in Brooklyn. That process helped lead to a sweeping middle school integration plan in District 15, which spans brownstone neighborhoods, including Park Slope, and working-class immigrant enclaves, such as Sunset Park.

But the process in District 28 has been far more contentious, with parents flooding public meetings in protest.

Now the city is pledging to add more members to the Queens working group. Parents had noted that the area’s vast Jewish community was not represented in the working group, a criticism that was leveled at the mayor at Wednesday night’s town hall. He pledged to change that.

“I guarantee it,” he said. “Of course there needs to be representation.”

The changes didn’t seem to go far enough for some. At the town hall, Vijah Ramjattan — president of the local Community Education Council, a parent body that oversees school issues — called for a complete do-over. He took issue with the working group being made up of unelected members.

“Can we squash the whole plan, start all over, and get a working group by the parents, for the parents,” he asked. “Let’s all vote as a community who we want to represent us.”

De Blasio assured the crowd that any changes would only move forward with support from the community, and tried to quell fears that students would be bused across long distances to integrate schools.

“School busing, to me, is not the way to get it done,” he said. “We want a great education for our kids. We don’t want our kids traveling crazy distances.”

A spokeswoman for the education department said planning will kick off with school-level meetings prior to hosting six district-wide workshops, which will begin in May.

Below is the list of working group members that the education department shared Wednesday.

Mohamed Q. Amin, founder and executive director of Caribbean Equality Project
Oswald Araujo, director of Beacon Services at Queens Community House
Stephanie Barreto-Lastra, community affairs borough manager, Division of Community Empowerment, Partnerships, and Communication of the NYC Department of Education
Sadio Comrie, teacher at Redwood Middle School
Simone Dornbach, PTA co-president at The Academy for Excellence through the Arts PS 303
Merari Gallimore, PTA president of PS 80 Thurgood Marshall Magnet School of Multimedia and Communication
Shavvone Jackson, PTA recording secretary, SLT member, and Title 1 board member for Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School
Mohammed Enamul Karim, parent at PS 182 Samantha Smith
Venus Ketcham, community leader in Southeast Queens and parent at JHS 217 Robert Van Wyck
Seiw Kong, District 28 acting superintendent
Karin Marroquin, parent leader at the Queens School for Leadership and Excellence PS 349
Maureen McTigue, teacher at PS 117 J Keld Briarwood School
Patricia Mitchell, principal of PS 48 William Wordsworth
Shernette Pink, program manager at Queens Youth Justice Center
Howard Pollack, Community Education Council District 28 member, PS 196 parent/teacher leadership team member
Vincent Suraci, principal of JHS 157 Stephen Halsey
Mazeda Uddin, director of South Asian Fund for Education Scholarship Training
Stella Xu, education committee chairperson for Forest Hills Asian Association
Student – JHS 8 New Prep
Student – JHS 190 Russell Sage

Turning up the pressure for integration, NYC students plan citywide school boycott

2020-02-05T23:30:20+00:00

It’s been more than two months since New York City students began boycotts at a different school campus each week. They’ve walked out of class to demand Mayor Bill de Blasio integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

Students went on strike at one Manhattan campus to protest admissions practices that had segregated them into different schools within the same building. A few weeks later at another campus, students walked out to highlight how schools with mostly black and Hispanic students often lack access to sports teams.

This spring, students plan to ramp up the pressure by taking their strikes citywide. Two student-led organizations — IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge, which has led the weekly actions — are joining forces for a daylong walkout planned for May 18.

“It’s just addressing the inaction by the city government, but I think more importantly, it’s also about building youth power,” said Emma Rehac, a Manhattan high school student with IntegrateNYC, who is helping organize the boycott. “If you walk out, you’re taking the power into your own hands.”

Both student groups have pushed the de Blasio administration to take a more systemic approach to desegregation within the nation’s largest school system. But the mayor, who until recently refused to say the word “integration,” has prefered to follow the lead of local activists fighting for school-by-school changes, or tweaking admissions only within local districts.

“There hasn’t been enough progress,” said Taylor McGraw, an adult advisor with Teens Take Charge. “Students across the city are united… and are calling for more, and faster.”

The student activists say they aren’t bringing any new demands to the table with their latest protest — because the mayor already has a menu of policy options to choose from, following years of planning led by local communities, city-appointed task forces, and reams of academic research on possible solutions.

IntegrateNYC, for example, was part of an advisory group appointed by the mayor to make recommendations on how to integrate schools. More than five months after the group issued its latest report, the mayor has yet to respond or implement the proposals.

“We want our schools to get better,” Rehac said. “We want to learn more. We’re saying that’s not happening in school right now.”

Teens Take Charge wants the city to implement the group’s proposal to overhaul high school admissions so that every campus enrolls a similar share of high-performing students and those who struggle academically. In New York City, students must apply to high schools, which in turn can set their own competitive admissions criteria — a process that many blame for deepening segregation.

By taking their protests citywide, teens are following in the footsteps of history. On Feb. 3, 1964, nearly half a million New York City students refused to attend school to demand that city leaders act boldly to integrate classrooms — one of the largest civil rights protests in history.

The May walkout is planned on the anniversary of the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in the Supreme Court, which upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal” establishments for black and white citizens. It was overturned more than 60 years ago in Brown vs. Board of Education.

Why integrating middle schools in Queens won’t follow Brooklyn’s footsteps

2020-01-27T11:30:46+00:00

There’s a battle raging in the heart of Queens over integrating middle schools.

It’s in stark contrast to the comparatively placid effort to tackle the segregated schools in northwest Brooklyn.

Brooklyn’s District 15 — which includes affluent brownstone areas like Park Slope and Cobble Hill, as well as lower-income areas like Red Hook and Sunset Park — approved a sweeping middle school integration plan last year after a lengthy public engagement process. That process has since been held up as a model to be followed across the five boroughs, and in fact, five other districts won grants to implement a similar engagement process.

District 28 is one of those places. But the reaction so far in this Queens area, spanning from Forest Hills and Rego Park to Jamaica and Richmond Hill, reveals that it’s not so easy to replicate what happened in the borough next door.

Not only is the parent pushback more intense in this effort, but the drivers of school segregation and potential solutions are not cookie-cutter either.

Here’s what to expect, and why the Queens fight is nothing like what happened in Brooklyn.

Grassroots or top-down: Each district’s push to integrate has different roots.

In Brooklyn’s District 15, the process that eventually led to an integration plan grew out of parent advocacy.

Frustrations had been mounting among families over the complicated middle school application process. Most schools selected students based on competitive criteria such as test scores and auditions. Parents sometimes sent their children to school sick for fear of jeopardizing their attendance records, which were also weighed in admissions decisions.

When it came time to find solutions for integrating schools, parents there pushed for a public process so that families from across the district could share their concerns and ideas. When the city finally agreed to help pay for such a process, it was seen as a victory.

District 28’s push has not been parent-led. Instead, the superintendent at the time applied to the city grant and won, but she has since been promoted to a new position outside the district, and a permanent replacement has yet to be named.

The same process that was heralded in Brooklyn has been met with intense backlash by parents in District 28. Opponents have tried to discredit the process as not being transparent or inclusive. At a recent public meeting, Jason Fink, a parent in the district, took aim at schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and WXY, the planning firm leading the public planning process.

“It’s our assumption that Carranza and WXY is trying to ram through a de-zoning, forced busing, quota plan — and disguising it behind the smoke and mirrors of this false community involvement,” Fink said.

Both areas also have starkly different activist communities. District 15 is at the epi-center of the movement opposing standardized testing, while District 28 is home to families who have been actively supporting the Specialized High School Admissions Test. The test is the sole determinant for entry to the city’s top eight schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, and is often blamed for driving deep segregation in the schools, which enroll low numbers of black and Hispanic students.

There are different forces driving segregation.

Most of District 28’s middle schools are zoned, meaning students are assigned a school according to where they live. That drives segregation based on where families can afford to buy or rent, or where they find tightly-knit enclaves that attract people from the same backgrounds — whether they are Chinese, Punjabi, Guyanese, Latino, or belong to one of the many other communities that make the district home.

The area has a solid and diverse middle class, many of whom are immigrants — though the northern end of the district has a larger concentration of families who are higher-income and white, while the southern end has more low-income and black families.

Despite the diversity of neighborhoods, not a single school in District 28 reflects the area’s student demographics.

In District 15, schools were segregated not by geography, but by competitive admissions criteria called screens. Students could apply to any middle school in the district, so in theory, they could have already been traveling beyond their segregated neighborhoods. But widespread screening allowed schools to select students, separating them by race, class, and academic achievement. Very few children from the brownstone neighborhoods, for instance, were going to Sunset Park schools.

The arguments supporting or opposing the plans also diverge.

In Queens, parents unhappy with the possibility of losing access to their neighborhood schools have focused partly on the difficulty of traveling across a traffic-congested district that’s poorly connected by public transit.

“I don’t want them to go far from home,” one mom said of her children at a recent public meeting. “That’s the only reason I’m here — no other. I want my kids to go to their school.”

The district covers a much larger geographic area than Brooklyn’s District 15, with more students, too.

Some District 28 parents argue that the city would be better served by focusing on struggling schools. When segregation leads to extreme concentrations of poverty, schools often have teachers with fewer years of experience, crumbling infrastructure, and PTAs that can’t compete with more affluent areas.

“Instead of worrying about spreading out all the inequality, focus on the schools in the south. Build the schools up in the south with the basic, necessary tools that the students need,” Lorraine Reid, whose child attends Redwood Middle School in the southern end of the district, said at a recent public meeting.

Some of the same issues were raised in Brooklyn, but the bigger argument was over student merit, and the best way to serve students with a range of academic abilities. Parents who defended screening, for instance, argued that students with high test scores had earned a place in schools that were widely regarded as better performing.

The solutions will have to be unique to each district.

In Brooklyn, schools eliminated all screens. Now, families still apply to their choice of schools, but admission is based on a lottery with priority given to certain students. The admissions changes were coupled with pledges to look at the resources available across schools, such as parent fundraising or the technology students have access to in classrooms.

City leaders and WXY Studio say that solutions in District 28 will be driven by what parents, educators, students, and community leaders say they want.

The district could remove or redraw zone lines — but that is probably one of the most controversial moves to take, and it would likely require approval from the local Community Education Council. The council is a parent-body that oversees school issues, including signing off on attendance boundaries. Members have so far appeared split on the district’s push for integration, which could doom any chances of rezoning.

Another option might include opening new magnet schools or converting existing schools to magnets, which typically are considered “choice” schools that draw from a variety of neighborhoods. That would have the advantage of allowing families to opt-in because they are interested in the unique programming usually offered by magnets, whether it’s science and technology-centric or focused on the arts, for example.

But the district has a number of magnet schools already, and they enroll very few white students.

Given the pushback already, what happens in Queens could be much more modest than what was approved in Brooklyn — if it even happens at all.

This Queens high school thinks it can be a model if NYC ditched selective admissions

2020-01-22T22:59:26+00:00

Students in a horticulture class at Veritas Academy in Queens were scooping soil into plastic soda bottles with sawed-off bottoms, creating mini-ecosystems with layers for plants, compost, and a small fish.

The idea to pursue this multi-week project wasn’t solely dictated by Vittoria Venuti, the teacher shuttling around the classroom that recent morning. This science elective had grown out of overwhelming student interest, and students themselves had a direct say in choosing to experiment with creating small-scale ecosystems.

“I’m so used to lessons given to us,” said Jennifer Gallego, a senior at Veritas who helped push for the horticulture elective. “This is kind of a break where we get to say what we want to do.”

The Flushing high school is laser-focused on finding ways to unearth the gifts and talents of its students.

To do so, Veritas is one of several schools across the city that have embraced a “Schoolwide Enrichment Model.” The approach emphasizes that students of various ability levels should receive high-level, hands-on, project-based instruction — not just those labeled “gifted and talented.” Educators develop projects based on their students’ interests.

The school’s model is at the heart of a broader debate in New York City education about whether students at different academic levels should be served in the same classrooms.

A high-level mayoral task force grappling with how to bolster school diversity has called for rapidly scaling up similar enrichment approaches as a replacement for gifted and talented programs. Elementary school gifted programs, which generally admit students on the basis of a single test given to 4-year-olds, tend to be disproportionately white and Asian.

When it comes to tackling high school segregation, some activists and experts are pushing the city to scale back or overhaul “screened” admissions that choose students based on grades, test scores, and attendance. These schools also tend to be starkly segregated by race, class, and previous academic performance.

Such changes remain controversial. Many families and advocates argue that maintaining programs that track students by ability are essential to ensure that academically advanced students are adequately challenged.

‘Less about measuring students’

Officials at Veritas see their program as a proof point that selective admissions aren’t necessary to offer academically rigorous classes. The school offers priority to students in Queens, but does not admit students based on their academic records. The school’s student body is 61% Hispanic, 13% Asian, 13% black, and 9% white. Nearly 69% of families come from low-income families, roughly in line with the district average.

“Our opinion has always been put [school-wide enrichment] in every school because that way you address every child,” said Cheryl Quatrano, a co-founder of Veritas, who retired last month. She also helped launch a Bayside middle school that uses a similar model.

In the horticulture class, for instance, students who are still learning English participate alongside their peers. When students break out into groups for activities like the ecosystem project, Venuti said she makes sure students aren’t simply clustered by ability.

“They have to be successful as a team,” Venuti said, noting that students will sometimes serve as de facto translators for each other to make sure the task at hand is clear to everyone in the group.

To dig deeper into students’ interests and help shape the school’s battery of electives, Veritas deploys regular surveys that ask dozens of questions about student learning styles, interests, and even their degree of motivation. One of them is adapted from a questionnaire developed by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis, academics at the University of Connecticut who helped pioneer the Schoolwide Enrichment Model.

“It’s much less about measuring students,” Reis said of their approach. “We’re trying to create the conditions in which interest develops.”

Still, despite a weeklong training teachers attend when they first arrive, some said it can be a big learning curve to tailor their classes to hew with student interests.

“There are so many different ideas. How do you incorporate this hands-on model, student choice?” Venuti said. “Planning the lessons we do takes a long time.”

Following teacher interests, too

In addition to taking student interests into account, Quatrano emphasized that it’s important to give educators an outlet for their passion projects.

Based on his lifelong passion for superheroes, social studies teacher Laurence Neadel created a contemporary mythology class where students draw parallels between Star Wars and ancient Greek and Roman myths, as well as design extraterrestrial species and invent biological explanations for how they would survive.

While the school offers Advanced Placement classes typically designed for students who are ready for more accelerated work, Veritas takes a more flexible approach. In one case, a student with a disability advocated for enrolling in AP Psychology, a request the school accommodated. That prompted several other students with disabilities to ask about taking AP classes, according to the school’s quality review.

“I love the fact that we’re giving more chances for students to come in and take those more rigorous courses,” said Matt Gill, who teaches AP computer science.

Providing access is more important than whether students get top scores on the AP exams, he said.

School officials also emphasized that they work hard to get to know students and hold regular meetings to get a handle on any social emotional issues that may crop up and which can affect a student’s attendance or overall school performance.

Vittoria Venuti (left) and Hal Eisenberg

In a recent meeting of the school’s “social emotional inquiry team,” school social worker Hal Eisenberg led a conversation with a group of teachers about students they were worried about. One student was struggling with a parent’s negative reaction after coming out as bisexual. Another, who often misses class, was wrestling with being the de facto caretaker for an autistic brother. One was dealing with a mother’s terminal illness.

After each discussion, a handful of assembled teachers offered their insights into what was going on with each student, offering up strategies to help them.

A model to replicate?

Still, there are some signs that the school has room for improvement. Only about half of the students said they were challenged in their classes, according to the education department’s annual survey from last year. That figure was slightly lower than the city and borough averages.

“That’s something we’re aware of and is a constant conversation here,” Eisenberg said of the survey responses. “We’re always, always looking at curriculum.” School officials added that they believe some students may have misinterpreted the question.

It remains unclear whether Veritas’ schoolwide enrichment model will be implemented more widely in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio has indicated he won’t be making any decisions about gifted and talented programs this year and has been reluctant to implement sweeping changes to selective high schools.

Still, Matt Gonzales, a member of the advisory group that recommended expanding schoolwide enrichment, says he is hopeful the model will catch on, emphasizing that there are many different ways for schools to incorporate it.

“There’s not necessarily one way to lay this out across the system,” he said. “Veritas is one of the standards of what we should be thinking about.”

NYC councilman calls on city to let PTAs share funds

2020-01-15T23:53:53+00:00

Amid massive parent fundraising disparities, Councilman Mark Treyger is asking the city to allow school PTAs to pool their money.

Treyger’s requests could hit a nerve with parents who are not keen on sharing funds they’ve raised with schools that bring in significantly less money, or those who believe the main problem is inadequate state education funding. Parent fundraising can be used to boost school programs and pay for supplemental staff that the principal did not budget for.

Still, a recent release of unaudited and self-reported PTA fundraising data has fueled calls to relieve the disparities. For example, the Upper East Side’s P.S. 158 raised about $1.5 million, or $1,840 per student, last school year, while P.S. 194 in Manhattanville raised $391, or about $2 per student. Sharing PTA dollars means wealthier parent groups could help cover enrichment and support staff at schools with fewer resources.

In a letter sent Wednesday to schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, Treyger, who chairs the City Council’s Education Committee, asked the city to allow for collaboration between parent organizations. He also wants the education department to provide parent organizations with baseline funding for PTAs and PAs, something he’s advocated for in the past.

“If DOE added a base-level of funding to PTAs and PAs and allowed schools that desired to share resources to do so, this could help move our schools in the right direction towards equity,” Treyger wrote.

In the letter, Treyger, who sponsored the 2018 law that forced the department to compile and release school-by-school fundraising data, asked for a broader conversation about parent organizations and school funding, and for “all stakeholders come to the table to discuss the future of PTAs and PAs.”

The department’s release of fundraising numbers last month offered a window into how parent organizations raise vastly different amounts.

Katie O’Hanlon, a spokeswoman for the city education department, said they will review Treyger’s letter and are “looking forward to partnering with parent leaders to develop solutions to the inequities between parent organizations.”

Carranza has acknowledged the differences in fundraising and shown interest in tackling the issue, though it’s unclear what steps the city might take.

“We have schools in New York City that have a whole other funding system in play,” Carranza told his parent advisory board last week. “The privileged get even more privileged and the poor get even more poor […] That’s something I think we could make a lot of headway on.”

The conversation is sure to stir up debate. Parent leaders in Manhattan’s District 3, where fundraising amounts can range between a few hundred dollars and up to $2 million, have floated a wide range of ideas to address the disparities, such as creating a central pool of money, starting a fund-sharing system, and capping donations at certain schools — a concept that’s going too far for some parents.

“I have kids of my own, and it’s hard to be like, ‘All right, let me think about everyone else,’” said Dennis Morgan, a member of District 3’s Community Education Council, the local elected parent body that can approve rezoning, previously told Chalkbeat. “But this moment where we are in time, where we’re like, ‘Me, me, me, me,’ let’s figure out how we can lift everybody up.”

Read Treyger’s letter below.

A push to integrate Queens schools has ripped open a fight about race, resources, and school performance

2020-01-13T17:24:44+00:00

A stream of angry parents strode up to a microphone and vented for nearly two hours at a public meeting earlier this month about a possible plan to integrate Queens middle schools.

They heckled public officials, booed each other, and waved signs, railing against the possibility that their children would be assigned to schools they deemed “failing” and too far from where they live.

Shavvone Jackson, who is black, stood to give her take on what was playing out at the meeting, where a mostly white and Asian crowd filled the auditorium at Briarwood’s M.S. 217.

“The parents in this audience seem very racist,” she said, prompting a flood of protests from the crowd, who insisted race was not at play.

Queens, one of the most diverse counties in the nation, may seem like an unlikely battleground for school integration in 2020. But New York City schools are among the most segregated in the nation — and District 28 is no exception. Spanning the mostly white and affluent neighborhoods of Forest Hills to the north, and the more racially diverse and working-class communities of Richmond Hill and Jamaica to the south, the district is now taking some first steps towards making its middle schools more integrated.

An official proposal for how to do that has yet to be put forward. But the response from families has already been so intense that the local Community Education Council, a body of parents who oversee school issues, has held multiple meetings like the one at M.S. 217 to give people a chance to learn about the process and weigh-in.

So far, there have been loud shows of opposition, but also signs that support for more diverse schools could be growing. Here’s what you need to know about what’s happening in Queens District 28.

The district is diverse — but its schools and neighborhoods don’t always reflect that.

Across the district, about 30% of students are Asian, just under 28% are Hispanic, almost 22% are black, and about 16% are white. But not a single school reflects the area’s demographics, according to a recent analysis from the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York.

The north is mostly higher income and white, though quite diverse. Immigrants make up more than half of the residents in Forest Hills and Rego Park, according to 2018 data from NYU’s Furman Center for real estate and urban policy. Many come from Russia but there’s also a substantial Chinese community, figures from the Department of City Planning show.

To the south is Jamaica, where many black residents live. There’s also Richmond Hill, home to a mix of working class Indo-Caribbean Guyanese, Indian Punjabi, and Bangladeshi neighborhoods. The area is lower income and also has a sizeable Muslim community.

Segregation in the area’s neighborhoods helps drive divisions in middle schools: Most of District 28’s middle schools are zoned, meaning enrollment is assigned based on where students live. Families often buy or rent homes and apartments with the expectation of going to certain schools, segregating students based on what their parents can afford.

In Forest Hills and Rego Park, the median price for a single-family home was $970,000, according to 2018 Furman Center data. That was more than double the median sales price in Jamaica and Hollis, which was $465,000.

Real estate values often figure prominently in fights over who has access to which schools. So far, parents in Queens seem to have intentionally steered clear of that argument. On a Facebook page that was created for families to discuss the district’s integration plans, posters warned against discussing how school assignments would impact home prices, with one person saying it would “play badly.”

“Don’t discuss ‘property values.’ It is not the [education department’s] job to maintain our property values, it is their job to educate all students,” one poster wrote, offering tips for parents who planned to speak at a public meeting. “Moreover, it makes us sound like greedy affluent people, which is what they want us to sound like.”

Jean Hahn-Choko, a Rego Park parent who is the Facebook administrator for the group, called Queens Parents United, said, “The quote from the Facebook post reflects the singular view of a former member.”

She added, “We are not anti-diversity nor anti-integration, but this boils down to resources, and feel the DOE is not doing their job funding schools adequately. More resources, not reshuffling, that’s our mantra.”

Rancor has already exploded at the suggestion of integration.

How to integrate the district’s schools hasn’t yet been decided. District 28 is about to kick off a public engagement process to hear parent concerns and also collect suggestions for possible solutions. It’s the same process that happened in Brooklyn’s District 15, after advocates there insisted that integration plans had to be informed by feedback from a diverse swath of the community.

That process, led by urban design studio WXY, was heralded by elected officials as inclusive and comprehensive. So the city gave other districts, including District 28, grants to follow a similar model in their own communities.

In Queens, the public process hasn’t started yet, but it’s already under attack. Parents have voiced skepticism about how feedback will be collected, who was chosen to participate in working groups that will help steer decisions, as well as the format of planned public meetings, which favor small-group discussions led be a facilitator.

“There’s really not trust in the transparency of the process,” said Kristin Gorman, speaking at a public meeting where she said she had been interviewed for the working group but was not selected. “It’s a format conducive to setting an agenda.”

Many have argued the city has already made up its mind about what needs to be done, pointing to the grant application written by the former district superintendent, in which she suggests giving students in the southern end of the district priority in admissions for schools in the northern end.

The district’s northern end is home to Halsey and Russell Sage, Forest Hills schools coveted by affluent families, where white enrollment is as high as 40% — more than double the district average. These schools are still diverse, by some measures, except when it comes to enrollment of black students who are vastly underrepresented. At the southern end, at Redwood Middle School and M.S. 72, about two-thirds of students are black.

These stark divides between black and white students could have implications for how the integration fight plays out.

In New York City, black students are the least likely to go to school with white students (or Asian students), according to demographic data. Some of the city’s most bruising integration battles recently have been cases where white parents faced the possibility of their children being sent to schools with mostly black students, such as in Brooklyn’s Vinegar Hill.

Queens parents have not talked about race, but have expressed concern about the possibility that their children will have to travel long distances to get to school in a district that’s poorly served by public transit — which can be a big deal for kids as young as 10 years old.

“I don’t want them to go far from home,” one mom said of her children at a recent public meeting. “That’s the only reason I’m here — no other. I want my kids to go to their school.”

On Facebook, parents from Montgomery County, Maryland — where school leaders are considering a controversial redistricting plan to integrate schools and are working with WXY — have been weighing in with tips about what to expect, and how to navigate the process that’s unfolding.

Questions remain about representation.

In public meetings, one persistent critique from some families about the process so far, is that it is lacking Jewish voices.

The working group that WXY put together includes students, teachers, parents, school leaders, and community organizations from across the district. There are no members specifically representing Jewish groups, though the area is home to one of the largest communities of Bukharan Jews, whose families hail from Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics in central Asia.

Pointing to recent anti-Semitic attacks in the city and state, one commenter on Facebook said he was “outraged” by the makeup of the working group, writing: “Our community ties mean more than you think they do. We should have a say.”

Also, at a recent meeting to discuss District 28’s integration plans, some Asian parents who have fought against admissions changes at the specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, showed up and waved signs protesting the integration push in Queens. One sign read: “Stop your D28 diversity plan: We don’t want it!”

Asian students make up the majority of enrollment in specialized high schools, and some have argued against integration efforts at those highly competitive schools, saying any reforms would pit communities of color against each other. It’s unclear, though, how representative these protesters are of the district’s larger, diverse Asian community.

And while Hispanic students make up the second-largest enrollment in the district, few people, if any, identifying themselves as Hispanic have spoken at recent public meetings where integration plans have been discussed.

The education department and WXY have said they are planning to host a number of smaller meetings across the district, including with communities that might be harder to reach.

“We know that plans are better when decisions are made directly by the local community around issues that will affect them,” representatives for WXY said in an emailed statement. “We are facilitators in this process, and are looking to create ways for the community to give feedback and work to inform government partners on what the local interests are directly on the ground.”

Some parents want the education department to focus instead on lifting performance at schools in the district’s southern end.

When segregation leads to extreme concentrations of poverty, the result is often lower academic achievement, and fewer resources for schools, including programming or parent fundraising to support arts programs, after-school enrichment, and other activities. Many black and Hispanic parents who are skeptical of integration efforts want to see more investment in the schools in their own backyards.

Lorraine Reid, the PTA president of Redwood Middle School in Jamaica, recently wrote a desperate letter shared widely across District 28. She begged for help fixing the school’s auditorium lights, which were dark ahead of a student holiday show, and complained of roaches infesting the gym.

“Practically everything in the building that the students in ALL three schools use is broken, damaged or in disrepair with no signs of ever being repaired or replaced,” she wrote. “How can that be possible, while we sit here and discuss diversity?”

Many parents in the north of the district have raised similar points, demanding the city fix “failing” schools on the opposite end of the district. Some have pointed out that such arguments sound insincere when coming from communities who have not expressed concern about the state of schools that serve mostly children of color — until faced with the prospect of sending their own children to those schools.

The assertion also makes broad assumptions about school performance in an entire swath of the district, often boiling judgements down to test scores, which can mask the progress made at schools where most of the students are already behind grade level when they enter.

“We hear over-simplifications about good and bad schools that can stigmatize entire schools and their students,” said Ted Chang, a member of the local Community Education Council, at a recent public meeting. “We hear hurtful generalizations about mediocrity, but without any constructive solutions that address disadvantages that students face.”

There is also a growing contingent who support integration.

While opposition has been organized and loud, there is also a growing group of district parents who have stood up to support the engagement process and integration. Some have called the process an important opportunity for the community to shape its own school policies.

“For the first time that I can remember, you guys are asking for our help to do the right thing,” Rafael Lena, a parent in the district, told school officials at a recent public meeting. “What we can’t do is stop the planning before it starts. It would be a shame. It would torpedo our chances to speak plainly to you guys about what would work for our district.”

Integration could be a way to address disparities in both resources and academic achievement: Studies that show that attending diverse schools can help boost learning for all kinds of students and provide more access to resources like qualified teachers, and well-maintained buildings.

Andy Medas-King, a member of the Community Education Council, argued at a recent meeting that parents should trust the planning process, saying it could address the unequal resources and opportunities that he said keep students of color out of competitive programs like gifted classes or the specialized high schools.

“What the DOE is trying to do is make the playing field level,” he said. “They’re trying to break down those boundaries.”

Brooklyn twins families win middle school sibling policy change for September

2019-12-20T23:13:01+00:00

The education department is reversing course and giving twins and some siblings preference in middle school admissions this year in Brooklyn’s District 15, officials announced Friday.

Parents of twins had led a campaign for sibling priority after District 15 implemented a new admissions policy to integrate middle schools. The new lottery-based admissions policy has improved racial and socioeconomic integration in the district — spanning Cobble Hill to Red Hook, Park Slope to Sunset Park — but parents of twins said it made it harder for their children to stay together, creating logistical headaches for families.

The announcement came just hours after a parent pressed Mayor Bill de Blasio on the issue during his weekly radio appearance on WNYC.

“I’m a single parent, sole parent of twin girls. I can’t send them to two different schools in September,” the parent said, explaining the hardship of sending their children in different directions.

“This is a really serious real-life issue for a family, for any family and particularly for a single-parent family,” de Blasio conceded.

The city’s elementary schools have sibling priority, but middle schools do not. Though there was no middle school sibling priority under District 15’s previous admissions system, individual schools had more influence over how to admit students and could decide whether to offer siblings priority, families said.

Several parents launched an online petition and lobbied local elected officials, who issued a letter calling for an admissions preference that would also extend to other siblings. Even schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, himself a twin who attended college alongside his brother, indicated an openness to this change.

The education department said it would pilot a new policy allowing families with twins in fifth grade who submit identical applications to request an offer to the same District 15 middle school. It also applies to current fifth-grade students who have a sibling in sixth grade at a District 15 middle school to have a priority to attend that school.

“Please note, this pilot is for this current admissions cycle only, and will be re-evaluated before the next admissions cycle,” the letter to district families said. “There is no guarantee there will be a similar priority next year or in any future years.”

The sibling policy does not change District 15’s other admissions priorities, the letter stated, noting that 52 percent of seats in the incoming sixth-grade class will continue to be prioritized for students from low-income families, English language learners, and students in temporary housing.

Though the change came after middle school admissions were due, twins families celebrated the new policy.

About 50 District 15 families with twins will be affected, according to estimates shared with the integration working group members. Another 80 families could benefit from the sibling priority.

Listen: Chalkbeat talks with School Colors podcast creators about race, class, and the struggle for power in Bed-Stuy schools

2019-12-20T16:27:07+00:00

Over the course of eight episodes, the School Colors podcast dove deep into the past and present of Central Brooklyn’s education system.

To celebrate the conclusion of this citizen journalism project from Brooklyn Deep, Chalkbeat hosted an event at the Brooklyn Public Library on Dec. 17 with the podcast’s producers Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman along with NeQuan McLean, president of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Community Education Council for District 16.

Chalkbeat reporter Christina Veiga led a conversation that touched on the process of putting together the series, as well as the thorny subjects that School Colors raised in such a thought-provoking way: race, class, and the struggle for power.

The creators also talked about what might be next for the podcast now that it’s wrapped up. Its themes are still very much on the minds of New Yorkers as the Department of Education focuses on school integration plans in District 16 and beyond.

“What we’ve been talking about is the idea of perhaps putting together a curriculum that could be used in schools and PTAs and community-based organizations as this city is making changes,” Winston Griffith said. “We want to be a part of helping to have that conversation.”

School Colors recorded the event and released it Friday as a surprise bonus episode. You can listen to the event here.

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

Protesting racism at Beacon, NYC students say officials will meet their demands

2019-12-16T23:03:51+00:00

Beacon high school agreed to begin holding joint student, parent, and staff meetings, after students organized a sit-in Monday to protest discriminatory comments allegedly made by a senior about college offers that students of color received.

The protesting students, who took to the hallways of the sought-after Hell’s Kitchen school, said the incident was not isolated, and they blamed the school’s staff for enabling racist behavior. They issued a set of seven demands, including asking the school to issue a public apology “for allowing racism to fester over the course of years.”

Outside of Beacon on Monday afternoon, students told reporters that they met with school and education department officials during the day and that they agreed to meet student demands in some way. They will not boycott classes on Tuesday.

“I think that, as students, we have no choice but to hold each other accountable, and the first step to solving this issue is to change the culture at Beacon,” said Adrian Perez, a junior and one of the organizers of the protest. “I referred to it in the administration meeting, that Beacon has cancer. The racism in the school is a tumor, and until we diagnose that tumor as a community we will never be able to surgically remove it.”

Anger about racist incidents at Beacon — a highly selective school whose students are nearly half white — has been steadily growing, according to students, and has erupted more recently as student-led integration efforts have gained traction. Last month, several students with the advocacy group Teens Take Charge walked out in protest over the school’s disproportionately white demographics in a city where nearly 70% of public school students are black or Hispanic.

Monday’s boycott is just the latest show of solidarity against racist incidents inside of New York City private and public schools – including at the highly selective Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the city’s Upper East Side.

Monday’s action was sparked by an incident last week where a white student allegedly complained to guidance counselors about not getting into her college of choice and was reportedly overheard making belittling comments about students of color getting in because of affirmative action, according to the New York Post. That student, according to the report, is now being subjected to online threats and told the Post her comments to guidance counselors have been taken out of context.

Beacon United Unions, the coalition of student unions that issued the demands, asked the school to investigate the guidance counselors who were part of that incident to determine if racial bias may have affected their job performance and interactions with students. They also asked the school to make serious efforts to diversify its counseling staff — on top of asking for more teachers of color in core classes.

Beacon’s principal Ruth Lacey met with students on Monday and pledged to continue discussions on how to make the school more supportive for all students and staff, education department officials said. The school is expected to gather for a student assembly by grade level on Thursday, jointly held by students and administration. The school also plans to hold regular joint meetings between students, PTA, and administration.

A department official said that Alan Cheng, the district superintendent, would support the school through implicit bias training, restorative justice efforts, and culturally responsive education. He also pledged to investigate reports of bullying and staff misconduct, education department officials said.

Perez told reporters that protesting students asked the administration for more details about last week’s incident, but they refused to offer more details, only saying that an investigation is ongoing.

“Students and staff at Beacon deserve a safe, supportive and inclusive school, and Principal Lacey has clearly communicated to students, staff, and families that she takes these concerns seriously,” said Miranda Barbot, a department spokesperson, in a statement. “While we investigate allegations about an incident last week, we will support the school community’s efforts to foster a welcoming learning environment for everyone.”

Instead of attending class, students filled the school hallways to participate in “teach-ins,” held by leaders of different student union representatives to talk about racial discrimination and how to resolve conflict. The Muslim Student Union, for example, passed out blank pieces of papers and asked their peers to write down anonymously a time they were discriminated against at or outside of Beacon, said Sama Al-Alami, a senior and leader of the Muslim Student Union. They shuffled up the papers and passed them out, so that students read each other’s experiences out loud.

“A lot of people came up to us, came up to me, to say how great that was,” Al-Alami said.

One of the most powerful moments, students said, was watching their peers enter school in the morning dressed in all black — a symbol of solidarity with the protest. They believe that a majority of students boycotted classes on Monday, including those they weren’t necessarily expecting at the teach-ins. Even the “goofiest person” was shushing their neighbor during one teach-in so they could participate, said Chinyere Brown-McVitie, a junior who leads Beacon’s Black Students Union.

There were teachers who decided to push back their class assignments and talk about the issues highlighted by student leaders on Monday, students said. And during a staff meeting, all teachers heard speeches from the seven students who attended the meeting with administration officials, Perez said.

“It was almost moving because a lot of teachers started crying,” Perez said. “Because again this isn’t just a Beacon issue or student issue, it’s a tumor in our school and that tumor affects every single person in our building.”

Student activists demand swift action to address NYC’s sports inequities

2019-12-16T22:10:30+00:00

Basketball gives Justice Harris a sense of purpose.

The senior at Manhattan’s PACE High School said that the sport can help some students of color stay off the street in his community. Yet many schools that serve predominantly black and Hispanic students don’t have a single sports team, he told a group of at least 150 people rallying Monday as part of an ongoing series of weekly demonstrations against school segregation in New York City.

Access to extracurricular sports occupied much of the focus at this week’s rally, organized by Teens Take Charge, a student advocacy group that wants education officials to remove academic screens from the city’s high schools. Monday’s gathering, held in front of the Chinatown school, was the student-led group’s fifth rally since starting their high-profile half-hour walkouts last month.

“I want to stress this point: sports, arts, and access to a quality education can literally save your life,” Justice said. “Sports transforms kids, it makes us better people, and most importantly, better students.”

Given the benefits, Justice couldn’t understand why so many schools with majority black and Hispanic student bodies were lacking sports teams or quality sports facilities.

At PACE — where last school year 87% of students were black and Hispanic — rally-goers shared stories of decrepit gym conditions, with broken lockers and showers, as well as a gym floor in poor condition. They contrasted what they have with the gleaming new sports facilities at Beacon high school, which is nearly half white.

A class action lawsuit was filed last year against the education department and Public School Athletic League, claiming that both bodies discriminated against black and Hispanic students by denying them an equal opportunity to play on school teams. Statistics cited in that lawsuit showed that the average black or Hispanic child attends a New York City school with 10 fewer teams than the average student of another race. In New York City’s most segregated schools, with more than 95% Black and Hispanic enrollment, there are only seven teams on average, according to the Fair Play for All coalition.

The education department has since launched a pilot program to expand sports teams at certain schools.

The crowd of students who gathered at PACE wanted to see bigger changes when it comes to athletics as well as allocating other resources. They were joined by Brooklyn Councilman Antonio Reynoso, who briefly spoke and encouraged students to keep pressing officials for change.

PACE students also mentioned they have no functional library, have very few art supplies and only five AP courses. They contrasted that to schools, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, on the Upper East Side, where students — only 13% of whom were black and Hispanic — had access to more than a dozen AP courses.

“We still work hard on the court no matter what the situation is and every time our team comes downstairs to the gym to practice or have a game, we always give it our all,” said PACE freshman Marcus Shields. “Our coach should not be self-funding our gear or our snacks. Our teachers should not be doing more while having less. We deserve to have more resources, and we deserve to be given the same shot as our white counterparts.”

The students plan to continue their weekly strikes until the education department takes more aggressive steps to integrate city schools.

Education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot acknowledged the importance of sports for students’ “motivation, focus and success” in and out of the classroom.

“Under this administration we’ve added hundreds of teams and piloted a shared teams model,” she said. “There’s work to do, and we’ll continue to partner with students and staff to increase access for all schools.”

Integration plan for UWS and Harlem schools yields modest shifts in first year

2019-12-12T23:59:53+00:00

Manhattan middle schools in District 3 showed modest progress towards serving a more academically and economically diverse range of students this year, according to preliminary enrollment data released this week.

Spanning the Upper West Side and part of Harlem, District 3 was at the center of a fiercely contested push last fall to integrate schools, which are largely divided by race, class, and students’ academic performance.

The new policy called for a less ambitious shift than the high-profile plan recently implemented in Brooklyn’s District 15, and the results appeared less dramatic as well. District 3 opted to give priority for a quarter of its seats to students who come from low-income families, struggle on state tests, and earn low report card grades. Since race and class are tightly linked to academic outcomes, the hope was that these changes would result in more diverse schools. When it was first unveiled, District 3’s plan was vigorously protested by some parents who feared their children would be elbowed out of the schools many white, affluent families seek out.

The preliminary enrollment data showed that 11 out of 16 participating middle schools moved closer to the 25% target outlined by the district’s diversity plan.

“Maybe this is really gaining traction, and people see the sky is not falling,” said Kristen Berger, a member of District 3’s Community Education Council, the parent-volunteer body that oversees local admissions policies.

“I do have faith that we’re moving in the right direction,” she added. “I’m heartened by what I hear on the ground. There seems to be organic movement of parents in the district looking at different schools.”

Certain demographics at some of the most coveted schools barely budged. Booker T. Washington enrolled 18% of students identified as lower-performing students from low-income families (who would qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch, or FRL), up from 9% the year before. But that still fell short of the 25% of seats that were set aside for this priority group. In terms of racial demographics at that school, 28% of this year’s sixth graders were black and Hispanic, up six percentage points from the prior year. But the percentage of white students at the school remained essentially unchanged, with white students making up 52% of the incoming sixth grade, compared to 55% the year before.

Schools that have served mostly struggling students saw few changes, with some seeing significant increases in the percentages of higher-needs students they serve. Wadleigh Secondary Prep, for example, saw its enrollment of priority group students jump to 61%, from 56%, year-over-year. Frederick Douglass Academy II Secondary School saw the percentage of low-performing, low-income students jump to 44%, from 32%.

Meanwhile, the Computer School and Mott Hall II enrolled fewer struggling students in a year-over-year comparison. At the Computer School, where white student enrollment climbed to 50%, from 42%, the percentage of students in the priority group remained fairly stable at 19%. At Mott Hall, where the percentage of white students climbed to 34% from 16%, the number of students in the priority group dipped three percentage points to 34%.

Despite threats of an exodus of white families from the district, the number of students who enrolled this year did not dip dramatically from last year, with 1,270 students entering sixth grade in September versus 1,332 starting at the 16 middle schools in the district the year before. In fact, white students comprised 32% of enrolled students this year, compared to last year’s 30%.

Berger said the district still has to work not only on making parents aware of options, but also on focusing on what’s going on inside schools when it comes to educational quality.

“I do believe every school should be a school you want your student to go to. We want schools to be academically rigorous, to be emotionally supportive,” Berger said. “[It’s] also about marketing and communication to make sure parents know about them all.”

New York City School Chancellor Richard Carranza had waded into the District 3 admissions policy controversy when he tweeted a video, captured by NY1, that showed a mom saying the plan would tell kids “life sucks!” The headline, which he did not write, said, “Wealthy white Manhattan parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools.”

New York City schools are among the most segregated in the country, though local communities beyond District 3 are starting to address that.

“The District 3 Diversity Plan was developed from the ground up and the community’s thoughtful recommendations have been critical to the success of this plan,” said education department spokesperson Kathleen O’Hanlon. “We are supportive of their community-driven plan and are continuing to work with District 3 to identify areas where we can collaborate in an effort to better integrate their schools.”

The District 3 plan has been overshadowed by that of District 15, which took more dramatic steps towards middle school integration by removing all screens.

Another five districts across the city are now working on their own integration plans, and the city council recently passed a bill requiring all districts to do the same.

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

Principal of coveted Queens gifted school leaving mid-year

2019-12-11T20:31:21+00:00

Principal Vasilios Biniaris is retiring from the 30th Avenue School in Queens, one of the city’s sought-after gifted and talented schools, according to the education department.

The 22-year New York City schools veteran is moving to be closer to his family, an education department spokeswoman said. He will step down on Jan. 10.

The Astoria school is one of only five citywide gifted and talented schools. As such, only 4-year-olds posting the highest scores on the city’s G&T are eligible to enter kindergarten. The 550-seat school goes up to eighth grade.

“My decision was made after long and careful deliberation,” Biniaris wrote to parents in an email. He added that he was “steadfast and confident” that the school’s remaining leadership team “will move our school to new heights.”

Biniaris took the reins from the school’s founding principal about three years ago, and the transition was, at times, rocky. PTA meeting minutes show that parents had concerns about families pulling their children out of the school. They also were alarmed by turnover of well-liked staff.

“Teacher and staff turnover has been unacceptably high, leading to a chaotic and unstable working and learning environment,” noted a 2018 resolution of the parent association that listed a litany of concerns, including whether students with special needs or those learning English as a new language were being properly supported.

But the most recent school surveys show that Biniaris had begun to improve his standing with teachers and parents. For example, 67% of teachers said he was an effective leader in last year’s survey, up from only about a quarter in 2016-17.

Biniaris did not respond to requests for comment.

Current Assistant Principal Sonita Ramkishun will serve as interim acting principal for the remainder of the school year, according Biniaris’s email to parents.

Education department spokeswoman Danielle Filson said the city will “engage the entire school community as we search for a new permanent leader.”

“We thank Principal Biniaris for his service at The 30th Avenue School, and we’ll work closely with Superintendent Composto to ensure a smooth transition,” she wrote.

Two Brooklyn schools weigh merger aimed at integration

2019-12-11T02:17:05+00:00

This story was originally published on December 10 by THE CITY.

District 13’s Community Education Council held a public meeting Monday night on its proposal to merge Fort Greene’s disproportionately white Academy of Arts and Letters with P.S. 305, an under-enrolled and majority-black elementary school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, starting in the 2020-21 school year.

“We see this as an important moment to potentially create a model for integration for the district and the city writ large,” said Ennis Addison, an Arts and Letter parent who backs the merger. “To have frank conversations in the spirit of integration, that feels good.”

The Academy of Arts and Letters is currently housed in a building shared with P.S. 20 on Adelphi Street — a building operating at 145% of capacity, according to the city Department of Education.

Arts and Letters’ student body is 42% white — far above the 19% district-wide average for public schools.

P.S. 305, meanwhile, has space to spare: While it can hold up to 667 students, only 102 are currently enrolled — 66% of them black, versus 50% district-wide.

Under the proposal, set for a vote next week by the citywide Panel for Education Policy, Arts and Letters would relocate its more than 500 students to P.S. 305.

As for P.S. 305, its students, staff and resources would shift to Arts and Letters. P.S. 305 would “no longer exist as a distinct school option,” according to an Educational Impact Statement released by the city Department of Education on Nov. 1.

Parents at Monday’s meeting cheered calls for desegregating the schools and increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity. Still, concerns persist about funding, teachers’ jobs and other details yet to be ironed out.

Cheers and Questions

Parents and other players hope that airing those questions early will prevent the kind of high-profile controversy that greeted an integration plan for P.S. 307 in the district four years ago. Meanwhile, CEC 13 is bracing for a district-wide desegregation effort.

“We have kept this goal at the center of all of our plans and initiatives,” CEC 13 President Ayanna Behin said Monday night. “Our mission is to advocate for all of our schools, striving for equity for all of our children.”

Behin added: “We don’t want to just move bodies from one school to another — we want a full, fair merger.”

Ayanna Behin, Community Education Council District 13 President in Brooklyn, Dec. 10, 2019. Photo: Claudia Irizarry Aponte/THE CITY

Merger-related discussions began in June, with a series of community meetings headed by the city Department of Education — and attended by District 13 members, principals from the three schools and parents — to discuss how to best utilize P.S. 305’s space.

By the fall, DOE officially announced the merger proposal, as Chalkbeat previously reported.

The merger would bring together school communities separated by income as well as race. Some 94% of students enrolled at P.S. 305 are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, compared to 22% of Arts and Letters students, according to the DOE.

Arts and Letters admits students by lottery and gives admissions priority to low-income students for 40% of its seats.

While parents, teachers and staff at the schools favor the merger, they want “pointed requests for assurance” on a myriad of issues — including staff retention, funding, early childhood education, special education, enrollment and class sizes, and transportation, according to a Dec. 4 letter addressed to the DOE.

Parents also raised questions about how to best meld the school’s educational philosophies: Arts and Letters has a progressive bent focused on project-based learning rather than test prep, while P.S. 305 is a more traditional school.

One idea floated by the Arts and Letters school leadership team, which drafted the letter, is to host social events to bring the school communities together before classes start in September.

Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark announced at the meeting that the merged school would be headed by two principals.

If approved, education department officials would essentially erase P.S. 305’s zone and re-draw the boundaries to zone residents to other local schools. For the first two years of the merger, children from low-income families currently zoned for P.S. 305 would get priority for 20% of Arts and Letters’ seats reserved for low-income students. But after that, nearby residents would not get priority for those seats.‘The Right Spirit’

Monday night’s mellow hearing contrasted sharply with fiery school integration discussions elsewhere in the city.

Among those pleased with the plan are parents at P.S. 20, who say a merger would relieve overcrowding at their school.

“We have the right spirit and the right energy,” Lawrence Watford, a member of P.S. 20’s parent-teacher association. “I think there’s a lot to be gained.”

While the DOE announced that $200,000 would be set aside to fund integration efforts, parents are eager to read the fine print — including how long the money will be available. A representative for the DOE declined to give details at Monday’s meeting, saying the specifics are still under discussion.

“My hope is that this will become a funding pilot for integrating schools … that we’re really thinking about this on a policy level,” said Eva Ruiz, an Arts and Letters parent.

The panel will vote on the proposal on Dec. 18, at Prospect Heights High School.

This story was originally published by THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

Brooklyn twins aren’t guaranteed to go to middle school together this year, but the city is mulling broader changes for siblings

2019-12-10T21:16:02+00:00

The education department won’t give twins and siblings preference in middle school admissions this year in Brooklyn’s District 15, despite a parent-led campaign to make it easier for their children to attend the same schools.

But there could be changes in store for next year’s fifth-graders — and not just those in District 15: The education department is weighing whether to offer a twins or siblings admissions preference in other districts, according to parents involved in the push.

“We had so much hope,” said Anna Carpenter, the mom of twin fifth-graders at P.S. 107 who had been advocating to change the admissions policy for next year’s incoming sixth graders.

Carpenter was part of a group of moms with twins who argued that a new admissions policy to integrate middle schools in District 15 has made it harder for their children to stay together, creating logistical headaches for families. They launched an online petition and lobbied local elected officials, who issued a letter calling for an admissions preference that would also extend to other siblings. Even schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, himself a twin who attended college alongside his brother, indicated an openness to change.

Parent advocates learned the night before middle school applications were due that the education department would not move forward with a proposal for this year, said Stephanie Becker, another P.S. 107 mom of fifth-grade twins. She said she received a call from the city’s head of enrollment, who explained that the change could not be implemented this year due to short notice that families would have received. The school official also noted the possibility of extending a sibling priority beyond District 15 in future application rounds.

Education department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon did not provide any specific details on the city’s decision-making but confirmed that they were still considering a policy change for the future.

“We are always looking for ways to support our families and make their lives easier,” she wrote in an email. “Any change to our admissions system needs thorough analysis, and we need to listen to families citywide to understand their positions. We look forward to continuing a productive dialogue with the community and reviewing this proposal.”

Becker wishes the city could have used District 15 as a test case, just as the area has helped pioneer integration efforts that have served as an example for elsewhere in the city.

“They could have just piloted it in District 15,” she said, stressing her support for the district’s diversity push in addition to a twins priority. “They didn’t have to wait.”

Families in District 15 — which spans affluent neighborhoods such as Park Slope and lower-income areas including Sunset Park — must apply to middle schools. Until last year, almost all of its 11 middle schools used competitive admissions criteria, such as test scores and attendance records. For the first time last year, the district eliminated such “screens” and instead moved to a lottery system that gives priority to students who are learning English as a new language, live in temporary housing, or come from poor families.

While the change was meant to spur more diversity in a starkly segregated swath of Brooklyn, families said it also took away the leeway that schools had to offer extend admissions offers to twins and siblings. When a school is already segregated, offering siblings an admissions preference can hamper integration efforts by making fewer seats available to children from different backgrounds.

But an education department analysis found that a sibling priority wouldn’t significantly tip the scales in Brooklyn’s District 15, according to data shared with community members involved in crafting the area’s integration plan. Twins families largely reflect the diversity of the district, the data showed, and the majority of those who would have received a sibling preference would have come from the district’s priority groups for disadvantaged students.

According to those familiar with the tabled proposal for District 15, twins would have had the option of sharing a single lottery number if applying to the same schools in the same order. Fifth graders who have a sibling currently enrolled in sixth grade would have also received admissions preference next year.

About 50 District 15 families with twins would have been affected, according to estimates shared with the integration working group members. Another 80 families would benefit from the sibling priority.

Middle school applications were due Dec. 6. Families should receive their admissions offers in the spring.

Middle school integration effort sparked heated opposition at Queens meeting

2019-12-06T05:11:11+00:00

This story was originally published on Dec. 5 by THE CITY.

Queens parents packed a meeting in Jamaica Thursday night that was called to quell anxieties about a just-launched effort to improve local middle schools’ racial diversity — one of five such projects citywide.

Planned public meetings and workshops aren’t officially set to begin until next month on the potential overhaul of District 28, which spans Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park, and Jamaica.

But parents with children in the district, where most middle schools are residentially zoned, demanded an advance opportunity to have their say amid concerns over the fate of selective admissions screening and school choice.

“You shouldn’t be forcing people to move and uproot their lives so that [the Department of Education] can make a new chart next year,” said Irene Raevsky, a parent from Forest Hills. “If you’re asking for dezoning or setting aside percentages for zoned schools, it’s going to be a problem … We are not going to take it lying down, OK?”

The diversity push follows years of debate over the often sharp racial, ethnic, and class differences among public schools within districts. Any final recommendations would have to be approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who also have been trying to diversify the city’s elite high schools.

The meeting also came as parents and kids were already fretting over the middle and high school applications deadline looming Friday.

‘A Lot of Strong Feelings’

Consultants from WXY, a firm hired by the Department of Education to guide planning, presided as parents at the standing-room-only crowd peppered them with questions and heated statements.

Parents repeatedly asked about the composition of a working group of residents, students, and educators who will advise officials. They also wanted to know whether proposed recommendations would reduce their children’s chances of being accepted to their first-choice schools.

This school district 28 MTG is SRO, parents are here in droves to hear the latest with the diversity plan process that's newly started. And it's starting with some tension... pic.twitter.com/YrfeDAAo9r
— Christine Chung (@chrisychung) December 5, 2019

Several parents questioned the diversity push, stating that education officials should instead focus on investing in lower-performing schools, many of which are clustered in the district’s southern end.

“Why aren’t we, instead of worrying about spreading out all the inequality, focus[ing] on the schools in the south, [to] build the schools up in the south with the basic necessary tools that the students need?” asked Lorraine Reid, of Jamaica, whose child attends Redwood Middle School.

Others cited the district’s wide geographic expanse in noting how potential changes to zoned schools could dramatically increase student commutes.

“If we’re going to be honest here, most families in Rego Park, in Forest Hills, are not going to put their kids on extensively long commutes for the pleasure of attending a subpar school. It just doesn’t make any sense,” said parent John Schaefer.

Parent Irene Raevsky speaks at District 28 meeting in Jamaica, Queens, on Dec. 5, 2019. Photo: Ben Fracteberg/THE CITY

“If we are going to say to the families in south Queens that the only way to get a good education is to send your kids to north Queens, that is an embarrassment.”

The forum was abruptly cut off after two hours, leaving dozens of parents’ grievances unheard.

Adam Lubinsky, a managing principal at WXY, said there were “a lot of strong feelings” at the meeting, but noted, “we are here to listen.”

But Grace Chang, the mother of a kindergartener in Forest Hills, declared the meeting a disappointment.

“They did not say anything,” she said. ”They did not give straight answers.”

A District Divided

More than 42,000 students attend 40 schools across sprawling District 28. More than 68% of students are classified as living in poverty, and about 11% of students primarily speak a language other than English at home.

Akina Younge and Adam Lubinsky, from the WXY team. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

In the 2018-19 school year, the district’s students were about 16% white, 20% black, 28% Hispanic, and 30% Asian, according to the city’s Department of Education. But the enrollment data also reveals a racial divide across geographic lines.

The majority of white students attend schools in the northern part of the district, in areas such Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, while most black students attend schools at the southern end.

In Forest Hills, for instance, Russell Sage Junior High School’s student body is 32% Asian, 30% white, 27% Hispanic and 7% black. Roughly 42% of students are identified as living in poverty.

Meanwhile at Richard S. Grossley JHS in Jamaica, students are 19% Asian, 2% white, 27% Hispanic and 41% black. About 85% of the school’s students live in poverty.

Former district superintendent Mabel Sarduy secured a $200,000 grant last summer from the city Department of Education for District 28, making it one of the five selected citywide to take a fresh look at admission procedures with an eye toward boosting diversity.

Districts were invited to focus on themes such as admissions policies and academic outcomes, and, ultimately, to draft recommendations furthering school integration efforts.

“Rents and property values on the northern end of the district are much higher — one of the main drivers of socioeconomic and racial segregation in the district,” Sarduy wrote in her application for the city’s diversity plan grant.

“Even though we are diverse as a district, many of our students from different ends never get to know and interact with each other.”

The ‘What-Ifs’

Vijah Ramjattan, the district’s Community Education Council president, said the WXY consultants were invited to the Thursday meeting at the district office to “give them a chance” to offer parents a preview of the process that will begin with an initial public forum in January.

Vijah Ramjattan at meeting on diversity, Dec. 5, 2019. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

“Nothing has been decided,” Ramjattan told THE CITY prior to the session. “I think the anxiety that is happening is the what-ifs if this goes through.”

According to the city Department of Education, the process is expected to unfold over the rest of this school year, with multiple rounds of public gatherings, community presentations, and closed-door meetings.

The consultants from WXY and the district office have assembled a working group of community stakeholders to lead engagement, said Katie O’Hanlon, an education department spokesperson. The roster was announced Thursday night — listing affiliations of members, but omitting their names.

Working group members affiliations. pic.twitter.com/dhQU6uCRVb
— Christine Chung (@chrisychung) December 6, 2019

The group met for the first time Wednesday, according to an email circulated by WXY.

Effort Started Two Years Ago

In 2017, the DOE formed a School Diversity Advisory Group of students, experts, parents, advocates, and others to draw up policy recommendations to promote diversity and integration.

This June, the mayor and schools chancellor announced the bulk of the recommendations would be adopted, such as establishing new diversity metrics and monitoring disparities across schools’ student discipline practices.

District 9 in The Bronx, Brooklyn’s Districts 13 and 16, and Staten Island’s District 31 will also be drafting diversity plans as part of the effort.

Some middle schools in these five districts, including District 28, admit children based on residential zones. Others accept children from anywhere in the district, and each school sets its own admissions policies, O’Hanlon said.

WXY’s $775,000 contract with the city covers planning for all five districts, at a fee of $155,000 per district, paid for by the grants. Staten Island has not yet opted to work with the firm, according to DOE.

Many parents were locked out of the meeting when the room reached its 112-person capacity. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

The DOE noted in contract papers that it selected WXY in part because of its experience leading Brooklyn’s District 15 middle school diversity plan, unveiled in June 2017 and implemented this fall.

That district, with DOE’s approval, opted to eliminate admissions screens — grades, test scores, attendance and/or auditions — in favor of a lottery system giving priority to English language learners, low-income students, and those living in temporary housing.

Recent city data showed that District 15 schools became more diverse this year — and not at the expense of a disproportionate number of white and middle-class families pulling their kids out of public schools.

The residentially zoned Russell Sage Junior High School on Austin Street in Forest Hills would be impacted by changes. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

At the Thursday meeting, District 15’s diversity changes were not seen as a success at all by the few who mentioned it, noting that some students no longer were able to go to their closest zoned school.

“District 15 is one-third the size of District 28 in both population and geography. Geography is important because it means longer travel time for those being allocated to schools they did not choose,” said parent Jason Fink.

Fink added that District 15’s diversity plan lists 10 goals, with the final one being for it to serve as a model for other districts.

“The question you all have to ask is: Do you want that plan to be serving as a model for this one?” he said. “Because that’s what’s on the table.”

Applications for middle and high school are due soon. Here’s what you need to know about changes this year.

2019-11-27T23:36:30+00:00

Families who aren’t from New York City are often shocked when they learn what it takes to get into middle and high school: Campus visits and ranking schools on applications are all part of the time-consuming, and often stressful, process.

There are several significant changes for this year’s applicants, and families have a little more time to apply for middle and high school, with the deadline extended to Dec. 6.

The new deadline was announced Wednesday, after parents experienced glitches with MySchools, the online admissions portal, days before applications were originally due. (Roughly 32,800 people used the site on Tuesday causing a temporary slowdown, school officials said, promising they were working “around-the-clock” to address problems and concerns.)

New York City’s fifth- and eighth-grade students apply to and rank their top 12 middle schools and high schools, respectively. Each district has a different process for middle school admissions, while for high school, students are matched through an education department-created algorithm. About a third of the city’s high schools use different criteria to select students, such as state test scores and attendance, and about a quarter of middle schools set their own competitive entrance criteria.

A word of advice from Elissa Stein, who runs the High School 411 service to help families navigate the process: “Rank thoughtfully. The DOE will place you in a school if you don’t get one you listed on your application, so families should rank 12 schools to increase chances of an offer.”

Mahalia Watson, of Let’s Talk Schools, noted that each of the spots on the application represents a program, so you can apply to multiple programs within the same school: “There are some schools that have more than one program. Each program is like a doorway which can be used as a point of entry to the school.”

Pamela Wheaton, a former editor of Inside Schools, who recently founded School Scout NYC to provide advice to families, also stressed the importance of filling out 12 options.

“I think the DOE has really tried to improve things,” Wheaton said about tweaking the application process. “But every year, it’s a new crop of people applying, and they really can’t believe what they have to go through.”

Any families experiencing any issues with MySchools can call, email, visit a welcome center (located in all five boroughs to help with admissions), or work with their school counselor to complete their application. The education department promised to work with families who do not submit their application by the deadline for any reason. Students are expected to receive offers in March.

Here are some things that have changed for this year’s application season.

Directories are now online.

Instead of printing out its high school directory, which was 630-long pages last year, the education department moved most of its contents online this year. That means information about college enrollment data, Advanced Placement classes, special programs, and other offerings are online — and finding such data can be tricky even for the digitally savvy.

There’s only a thin printed guide for rising eighth graders containing general information and pointing students to MySchools for more detailed, school-by-school data.

The change aims to simplify the complicated admissions process and streamline updates or changes to inaccurate information that has shown up in past guides.

But the overhaul raises questions about whether families without easy Internet access will be disadvantaged — and if the change actually addresses the larger issue of equity around admissions.

“Every year this process gets more challenging and complicated,” Stein said. “While the DOE strives to create a more level playing field for all families, by moving everything online and no longer printing high school directories, they’re making the process harder for those without a computer or online access, those living in shelters, and families who aren’t tech-savvy.”

Waitlists are in. The second round and appeals are out.

Instead of having a second round for high school admissions, the city is putting students on waitlists for all of the schools they wanted to attend but didn’t get into. That means, for instance, if students are matched with their third-choice school, they will be put on a waiting list for their first and second choices. (This is how pre-K and kindergarten applications already work.)

Students can also add themselves to additional waitlists, even among schools they didn’t list on their initial application.

These changes might result in thousands of students on waitlists, leaving families to wonder through September whether they’ll get a more desirable assignment. Last year, 44,000 students would have ended up on at least one waitlist.

Students will be told their place on each waiting list and can track updates in real-time, city officials have said.

Previously, students who received no school match — because they listed too few schools on their application, didn’t meet the entrance criteria for their choices, or the schools they applied to were simply oversubscribed — would enter a second application round for schools that had open seats.

This past year, the city began assigning those unmatched students to a school, while still allowing them to enter a second round. Now, the city is eliminating round two altogether.

The city’s education department is no longer accepting appeals for middle and high schools.

“All appeals will be handled through family welcome centers,” Stein noted.

The Bronx has a new middle school admissions process.

Bronx Executive Superintendent Meisha Ross-Porter announced in September a shift from a district-based process to a borough-wide process.

This shift aims to simplify the application experience as every school with available seats will be an option for all Bronx students. It also aligns the pre-K through high school admissions processes, giving students a larger pool of schools to explore, education department officials said.

Middle schools will continue to give priority to students living in their zone or district, but any remaining seats will be filled by other students in the district or from other parts of the Bronx, officials explained. Bronx families received an alert in their MySchools profiles about the change.

“We heard from the community and listened,” Ross Porter said in a statement. “Moving to a borough-wide process will increase access for students and has improved the application process for families and schools.”

More schools created admissions policies with diversity in mind.

To help with integration efforts, many schools now set aside seats for certain groups, like students from low-income families or who are learning English for the first time. Brooklyn’s District 15 last year, for example, moved to a lottery-based admissions process for all 11 of its middle schools to bolster diversity.

Four high schools added diversity-based admissions this year: Brooklyn’s Leon M. Goldstein; Manhattan’s tiny performance-focused Repertory Company High School for Theatre Arts; and two elite Manhattan schools: Baruch College Campus and Lab High School for Collaborative Studies.

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

What it’s like for the middle schoolers at the forefront of Brooklyn’s integration push

2019-11-27T01:47:30+00:00

In the mornings, the B61 city bus in Brooklyn feels like a school bus, filled with students criss-crossing District 15.

Sixth-grader Melina Mays climbs aboard in Red Hook, along with her neighbors and friends. Many peel off along the way, heading towards schools that have been considered the district’s most coveted, like Park Slope’s M.S. 51 and South Slope’s New Voices. But 11-year-old Melina continues on, catching a second bus that drops her off at Sunset Park Prep, about an hour away from home by public transit.

Melina doesn’t care that Sunset Park Prep isn’t one of the schools with an outsized reputation. She put it first on her list of options after meeting friendly, inviting students and teachers when touring the school.

“I think a lot of families want something that’s very close to them, and very well-known so they can kind of brag a little bit. So they can say, ‘Oh my child goes to this well-known school that is, like, one of the best schools in the community,’” Melina said.

This year’s sixth graders were the first to enter middle school as part of a new admissions plan to integrate schools in District 15, which includes affluent and mostly white Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Cobble Hill and Park Slope, as well as areas with higher poverty and a significant Hispanic population, such as Red Hook and Sunset Park.

The district’s first year of enrollment data show that schools are already becoming more integrated. We spoke to four students and their families at a pair of schools that are starting to get more attention from families that hadn’t previously considered them as options: Sunset Park Prep and the South Slope’s M.S. 88, which have historically served mostly Hispanic students from low-income families.

Now, some of those families are going back to their previous elementary schools and sharing their impressions of this first year. Along the way, they’re helping to shape their neighbors’ perceptions about the district’s options before middle school applications are due on Dec. 6.

Their feedback could help boost the district’s diversity push, which rests largely on families overcoming fears of the unknown, going to schools they may have never heard of or in neighborhoods where they seldom spend time.

At Melina’s Red Hook elementary school, P.S. 15, officials organized tours for families to explore their options. Her mother, Dorothy Mays, hadn’t even heard of Sunset Park Prep prior to applying. The Mays family is black, and last year there were only about 10 black students at the school. Mays had instead hoped for the places where families often clamor for admission and felt the diversity plan could increase her daughter’s odds of getting in. As part of the plan, the entire district eliminated competitive admissions criteria that most of the area’s 11 middle schools had used. Instead schools are now assigned students by lottery, with priority given to certain disadvantaged families.

“Last year, it became, you could pick a school you really wanted, and know you had a shot,” Mays said. “It was an eye opening experience to see some schools and the different programs they offered.”

What sold Dorothy Mays on Sunset Park Prep was that the principal seemed to know all her students by name, and the students who helped lead tours said they felt understood and respected by their teachers. The commute now seems worth it, even after a promised school bus fell through. Mays has turned into an evangelist, downplaying the distance to her neighbors.

“We didn’t know anyone from our neighborhood actually went there,” Mays said. “So we’ve been trying to tell people, ‘This is a great school. Go.’”

Melina said she loves gym class, but sometimes has trouble keeping up in math.

“In P.S. 15, we didn’t learn everything that we’re doing. So my math teacher, she will start doing something, and I don’t know anything,” said Melina, who gets math help at home from an aunt to keep up.

Owen McNamara has had a different experience at Sunset Park Prep. He said his classes are sometimes easy because they can feel like a review of what he learned in fifth grade at P.S. 321. The school’s principal, Jennifer Spalding, said that is partly by design: The first few weeks of school are spent getting to know students and reviewing key concepts from elementary school.

When Owen found out he had been accepted to Sunset Park Prep, he worried about not knowing anyone: Only one other student from his elementary school would be heading there.

He and his family paid a visit, and Claire McNamara, Owen’s mom, remembers teachers in the hallway made a point to greet them. They decided the school was a good option, even though McNamara had previously hoped Owen would get accepted to a school with a music program and was close to home, such as M.S. 51, which is just a short walk away.

Owen McNamara quickly made new friends at Sunset Park Prep.

Now that the 11-year-old would have to commute by city bus and subway, the family reluctantly bought him a cell phone — a flip phone without an internet connection. Owen remembers gripping the hand rails on his first solo bus ride. That initial nervousness has worn off, and now he said he finds the commute “relaxing.” He isn’t worried about being alone anymore, either, having made friends on the very first day of school. For the first time, they include students who are still learning to speak English.

“I think it makes it kind of better, because you get to learn a lot more about everyone else and everyone else’s culture,” said Owen, who is white. “And it’s a good opportunity to learn more about different races that aren’t yours.”

There are notable differences from his elementary school experience. Owen played trumpet there, but hasn’t had the same opportunity at Sunset Park Prep. His mom said it’s sometimes hard to stay informed about how she and other parents can pitch in, especially compared with the well-oiled PTA at their elementary school.

While Sunset Park Prep, where more than 90% of students come from low income homes, might not be able to raise much money from families, it is a powerhouse when it comes to participatory budgeting — a voting process that lets the community decide how to spend city money on public projects. One of Owen’s favorite classes is science, where students are using triple beam balances and other equipment in a lab that was redone thanks to almost $2 million in participatory budgeting projects that have been funded in recent years.

Sunset Park Prep enrolled virtually no white students last year, but this year white students make up 10% of the sixth-grade class.

McNamara was reassured at the first parent-teacher conferences that Owen’s teachers already seemed to know him well. She was planning to head back to P.S. 321 to share her impressions at an event for fifth grade families, saying it’s the first time anyone can remember someone representing Sunset Park Prep at the event.

“It’s great the way it is, but I think it’d be great if people from all over the district knew about it,” she said. “It wasn’t really on my radar, and I’m really glad we ended up there.”

Becket Tavenner and his mom, Mimi Turner, logged into the education department’s portal one day last spring to find out where he had been accepted to middle school. Both were caught by surprise. The name that flashed on the screen, M.S. 88, was a school Becket hadn’t even applied to.

Turner thought immediately about the distance her son would have to travel from their neighborhood in Carroll Gardens to the campus in South Slope, and the fact that Becket would be separated for the first time from his twin brother, who had been accepted to a different school.

She hoped for a transfer, but in the meantime, they attended an open house. Becket remembers learning about the school’s specialized programs, including an art track with opportunities to take classes in visual art, drama, and music. There were sports teams, and a comfort dog to help cheer students up.

“I thought it was a great school,” he said.

M.S. 88 has mostly enrolled Hispanic students and has a significant Asian population, too. The most underrepresented group has been white students like Becket. But that has begun to change. This year, the sixth grade class is nearly a quarter white, a 15 percentage point jump.

Becket Tavenner is attending M.S. 88, a school that he didn’t apply to.

The family’s transfer request never got approved. Turner had to swallow her fears about Becket commuting to school alone on the subway, and bought him a cell phone, years earlier than she had anticipated. Now she waits for his texts in the morning for reassurance that he’s arrived safely at school.

On a recent school day afternoon this fall, Becket had yellow paint splattered on his baggy tie-dye sweater, leftover from a class project that involved dragging magnets in paint. He described his new school as “awesome,” and also diverse. In that sense, middle school hasn’t felt much different from his progressive elementary school, Brooklyn New School.

Other aspects of middle school have taken some adjusting: while his elementary school was an epicenter of opt-out activism calling for testing boycotts, Becket notices he’s taken a lot more exams in sixth grade. Homework is harder — and so is mustering up the motivation to actually do it.

“In middle school, I’m learning, a little bit more, what kind of student I am,” Becket said.

By the time Isabella Scott-Nuti was weighing her middle school options, she had already heard from friends that some schools were considered the best. So when she learned she got into M.S. 88, her initial reaction was, “Darn it.”

The school had been towards the bottom of her list. But her parents liked that it had a Spanish program, just like at her elementary school, P.S. 15, and an “immense” array of after-school programs, said Kimmerly Scott, Isabella’s mom.

Scott said the school’s diversity also appealed to their mixed-race family: Scott is black and grew up in New York City, and her husband is a white immigrant from Italy. A school where most students come from the same background “wouldn’t make sense,” for her daughter, Scott said.

“The way she lives isn’t that way; The way she learns shouldn’t be that way,” she said.

Isabella had heard that some of the students at M.S. 88 were “rude,” but her mom told her to keep an open mind. She remembers her mom’s advice: The school was full of so many different kinds of students, that “you can’t really assume,” what it would be like.

Now that she’s enrolled, Isabella said M.S. 88 isn’t what she expected. She’s made new friends and described her teachers as “really interesting.” Her favorite subjects are math, “because you get to solve problems,” and science, because she likes “learning about how the world works.”

In the search for a middle school, she also learned to look beyond the kind of information that families often rely on to make decisions, like the test scores listed in the city’s middle school guide books.

“Really all they give you is data and, ‘This school sucks, or this school is good.’ But I think what’s really important is the perspective of a middle schooler,” she said. “I think just having a good life and being healthy in middle school really shapes who you are.”

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

At Harlem’s Columbia Secondary School, selective admissions opens old wounds — and ignites calls for change

2019-11-21T23:38:22+00:00

Harlem’s Columbia Secondary School was envisioned more than a decade ago as an oasis for high-performing students, providing a rigorous option for the surrounding historically black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Today, the public middle and high school stands out for its diverse student body and its academic track record. Enrollment is 60% black and Hispanic, and students routinely post test scores and graduation rates that blow past city averages.

Despite that record, Columbia Secondary is at the center of a debate about what it means to be a high-performing school, and who has access to such opportunities. The fight has also opened old wounds between the Harlem community and the school’s prestigious partner and neighbor, Columbia University.

Harlem parents say the school’s demographics do not go far enough in reflecting its immediate neighbors and are demanding changes to how students are admitted. The school’s principal counters that she’s working hard to bolster access within the confines of the New York City public school system, which is one of the most segregated in the nation, while still maintaining selective admissions standards.

“I get the frustration,” said Miriam Nightengale, Columbia Secondary’s principal. “I feel a problem is being put on my shoulders that the system doesn’t support me in solving.”

To get into Columbia Secondary for sixth grade, the school considers state test scores, and students must take a school-created test, have good attendance records, and live or attend elementary school in the surrounding neighborhoods. (Across the city, about a quarter of middle schools similarly set their own competitive entrance criteria.)

The school, situated on West 123rd Street, serves more than 700 students who take classes in philosophy, conduct month-long field studies, and attend university classes at Columbia as high school students. In 2018, the graduation rate was 99%, and students have gone on to universities including Yale, MIT, and Rice.

The school was launched as part of an official agreement with Columbia University, which has clashed infamously with Harlem residents. As the university expanded its footprint, partially through the use of eminent domain to seize homes and businesses, Columbia promised to partner with the education department to open a new middle and high school focused on math, science, and engineering. Its professors would help develop specialized curriculum, and the university would provide opportunities, such as internships and access to Columbia courses, so public school students could benefit from the Ivy League resources in their own backyard.

At least half of enrollment would come from East Harlem’s District 4, Central and West Harlem’s District 5, and District 6, which covers Inwood and Washington Heights. Also included: the area north of 96th Street, in the Upper West Side’s District 3.

Nightengale said the school needs to remain true to the agreement, which called for a “competitive” admissions process, specifically serving “high-performing” students, and ensuring “the highest level of education.”

But Sanayi Canton, the president of the Community Education Council in Harlem’s District 5, said the university also pledged to boost educational outcomes for students in neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of the university’s growth — areas where families have historically lacked access to high-performing schools. Those students, she argued, are being left out by the school’s competitive admissions standards.

In District 5, a little more than a third of students reached grade-level reading expectations on state tests last year, and only 68% graduated from high school.

“How you define a high-quality school, to me, becomes another screening measure to keep kids out,” Canton said. “The reason kids in my district are not getting into Columbia Secondary is because, from the inception of the school, it really wasn’t designed for them.”

Columbia University declined to comment.

Canton said parents have been coming for years to the education council and complaining about Columbia Secondary’s admissions process. In response, the council, a parent-led body that oversees education issues in the district, established a committee to dig into what was happening. Through a public records request, members found that the school was disproportionately screening out black and Hispanic students — which is by no means unique to Columbia Secondary. Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented at selective schools across the city, recent research has found.

Columbia Secondary enrolls far more black and Hispanic students than many of the city’s competitive schools. While it’s diverse, it isn’t representative of the districts where students have priority in admissions. Fewer than half of the school’s students come from poor families, compared with more than 80% of students in District 4. Almost none are learning English as a new language, in stark contrast to District 6, where such students make up more than a quarter of enrollment.

“Nobody’s saying they’re not a diverse school,” said Anna Minsky, a former education council member who continues to serve on the committee that has been investigating Columbia Secondary. “But I think we’re all sophisticated enough to understand that being diverse doesn’t mean the school doesn’t have practices that promote racism.”

Canton and other parent leaders want the school to drop its admissions screens or dramatically overhaul them to become more inclusive. At the very least, they’ve called for eliminating attendance and lateness as entrance criteria, echoing the calls of a citywide diversity committee. Screening for attendance and tardiness can disproportionately affect students from low-income backgrounds, such as homeless students who are more likely to miss days of school.

The school has already promised to host more information sessions to get the word out about the application process, Canton noted. Still, she doesn’t believe that’s sufficient to help District 5 students, who are overwhelmingly unable to get through the competitive admissions process.

Nightengale, Columbia Secondary’s principal, said she has met multiple times with parent leaders to examine the school’s admissions practices since taking the helm in 2011. But she’s steadfast in her belief that the school needs to maintain some kind of sorting mechanism, according to the university benefits agreement.

“If you’re serving high-performing students, you have to have some way to identify them,” Nightengale said, noting that the school does not get any information about a student’s racial or ethnic background when they rank them.

Some change is already on the way: This year, the education department has agreed to distribute admissions offers evenly across the priority districts, she said.

She has also asked the department to model what admissions demographics would look like if the school were to drop attendance and lateness from the admissions criteria, as the education council has asked. Nightengale has even considered ditching the school’s own entrance exam but is concerned that doing so will have unintended consequences by putting more weight on state test scores, which are tightly intertwined with race and class.

“It’s not an easy process,” she said.

Nightengale’s conviction to maintaining the school’s screens is also built from her own experience in New York City schools.

Before joining Columbia Secondary, Nightengale helped lead a Manhattan high school where most incoming students were black and Hispanic, and many were already far below grade level. While she’s proud of the work that school did to help students catch up, she also worried about those who excelled and could have benefitted from more than the school could provide, like another Advanced Placement course to help students rack up college credits.

At Columbia Secondary, she saw an opportunity to do right by talented black and Hispanic students, who she believes can easily fall through the cracks. Others feel the same: Elected officials such as Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., have argued that those students deserve more selective programs in their neighborhoods, which are currently more likely to go without such high-performing options.

“Those students aren’t being served elsewhere in the city,” Nightengale said. “Eliminating screening does not eliminate the fact that there are students who need teachers who can teach AP calculus, and [at many city schools] they’re not going to get them.”

Watch live: Officials meet to discuss rezoning of Brooklyn elementary schools

2019-11-19T22:58:33+00:00

When it comes to school-related meetings, just because they’re public doesn’t mean they’re necessarily accessible for families, who for a variety of reasons are unable to show up in person.

That is why Chalkbeat, in conjunction with RedConnect, a community journalism project by CUNY Social Journalism graduate student, Lauren Costantino, is livestreaming tonight’s meeting of District 15’s Community Education Council, a parent body that approves zone line changes, held at Carroll Gardens’ P.S. 58.

A plan to redraw elementary school boundaries in the northern part of District 15 — which also includes Cobble Hill, Red Hook and Gowanus — was recently delayed in response to concerns from parents in mostly low-income neighborhoods that they hadn’t been properly engaged in the process. Despite about a dozen meetings the education department hosted throughout the district — and targeted outreach in Red Hook and public housing in Gowanus, where many of the district’s students of color live — families wanted a more inclusive process. Some felt that more affluent families were overrepresented at the meetings.

School officials will launch an engagement process called Participatory Action Research, or PAR, that relies on smaller format discussions, like canvassing and one-on-one conversations led by people living in the community. Tonight’s meeting is expected to provide an update on that process as well as the status of the rezoning slated to be implemented in the 2021-22 school year, among other agenda items.

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

New York City students walk out of class, pledging weekly strikes to demand school integration

2019-11-19T01:32:46+00:00

Every morning, students from two different schools stream into a shared building in Hudson Square, offering a stark example of segregation in the country’s largest school system.

Through one door, students head to NYC iSchool, a selective school where 46% of enrollment is white — in a school system where more than two-thirds of students are black or Hispanic. A separate entrance leads to Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School, where only 4% of students are white. Separated by a flight of stairs, there is little opportunity for them to meet.

But on Monday morning, students from both schools came together to push for bold action to integrate New York City high schools — including their own. It was the first in a wave of strikes that student activists with Teens Take Charge pledge will continue every Monday. With these protests, they are borrowing a page from the playbook of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who last year began protesting weekly in her native Sweden and went on to inspire a worldwide movement.

The New York City teens said they will keep it up, with the hopes of building a citywide movement, until Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza meet their demands.

“This is a systematic issue that needs a citywide solution,” Carla Gaveglia, a senior at the iSchool who helped organize the protest, told a cheering crowd. “De Blasio and Carranza need to do better. They must do better. And they must know that our voices matter.”

Officials at City Hall and the education department pointed to recent integration efforts put forward by the de Blasio administration. They cited $2 million in grants to school districts working on their own diversity plans — something that all districts will soon have to create, according to a City Council bill passed last week. The mayor is also weighing policy changes recommended by a school diversity task force he appointed.

“Our schools are stronger when they reflect the diversity of our city, and we’re taking a look at our admissions processes,” City Hall spokeswoman Jane Meyer wrote in an email. “We thank Teens Take Charge for raising their voice.”

About 150 students filled a small park that fronts their school building beginning at 8:45 a.m. They held signs with messages such as, “We need equity,” and chanted in unison “Educate, don’t segregate!” At one point they linked arms before streaming into their separate entrances for class. The rally lasted for 30 minutes, or 1,800 seconds — roughly one second for each public school in New York City, which is home to one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

Alexander Ruiz, a senior at Chelsea CTE, helped organize the walkout. With his high school graduation on the horizon, he sees that students at the iSchool heading to more selective universities than his own classmates.

“It’s not because they’re smarter than me. It’s just that they’ve been given the supplemental tools, while I haven’t,” he said, noting that he wishes he had more access to college counselors who could have helped him reached higher. “It’s not the same playing field. It’s not fair at all.”

In New York City, students must apply to high schools, and the schools are allowed to set their own competitive admissions criteria. At iSchool, for example, students have to type up short answers to a series of questions. (The school also recently tweaked its admissions to give certain students priority, in the hopes of spurring more integration.) Teens Take Charge wants the city to abolish high school screens, such as test scores or attendance records, which integration advocates blame for deepening segregation.

“In this building, we see the achievement gap, wealth gap, and opportunity gap. This is what the system has put in place,” said Chris Gonzalez, a senior at Chelsea CTE who spoke at the rally.

Instead, the group is calling for all schools to admit students with a range of academic abilities, breaking up concentrations of students who struggle — which can overwhelm schools trying to help them catch up. Also among the demands: more guidance counselors and college counselors in schools where most students have fallen behind grade level, as well as paid internships, and opportunities to share resources such as advanced courses and sports teams at nearby campuses.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the neighborhood where NYC iSchool and Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School are located.

A push to integrate Brooklyn middle schools is starting to show results, according to new data

2019-11-15T00:06:40+00:00

A pioneering diversity plan is starting to shift racial demographics of schools in one corner of Brooklyn, according to preliminary 2019-20 enrollment data released Thursday by the education department.

By moving to a lottery-based admission system and getting rid of competitive screens, the new policy aims to integrate middle schools so they reflect the demographics of District 15 — which includes affluent brownstone neighborhoods, such as Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, as well lower-income areas, such as Red Hook and Sunset Park.

This year’s enrollment numbers show that disproportionately white and affluent schools saw some of the most dramatic changes. Schools serving mostly Hispanic students also experienced notable shifts — but in some cases the changes were less pronounced, suggesting there is still work to be done to convince families to consider a wider range of options for their children.

“It’s hard work, and there’s a lot more to do. But the [District 15] diversity plan is working,” tweeted Brad Lander, a City Council member representing a large swath of the district.

City leaders hope that District 15’s efforts can be a model for the city’s other school districts — all of which must now develop integration plans of their own.

Dire warnings that white and more affluent families would flee the public school system largely did not come to pass. In fact, the district’s share of white sixth graders — 31% — remained unchanged compared to last year.

Claire McNamara, who is white, enrolled her son at Sunset Park Prep this year, a school where there were virtually no white students the prior year. Her family hadn’t previously considered the school but decided it was a good option after taking a tour and being impressed with the engaged students and friendly teachers.

“We came in with an open mind, and we’re pretty happy,” she said. “I feel kind of lucky that we ended up here.”

South Slope’s New Voices, a performing arts school coveted by white families in the district, saw Hispanic student enrollment climb by almost 20 percentage points, to 41% of the sixth-grade class. At M.S. 51, which has billed itself as a school for gifted students, Hispanic enrollment jumped by 13 percentage points, to 36%.

Meanwhile at the southern end of the district in Sunset Park, the incoming classes remained overwhelmingly Hispanic, though the number of white students is slowly ticking upward. At Sunset Park Prep and Charles O. Dewey, for instance, the number of white sixth graders was negligible last year. This year, 9 and 10% of the students were white, respectively.

In a sign of the challenges that remain, many more white students received offers to both schools than those who ultimately enrolled. The disparity was especially stark at Dewey, where 27% of offers went to white students, according to an analysis by WXY, the firm that helped lead the community-driven plan to overhaul the admission policy.

That said, there did not appear to be a mass exodus students from the district’s public schools. Roughly 76% of fifth graders from District 15 elementary schools ended staying in the district for sixth grade, according to education department data. The year before about 80% enrolled in the district’s middle schools. Those numbers reveal that many students who applied to middle schools in previous years also ended up going to schools beyond the district, whether they went to private schools, charters or selective public schools elsewhere.

Before this year, most middle schools in the district had used their own selective criteria, such as test scores and attendance records, to admit students. Integration advocates say the city’s widespread use of competitive admissions standards helps drive New York City’s status as the most segregated school system in the country. And parents complained about their 10-year-olds feeling rejected when they didn’t get into their schools of choice.

For this year’s incoming sixth graders, the uniquely diverse district eliminated screens. Instead, students were admitted by lottery, with preference given to students who are low-income, in temporary housing, or learning English as a new language. The aim is for all of the district’s middle schools to enroll 40 to 75% of students who fall under those categories. In this first year of the initiative, all but three schools met those benchmarks. (The year before only three schools reflected those targets.)
“Our schools are stronger when they reflect the diversity of our city,” schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement. “I am grateful to the community for their partnership in building a more equitable future for our students, and look forward to the many positive impacts of this plan in the coming years.”

City Council says all NYC school districts must develop integration plans

2019-11-14T23:03:40+00:00

Every New York City school district that doesn’t already have an integration plan in the works will be tasked with creating one, under a bill the City Council approved Thursday.

This work is already happening in certain places, such as Manhattan’s District 1 and 3 and Brooklyn’s District 15, where controversial admissions changes have shown some promise in integrating student bodies. Five other districts are developing their own diversity plans using $200,000 grants from the education department.

It’s unclear how each working group would fund their efforts, though the bill says the city can lend the groups administrative support.

Before the vote, bill sponsor Councilwoman Carlina Rivera of Lower Manhattan told reporters that her legislation creates an inclusive process for a school system that “is failing to provide equitable education for all New Yorkers.”

Under Rivera’s bill, Mayor Bill de Blasio will be required to create a “diversity working group” in every district that doesn’t already have one. The mayor must appoint at least 13 people to each group, consisting of students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators, and advocates. Each group can also choose to partner with a community-based organization, as long as it comes from a list pre-approved by the mayor.

These panels will operate separately from the Mayor’s School Diversity Advisory group, which recently recommended dozens of changes to help desegregate the school system such as phasing out gifted and talented classes.

Within two years of a group’s creation, its members would have to publish an integration plan that tackles such issues as admission policies, language access, and transportation, and send their recommendations to the mayor, the schools chancellor, and the speaker of the City Council.

“Our students thrive in diverse learning environments, and we thank the Council for their partnership in developing this important, community-driven work,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot said in a statement.

The task of creating these groups could be passed to whoever succeeds de Blasio, whose term ends in January 2022. Every working group must be created by 2024, the bill says.

The legislation passed the same day the city released preliminary enrollment data for Brooklyn District 15, where a middle school integration plan is in its first year. Eight of its 11 middle schools met targets of having 40 to 75% of its students from low-income families, learning English as a new language, or living in temporary housing — up from just three schools last year.

Districts that already have a plan or are in the process of creating one would not be required to create a working group but would have to provide their plan and recommendations to the City Council, the bill states.

Rivera’s plan “goes a long way to say, ‘Hey, let’s give power to the people,’” said David E. Kirkland, executive director of NYU Metro Center and a member of the city’s School Diversity Advisory Group. He said the bill is an important start in giving school communities a voice in spurring integration, but also said it falls short of actually overseeing the implementation of a plan and ensuring that it stays intact.

“Achievement seems to me to be the lowest bar,” Kirkland said. “The question after achievement is, how do we maintain that? We haven’t done a good job in this country of maintaining integration.”

Rivera’s bill was passed along with a slate of school diversity bills:

A bill from Councilman Brad Lander will require the education department to report more detailed student demographic data and provide a side-by-side comparison of how each school’s demographics match up to its surrounding district and the whole city.
Councilman Mark Treyger, who also oversees the city’s education committee, sponsored a bill that will require education officials to publish an annual report on the demographics of teachers and other schools staff, such as administrators and paraprofessionals. Those reports, which must be posted online, must include gender, race, length of employment at the school, and years of experience in that position.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams pitched a bill that will make permanent the city’s mayoraly appointed School Diversity Advisory Group, and would add to it members appointed by the Public Advocate and the City Council Speaker’s office. Starting in 2021 and annually after that, the group would have to write a report reviewing integration efforts by the education department and provide any recommendations. They’ll also be required to hold at least one public hearing in each borough annually.

Brooklyn parents lobby to keep their twins together in middle school

2019-11-04T21:35:57+00:00

Mimi Turner’s twin boys attended the same pre-K, the same elementary school, the same after-school programs and the same camp. As they entered sixth grade this year, the 11-year-olds were separated for the first time — and it’s been a logistical and emotional burden.

The Carroll Gardens family resides within Brooklyn’s District 15, where the middle school admissions system was recently overhauled. The aim was to improve racial and socioeconomic integration in the district, which includes Sunset Park, Red Hook, and Cobble Hill. But some parents of twins say the changes have presented additional challenges for their families, making it harder for those who want to keep their children at the same school.

Though having children at different schools could pose difficulties for any family, some parents of twins say there are extra hurdles when it comes to balancing the demands of two children who are the same age.

Once a reliable PTA volunteer, Turner hasn’t made it to a single meeting this year — “There’s no way I could do it at two schools. What, I’m supposed to pick one?” she said.

Her sons, used to walking to school together in the mornings, now head out alone. One walks about five blocks to class; the other leaves 45 minutes earlier to catch a bus or the subway.

“It’s a dramatic change,” she said. “This is making it so much harder for me than I could ever imagine.”

Unlike for elementary school, the education department doesn’t offer sibling preference for middle school (though there are exceptions for K-8 or K-12 schools.) But before District 15 reformed its application process for this year’s sixth grade class, individual schools had more influence over how to admit students, and could decide whether to include sibling priorities, families said.

Parents of twins in the district are now lobbying the education department for a preference that would allow their children to attend the same middle schools. A group of moms at Park Slope’s P.S. 107 with rising middle schoolers have bent the ears of local politicians. Last month, they launched an online petition a month ago that has garnered 600 signatures so far.

“It’s so heartbreaking for the kids and the parents to separate those twins,” said Nancy Dodd, the mother of twins who has helped lead the charge to tweak admissions rules.

Twins tend to be split into different classes once they’re in Kindergarten (if not before), but many parents often prefer to keep them, at least, in the same school. The parents behind the petition argue that when twins are sent to different campuses, families can get stretched too thin when it comes to volunteering to help out, or attending events like teacher conferences. As for students, they say the already-difficult middle school years can seem more daunting without their sibling pair.

After Anna Carpenter moved to Brooklyn from England, she said it was “traumatic” that her twins were placed in different classrooms for the first time. Her girls are now in fifth grade at P.S. 107, and she doesn’t want to think about how they would fare at separate schools.

“They’re very, very close,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

When a school is already segregated, sibling preferences can complicate integration efforts by making fewer seats available for children from backgrounds that are different from those already enrolled.

The moms lobbying for a twins preference are quick to note that they are supportive of diversity efforts. But now that admissions are more fair, they argue that allowing twins to stay together shouldn’t pose the same difficulties to integration as before.

Local Assembly members Robert C. Carroll and Jo Anne Simon, along with City Council members Carlos Menchaca and Brad Lander, recently sent a letter to the Department of Education leaders in support of a sibling preference, even beyond just twins.

“We believe offering middle school parents a standard sibling priority option would be the right thing for the DOE to do, and would make implementation of the diversity plan more amenable to many parents in District 15,” they wrote in a Nov. 1 letter.

So far, no action has been taken — but schools Chancellor Richard Carranza previously hinted that the education department may be open to change. Carranza is also a twin himself, and went to college alongside his brother.

“We don’t want to inconvenience parents,” Carranza said on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer’s show in September, in response to a question from Mimi Turner, the Carroll Gardens mom whose twins are at separate middle schools.

“We’re actually looking into what that would look like going forward,” the chancellor added.

Sunset Park is the next neighborhood to weigh school rezoning plans in Brooklyn’s District 15

2019-10-31T19:43:56+00:00

Schools in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park could see their attendance zones shift as the city builds new schools in the neighborhood, where overcrowding has been a persistent issue.

District 15 Superintendent Anita Skop wrote in a recent letter to parent leaders that she would follow a similar community engagement process as in the northwest corner of the district, where a separate plan to redraw school boundaries was recently put on hold as more community feedback is sought.

The local Community Education Council, a parent body which must vote to approve rezoning proposals, will discuss the district’s plans at a Nov. 19 meeting.

Three schools are slated to open in Sunset Park, according to documents from the construction authority. A 330-seat building for pre-K through fifth grade is expected to be completed in fall 2022 at 4302 Fourth Ave., the site of a landmarked former police station. The other two schools are also planned to serve pre-K through fifth grade. They are still in the design phase, with a 400-seat building planned at 836-841 Fifth Ave., and another 300 seats in the pipeline at 4513 Eighth Ave.

Skop recently told education council members that the city intends to use a model called Participatory Action Research to move the Sunset Park planning forward. That’s the same approach the city pledged to use for its rezoning plans in Red Hook, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens, and Cobble Hill, after advocates said families in mostly low-income neighborhoods hadn’t been properly engaged.

“We are working in partnership with the Sunset Park community to develop a rezoning plan that is responsive to their needs and feedback,” said education department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon. “We look forward to rolling out this initiative in the near future.”

Often referred to as PAR, the process relies on one-on-one conversations, canvassing, and other on-the-ground approaches led by people in the affected communities — as opposed to the town hall-style meetings run by education department officials that typically guide decision-making processes.

The rezoning in Sunset Park comes on the heels of a separate plan to change the boundaries around seven northwest Brooklyn schools in an attempt to relieve overcrowding and also encourage diversity in a deeply segregated district. A decision on those changes was recently put on hold until the 2021-22 school year.

“I want to thank the CEC members for their ongoing partnership and you, the dedicated District 15 community, for your continued willingness to engage in this process as we continue to develop a plan that advances equity and excellence for all our students,” Skop wrote.

To give feedback about what community engagement should look like, families can contact Skop at 718-935-4317 or e-mail askop@schools.nyc.gov, or write to brooklynzoning@schools.nyc.gov.

New City Council task force will rethink NYC’s specialized high school admissions

2019-10-30T22:07:59+00:00

A new task force, approved by the City Council Wednesday, is expected to tackle the thorny issue of how to integrate the city’s most elite public high schools, such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

The 19-member advisory group must make recommendations by May 2020 for how to bolster diversity through changing admissions to the city’s specialized high schools. At those test-in schools this year, 80% of offers went to Asian and white students in a school system where 67% of students are black and Hispanic.

Objections to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s own plan, introduced in June 2018, has in part fueled the creation of this task force. Aside from backlash about the plan itself, which Albany has left untouched for two straight years, critics have said he did not gather input from families and elected officials before rolling out a proposal that would scrap the admissions test and instead offer spots to the top 7% of students at city middle schools. Supporters of this task force believe it will be more inclusive of those affected by the school system.

The task force will be charged with ensuring “that there is a comprehensive, thoughtful analysis” of how admissions should work while taking into account “the input of all stakeholders,“ a council spokesperson said in an email.

It will allow those involved with the system to have a say in what the city should do, said City Councilman Mark Treyger, a bill co-sponsor, adding, “Show me where there has been a government-sponsored task force made up of [advocates, parents, students, and policy experts].”
It remains to be seen how much weight the group’s recommendations will have on state lawmakers, who make the final call on admissions changes to the three most populous schools of Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech. Rules governing those campuses are written into state law.

The idea of a task force has already received mixed reviews. There’s support from Education Equity Campaign, which is funded by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and former Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons, and has lobbied to preserve the admissions test.

But some questioned what the task force will achieve.

Matt Gonzales, director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative at NYU Metro Center, wants the city to regain control over admissions at the big three schools, and said he also values community input. But creating this task force and focusing on the process behind the mayor’s plan felt like an “excuse to not actually want to engage in a real conversation,” he said.
“I get the point, but it just seems more designed to say, ‘people did something about an issue that’s super contentious,’ but they’re not really doing anything,” said Gonzales. He is also part of the School Diversity Advisory Group, which was tasked with finding new ways to integrate city schools.

The matter has been debated, researched by education experts, and has been the subject of heated community forums over the past year and a half, but the state legislature hasn’t moved on it in any direction — and many lawmakers haven’t clearly said where they stand on the issue.

The mayor and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza or their designees will each have a seat on the task force. The mayor will also appoint nine other members. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who initially proposed the task force bill, will get a seat and the opportunity to appoint the remaining seven members. Two of Johnson’s picks must be students — one who attends a specialized high school and one who does not. At least two parents, several education policy experts, and a member of a specialized high schools alumni organization must also sit on the task force.

The task force could recommend scrapping the schools’ controversial admissions exam, as the mayor had proposed. They could also consider new ways to admit students and changing existing city programs aimed at diversifying the schools, such as Discovery, which admits students from low-income families who score just below the exam cutoff.

Critics of the current admissions policies say that pricey test prep gives some students a leg up. Proposed efforts to diversify the city’s specialized high schools have often sparked messy debates centered on politics and race.

NYC City Council will consider task force on changing specialized high school admissions

2019-10-30T00:07:55+00:00

The City Council could vote Wednesday to create a task force aimed at diversifying the city’s specialized high schools by changing how students are admitted.

The task force bill passed through the City Council’s education committee on Tuesday with an 11-1 vote. (Five others were absent.)

Proposed in March by Speaker Corey Johnson, the task force would be responsible for coming up with diversity recommendations by May 2020. Their potential solutions could include scrapping the schools’ controversial admissions exam, considering new ways to admit students, and changing existing city programs aimed at diversifying the schools, such as Discovery, which admits students from low-income families who score just below the exam cutoff.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has acknowledged needing a new strategy to diversify the specialized high schools, after his plan to eliminate the test and admit top middle school students from across the city failed for a second year in the state legislature. (Changes to admissions policies at the most populous of specialized high schools — Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, and Stuyvesant — are written into state law, and must be approved by state lawmakers.)

The specialized high schools are disproportionately white and Asian, and outrage over how few black and Hispanic students have been admitted has boiled for years — with critics of the current admissions policies saying that pricey test prep gives some students a leg up. Proposed solutions, however, have often sparked messy debates centered on politics and race.

State lawmakers, such as Queens Sen. John Liu and Assembly Education Chair Michael Benedetto, held a hearing and forums this past spring to hear from the community following renewed anger when new admissions data was released, showing, for example, that only seven black students were offered spots at Stuyvesant. But beyond that, lawmakers have not made any major legislative moves. It’s also unclear if and how heavily the legislature would weigh the task force’s recommendations.

The goal of the proposed task force is to “ensure that there is a comprehensive, thoughtful analysis of the future of admissions at specialized high schools that takes into account the input of all stakeholders,“ a council spokesperson said in an email.

Councilman Mark Treyger, a co-sponsor of the City Council bill, said this task force would be different from what the city has already done because it’s not a “top-down” approach. He cited criticism of de Blasio for not collecting input from families and elected officials when he rolled out his plan in June 2018 — something the mayor has acknowledged could have been better.

“I feel we need to have a bottom-up conversation,” Treyger, chair of the education committee, said Tuesday after the bill was advanced. “We need to hear from everyone.”

The task force would be required to hold one formal public hearing.

But it remains unclear how this process would bring about any new community consensus. The multiple state-led forums yielded little, if any, common ground.

On Tuesday the education department pointed to measures it has taken, such as expanding the Discovery program and calling tens of thousands of families in underrepresented districts to inform them about the test — initiatives that have not succeeded in diversifying the schools.

“The status quo is unacceptable, and we’re committed to working with communities across the City to chart the best path forward for our students and families,” said Jane Meyer, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, in a statement. “We’ve invested in initiatives to expand outreach, and look forward to working with the task force.”

Many integration advocates support the mayor’s plan, which studies have found would quickly diversify specialized schools. Others argue that getting rid of a “race-blind” test would unfairly elbow out white and Asian families, who receive the most offers to these schools. Some argue that the real problem to be solved is fixing instruction at the city’s elementary schools and middle schools; others worry that admitting top middle school students would water down the academics at specialized high schools — an argument that integration proponents, including Chancellor Richard Carranza, have called racist.

The task force earned the support of the Education Equity Campaign, which wants to keep in place the admissions test, and supports expanding public test preparation, adding gifted and talented programs at, and creating more specialized high schools.

“We hope the council will use this as an opportunity to appoint members who reflect the views of a majority of black and brown New York City parents: which is that we need a comprehensive plan—like the one our campaign has proposed—to lift up students and tackle the shameful inequities throughout our public school system,” Rev. Kirsten Foy, one of the group’s leaders, said in a statement.

If passed, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration would have considerable say over shaping the 19-member group. The mayor and Carranza, or their respective designees, would each get a seat. The mayor would also choose nine more members, which must include a parent, a teacher, and four additional education department employees who have expertise in admissions, child development, and testing.

Johnson or his designee would also get a seat, and the speaker would choose the remaining seven members. Two of them must be students — one who attends a specialized high school and one who does not. A parent, three education policy experts, and a member of a specialized high schools alumni organization must also sit on the task force.

Counselors see the pitfalls and the possibilities of NYC high school admissions

2019-10-28T23:34:04+00:00

Applying to high school in New York City can often feel daunting for parents and students — and also for the school counselors who shepherd the process, a new report shows.

Researchers who interviewed 88 educators tasked with helping students navigate high school admissions found that many of them mistrust the system and question whether it’s fair, according to an October study in Educational Policy, an academic journal.

Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, an associate professor at Seton Hall University who co-authored the report, said the city should consider the experiences of counselors to make the process smoother and improve outcomes.

“They see the human toll — and the possibilities,” she said. “They see the kids struggling to identify schools or understanding the eligibility requirements … And then see them matched to schools they’re excited about, or not excited about, or that are two hours away.”

In New York City, students aren’t assigned to their local high school but must apply to schools, ranking a dozen choices from more than 700 programs. In theory, this system opens up opportunities to attend high-performing schools regardless of a student’s ZIP code.

Counselors largely “had positive things to say about the idea that kids could choose schools,” Sattin-Bajaj said. “It was more about in practice that there was a problem.”

Hurdles, counselors noted, include geographic preferences that shut students out of some of the most coveted schools. Some schools in Manhattan’s high-performing District 2, for example, give admissions priority to students who live within the affluent district’s boundaries. Every year, schools like Eleanor Roosevelt on the Upper East Side fill up exclusively with students who live or attended middle school in the area.

Many other sought-after options screen students based on academic performance, and have their own admissions criteria, such as an interview or a test. Keeping track of all the requirements can be another hurdle, especially for families who speak a language other than English, counselors said.

Students with disabilities also face specific challenges in the process. The study noted, “Multiple counselors decried the common practice of high schools attempting to dissuade admitted students from enrolling because their individualized education plans (IEPs) might require costly supports or services that they were legally mandated to offer but did not.”

The process is sometimes complicated by the high schools themselves, which may not provide up-to-date information about their offerings or may ignore requests for more information about their admissions criteria, according to counselors. Some of them said they wanted the education department to adopt more active oversight to make sure schools don’t violate city rules regarding admissions.

With high-performing students largely enrolled in the same select group of schools, counselors also reported there were fewer options for students who hadn’t scored top grades in middle school.

“The under-supply of high-performing high schools accessible to students of all achievement levels, particularly in parts of the city accessible to the most economically disadvantaged students, led many counselors to question the equity rationale for school choice,” the study found.

There have been some major changes in the process since the interviews were conducted in 2015. The city eliminated the limited unscreened admissions method, which didn’t have academic requirements but gave preference to students who show interest in a school by, for example, showing up for an open house. But making time for school visits during the workday could be a burden for some families, and information about tour dates and times was often hard to find.

The education department has also moved to an online application system, which could distance counselors from the application process. Previously, counselors had to submit students’ choices — an administrative load but one that encouraged student interaction throughout the high school application process.

Many integration advocates argue the extent of academic screening in high schools, and the labor-intensive application process, helps drive New York City’s status as one of the most segregated school systems in the country.

A spokeswoman for the education department, Miranda Barbot, highlighted the city’s training offerings for counselors and emphasized that information on applying to high schools is available in 10 different languages.

“School counselors make a difference for students and families every day by helping them navigate the high school admissions process, and we are committed to supporting this work through ongoing training and resources,” she said.

A task force appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio recently recommended ending the use of admissions criteria, such as attendance, and eliminating geographic priorities as ways to encourage more student diversity.

It is up to the mayor and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza to respond to the recommendations, which aren’t binding and are sure to draw backlash from families who say the current system rewards student merit.

The SHSAT is this weekend. Here’s what you need to know about NYC’s controversial admissions exam.

2019-10-24T23:23:03+00:00

Thousands of students are expected to take the high-stakes and controversial specialized high schools admissions exam, or the SHSAT, this weekend.

The test — administered at eight locations across the city on Saturday, Oct. 26, and Sunday, Oct. 27 — is the sole criteria for admission to Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and five other specialized schools. Many families see the test not only as a ticket to a first-rate high school education, but often pin their hopes that it will lead their children to a top-tier college.

The fact that so few black and Hispanic students get into New York’s test-in high schools has fueled an explosive debate over whether a single test should determine admission, and whether access to pricey test prep is what gives some students a leg up.

More than 27,500 students took the SHSAT last year. Of those, 18% where white,and 30% were Asian. Yet Asian test-takers earned just over half of all offers to the specialized schools and white students received 29% of the offers. While 24% of test-takers were Hispanic and 20% were black, those students together earned just over 10% of admissions offers. The racial disparities are glaring given that black and Hispanic students account for two-thirds of students citywide.

Any admissions changes to Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech would have to be approved by the state legislature. Mayor Bill de Blasio last summer proposed scrapping the test and admitting the top 7% of students at each city middle school, which studies have found would immediately diversify the schools. Critics of his idea say the test is unbiased, and that this plan would work against white and Asian families. They also contend that it would water down the academic rigor of the schools — a critique that integration advocates have described as a racist assumption about the academic capacity of black and Hispanic students.

This year pro-SHSAT groups, one backed by wealthy New York City businessmen, lobbied successfully in Albany to keep the law intact and the test in place. And lawmakers appeared unwilling to touch the issue beyond hosting forums and hearings.

Here are three things to keep in mind this year about the test and admission to the city’s specialized high schools:

The test remains unchanged this year, but the fight isn’t over.

After the mayor’s plan fell flat in Albany, he acknowledged that he might need to embrace a new strategy for diversifying the schools — but still thinks that scrapping the test is the best approach. It’s still not clear how the city will move forward, but some state lawmakers have their own ideas. Brooklyn Assemblyman Charles Barron, who sponsored the bill that would have carried out de Blasio’s plan, has said he and a group of other lawmakers will try to repeal Hecht-Calandra, the law that mandates the admissions test. Doing so would take the state out of making any decisions about how students get into the specialized high schools.

It’s not likely that such a plan would gain substantially more support than de Blasio’s approach, but it could do better among upstate lawmakers who don’t want to have a say over a city issue.

At the same time, the Education Equity Campaign — a group backed by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder, a Bronx Science alum, and former Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons — is determined to keep the SHSAT and plans to head back to Albany this year to lobby for the cause. They also plan to support a bill that would, among its proposals, create more specialized high schools and expand subsidized test prep — measures they believe are key to increasing black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, even though existing public test prep in New York City has not achieved that goal.

This year, the city is setting aside 20% of seats for students from low-income families in high-poverty schools who score below the cutoff and agree to attend a summer program before school starts.

This is part of the city’s Discovery program, which officials have been expanding in recent years as one way to diversify the schools. Despite changes to the program, most of those offers still went to Asian students, city data showed.

The number of offers to black and Hispanic students only modestly increased over the years. The city changed the eligibility requirements this year to include just low-income students from high-poverty schools.

This year, 30% of the Discovery offers went to black and Hispanic students, up from 22.4% in 2018. Asian students earned 54% of offers, up 11 percentage points from the year before, and almost 15% of offers went to white students — down about a dozen percentage points from 2018.

Parents and community organizations have sued the city over its Discovery expansion plan and eligibility tweaks, charging that it discriminates against Asian students. The lawsuit is ongoing.

Signing up for the test proved problematic this year.

Many families said that MySchools, the city’s online portal, where test sign-ups take place, was frustrating and confusing.

This was the second year families were expected to use the portal, rather than relying on school counselors to register for the test.

Parents reported that their registration confirmation seemed to disappear from the system after the deadline passed for signing up. (The education department acknowledged the concern and pledged to change the system.)

Unlike last year, parents were not able to pick the time or day that they wanted their child to take the SHSAT. The education department said officials last year piloted giving families the option to request a day and location to take the test. But they found families didn’t necessarily get what they wanted, and got feedback that the change was creating conflicts between registering for the test and auditions at LaGuardia, so the department switched back to the old system.

The change confused Jeanne Solomon, the mother of a ninth-grader at NEST+m on the Lower East Side, who again signed her son up for the SHSAT this year. Last year she got the day and time she wanted and was expecting the same this year, but was surprised to see her son automatically signed up for a non-ideal 8 a.m. exam on Sunday. It followed what she described as a glitchy process through MySchools that included her receiving six back-to-back receipts for registering for the test. Her son has decided not to take the exam because he wants to remain at NEST+m, she said.

“Last year was a significantly better experience and this year has been challenging,” Solomon said. “I’m worried about what the current eighth-grade parents are dealing with.”

It’s also now up to families to print out a ticket that allows students entry to take the test, potentially raising issues for those who lack access to a computer, the internet, or a printer. But the education department said students can also ask their schools for a ticket.

Parents were surprised to find an admissions change on Anderson School’s website. But officials say it was an ‘error’

2019-10-23T21:36:23+00:00

New York City parents hoping to secure a seat for their child in an elite gifted school were greeted by a big change in admissions policies when they checked the school’s website on Tuesday. But by Wednesday any mention of the changes had disappeared.

The Anderson School, which runs from kindergarten to eighth grade, recently updated its admissions page with a note that said the Upper West Side campus would reserve 30% of kindergarten seats for students who live “in northern districts of Manhattan.”

Anderson is one of five citywide gifted and talented schools, meaning it is open to students from across the city who scored at least in the 97th percentile on the exam used for admission to gifted programs. Since the programs are so coveted, typically only students with near-perfect scores are admitted.

Parents must sign their children for the test by Nov. 12, and the test is administered in January to children in pre-K through first grade.
On Tuesday evening, parents took to online message boards to ask questions about how the policy would work and which districts might be considered northern Manhattan. But by Wednesday afternoon, after Chalkbeat reached out to the school, any mention of reserved seats had been scrubbed from Anderson’s site.

“This was posted in error,” education department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon wrote in an email. She didn’t respond to a question about whether the school plans to change its admissions policies going forward.

Gifted programs in New York City — and across the country — are starkly segregated. At Anderson, for example, 12% of the student body is black and Hispanic, even though those students make up almost 70% of enrollment citywide.

Two other citywide gifted schools have changed their admissions to give priority to certain students in an attempt to create or preserve student diversity. TAG Young Scholars in East Harlem and Brooklyn School of Inquiry in Gravesend, both citywide gifted schools, give students from low-income families preference for 40 percent of kindergarten seats.

It’s unclear whether a geographic priority would help integrate Anderson in a meaningful way. North of Anderson are districts 5 and 6, which span Harlem and Washington Heights. In those districts, 80% or more of students are black or Hispanic, and come from low-income families.

Still, Michael McCurdy, the CEO of a test prep company called TestingMom.com, pointed to gentrification in neighborhoods like Harlem, to note that students who live north of Anderson may not be low-income or of color.

He said the education department should consider more targeted approaches to make sure gifted classes are serving diverse students, such as adding more programs in underserved areas and better communication about what’s already available.

“This is by far one of the most popular programs that the DOE offers and they should want to expand in these upper districts of Manhattan,” he wrote in an email.

That is a common argument for supporters of gifted programs that require 4-year-olds to take an entrance exam. But a city advisory panel recently recommended eliminating these test-in programs and replacing them with school-wide models that are more inclusive.

NYC delays controversial rezoning of 7 Brooklyn elementary schools

2019-10-23T15:54:35+00:00

The education department is hitting pause on a plan to redraw attendance zones around seven Brooklyn elementary schools, heeding concerns that parents in mostly low-income neighborhoods hadn’t been properly engaged in the process.

With the construction of a 400-seat annex at Carroll Garden’s P.S. 32, education department officials saw an opportunity to shift school boundaries in the northern part of District 15 as a way to relieve overcrowding at some schools, and also encourage integration in a deeply divided corner of the city that includes Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Red Hook and Gowanus.

Now, the department will delay any changes until the 2021-22 school year. A vote by the local Community Education Council, a parent body that approves zone line changes, has been pushed back to this spring.

“We have held numerous community meetings across the district where parents, students, CEC members, and other community members shared their ideas but also their desire for more time,” Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark said in an emailed statement. “In response, we’re extending the timeline to ensure we hear all voices and allow for an even deeper engagement process.”

The department hosted about a dozen meetings throughout the district, including targeted outreach in Red Hook and public housing in Gowanus, where many of the district’s students of color live. But activists there said it wasn’t enough to reach parents and asked for a more inclusive process. The meetings overwhelmingly attracted families from more affluent parts of the district. Many of of these parents expressed fear that their children would no longer have access to some of the area’s most coveted schools, such as P.S. 58 and P.S. 29.

In response to concerns from Gowanus and Red Hook families, officials will launch an engagement process called Participatory Action Research, or PAR, to hear from families. PAR relies on smaller format discussions, like canvassing and one-on-one conversations led by people living in the community.

“This definitely is a small victory,” said Edwin Pacheco, an activist in Red Hook. “But there’s still this feeling of, let’s make sure we continue to engage the DOE and hold them accountable, that they’re going to be faithful to their word.”

The addition at P.S. 32 will open as planned next school year, giving the school more room for pre-K and kindergarten enrollment, a department official said.

NYC families frustrated (again) with online portal for applying to middle, high schools

2019-10-21T15:42:01+00:00

As middle and high school application season kicks into high gear, parents say the city’s online application portal remains confusing and error-prone — only adding to the stress of what’s already a challenging process for many.

Officials from the education department, however, claim the system has gotten good reviews.

A year after a glitch-filled rollout of the MySchools portal, parents said they’ve found missing or inaccurate information in their children’s official student profiles, which include test scores and attendance data. Those registering for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test — or SHSAT — complained it’s unclear in the system whether they actually registered their child for the high-stakes exam, which is administered Oct. 26 and 27 for most students.

“For parents who are already on the edge of their seats, this is another fail,” said Elissa Stein, the founder of High School 411, a service to help parents navigate the application process. “People are panicking.”

Stein estimated roughly two dozen families reached out with concerns about the system.

Education department officials, on the other hand,“have not received any significant amount of concerns about application profile information,” said spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon.

“Families now have a one-stop shop to learn about school options and apply from any computer or mobile device,” O’Hanlon said. “We’ve heard positive feedback from families about applying online.”

In New York City, students must apply to middle and high schools. Applications this year are due by Dec. 2. (Parents must also apply to pre-K and kindergarten through MySchools, but those applications don’t open until February 2020 and early December, respectively.) When MySchools debuted last year, moving the notoriously complicated middle and high school application process mostly online, a spokesperson at the time promised the portal would make it “easier and simpler.”

When the system rolled-out, families and educators complained the department provided little information about how to find information in the portal, that it ran slowly, and that student information was missing or inaccurate.

Stein said the portal remains confusing to navigate, and finding information about individual schools’ admissions criteria requires clicking through several pages.

“In this movement to democratize the process, it’s actually become much harder to find information,” she said. “It’s complicated and clunky.”

This year, parents have also complained that the process for signing up for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test was confusing. The specialized high schools are some of the most coveted in the city, and the only way to be admitted is by earning a top-score on the exam. (The lone performing arts specialized high school, LaGuardia, admits students based on auditions.)

Registration information for the test, which had appeared in families’ personal profiles on the portal, disappeared after the registration deadline passed on Oct. 10, causing concern among parents who were confused as to whether they applied correctly. Under a tab that showed a personalized calendar, the portal showed a message that said “no assessments scheduled.”

According to O’Hanlon, that tab intended to show whether families had signed up for tests or auditions other than the specialized high schools, but she added, “We understand the concern, and we’ll remove this box during our next site update [this] week.”

Also, there should no longer be any blank or incomplete student profiles, and the department will continue to monitor this daily, O’Hanlon said.

Many integration advocates say the city’s labor-intensive process for applying to schools drives New York City’s status as one of the most segregated education systems in the country, in part by disadvantaging poor families who might not have time to navigate the system or money to pay for consultants’ advice.

The complications with MySchools only add to disparities by rewarding parents who know to check for errors and advocate to get them fixed, said Mahalia Watson, founder of the website Let’s Talk Schools, an online guide for parents navigating their options.

“What I’m worrying about is for parents who are not as diligent,” she said. “They don’t necessarily have the time or the access.”

When it comes to using the online portal, Watson added, “You just kind of have to wait and see, and pray that they get it right.”

Wealthy group of SHSAT backers are ready for round two in Albany

2019-10-17T23:10:10+00:00

The Education Equity Campaign, a well-funded group determined to keep in place the specialized high schools admissions exam, is again taking its fight to Albany — throwing support behind a bill that calls for creating 10 new specialized high schools and expanding subsidized test preparation programs.

New York City’s elite specialized high schools are under pressure to diversify their largely white and Asian student bodies. Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed scrapping the controversial SHSAT entrance exam, in favor of admitting the top 7% of students at all middle schools, but he recently signaled the need for a new strategy.

During a Thursday press conference in front of Stuyvesant High School, in Lower Manhattan, Education Equity backers said they would support diversity instead by continuing to push for more publicly funded test prep opportunities and for the expansion of gifted and talented programs in city elementary schools, even as a diversity task force is recommending those programs be phased out altogether.

“The last thing we need to be doing right now is reducing the standards of excellence that we demand at our schools,” said Richard Parsons, former chairman of Citigroup and Time Warner, and one of the key funders behind Education Equity’s multimillion-dollar campaign to retain the test.

The group’s public display of support for the SHSAT comes just weeks after de Blasio said the city should rethink its proposal to eliminate the exam, after it failed again in Albany. Next legislative session, New Yorkers could see a bill that would repeal the law that created the admissions exam, which would remove the state from making any decisions about how students get into these schools.

For its part, Education Equity will support a bill from state Sen. Leroy Comrie that would call for several things: Create 10 new specialized high schools; start a commission to recommend improvements to middle schools; expand public test preparation for every sixth and seventh grader, and make it standard for every eighth grader to take the test (with the choice to opt out); and open more gifted and talented programs. Comrie said the city “cannot dumb down” the system with its plan.

It’s not clear how any of these programs the bill proposes would be funded, though Comrie’s legislation says it would have no fiscal impact on the state.

Civil rights activist Rev. Kirsten Foy, one of the group’s backers, said the city “can find the money” in its $93 billion budget, but no one specified which current programs could be on the chopping block as a result. The education department’s annual budget is roughly $30 billion.

It’s also unclear whether Comrie’s proposals would succeed in diversifying the specialized high schools. For example, the city has slowly expanded free test preparation, reaching about 4,000 eighth graders this year, and says it reached out last year to 20,000 families in districts whose students are underrepresented at the specialized high schools. But those schools remain starkly segregated.

Critics of the SHSAT say the test bears some responsibility. The exam has been under severe scrutiny by those who say it’s a barrier for admissions that requires costly test preparation and keeps black and Hispanic children from earning their fair share of offers to these schools. This year black and Hispanic students received 10% of offers to the schools even though together they make up about 70% of students citywide. In contrast, 51% of offers went to Asian students and 29% went to white students, even though together they make up 31% of students citywide.

Asian and white families have argued that they, too, face financial challenges, and establishing the mayor’s plan would unfairly elbow them out of admissions.

Rather than change admissions requirements, “we’re trying to create a system that finds and locates talent where it exists, and talent exists across all communities — locates talent, nurtures talent, prepares talent, and then graduates talent,” Parsons said.

Since its inception in April, Education Equity has faced criticism as having an agenda that will work against black and Hispanic families because of its support of the test, and the group faced pushback for suggesting the city’s plan would water down the academic caliber at those schools. Parsons said that critique is “exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do,” and later said the city’s plan felt like an “insulting” implicit assumption that students of color couldn’t do well on the exam.

The city shot back on Thursday. In a statement, City Hall spokeswoman Jane Meyer said, “our students deserve better than billionaires standing in the way of change.”

“A single test on a single day shouldn’t determine any child’s future, and adding more test prep isn’t the solution,” Meyer said. “We’ll continue to meet with communities across the City to chart the best path forward.”

Education Equity is notable for its mix of supporters and deep pockets. Parsons and Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire and a graduate of Bronx Science, have pumped “seven figures” into the group, said Foy, who declined to specify a number. A spokesman later said Education Equity has spent between $2 million and $2.5 million to date on expenses, such as advertisements, its test prep program, and lobbying efforts. And some of those efforts seem to have worked — with the bill to eliminate the test sparking a public hearing, several forums, and internal debate among state lawmakers, but ultimately failing.

Fort Greene’s sought-after Arts & Letters might move to Bed-Stuy in a merger with P.S. 305

2019-10-15T18:12:20+00:00

The Academy of Arts & Letters, a highly sought-after progressive elementary and middle school on the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill border, might have a new home next year in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The education department is eyeing a possible merger with the underenrolled P.S. 305 as a way to solve two issues: Arts & Letters needs more space, and the school, as well as its Brooklyn district, is working to integrate students from diverse social and economic backgrounds.

Arts & Letters, a lottery-based school that attracts students from across District 13 — which also includes Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo, Prospect Heights and part of Park Slope — has been sharing space with the neighborhood school P.S. 20. But both schools are bursting at the seams, each operating at more than 130% capacity, according to Department of Education data.

P.S. 305, on the other hand, has room to spare. The school, whose students overwhelmingly come from low-income families unlike Arts & Letters, is operating at only 36% capacity.

A working group of parents, teachers, and administrators from the three Brooklyn schools have begun to sketch out possible proposals for the 2020-21 school year, and education department officials are in the process of scheduling community meetings to hear feedback.

But merging schools with distinct philosophies and student demographics can be challenging and often requires difficult conversations. For example, a preliminary plan to merge two schools in the East Village with similar profiles — the popular, progressive East Village Community School and the struggling P.S./M.S. 34 — was recently tabled after parents from P.S. 34 spoke out against the move, feeling their identity was going to be lost in the move.

The working group in Brooklyn recognizes there’s a lot of work to be done.

“There are lots of questions that still need to be asked and answered,” the working group wrote in a recent letter. “Many of the questions are common across all three of our schools like ‘What will happen next?’ ‘When will I get a chance to voice my thoughts?’ ‘How will my school community change?’ and ‘Will the schools be funded so as to thrive with this move and merger?’”

The letter was first posted on the NYC School Help blog, run by Brooklyn schools admissions consultant Joyce Szuflita.

When Arts & Letters moved into P.S. 20’s home of nearly 70 years, the neighborhood school had a dwindling student population. But P.S. 20, which has a popular French dual language program, has in recent years attracted more students, especially as the surrounding Fort Greene and Clinton Hill blocks have gentrified.

Meanwhile, Arts & Letters’ progressive bent — it has a strong emphasis on hands-on learning and student-led projects are emphasized over test prep — has attracted a strong following the past several years across the district, especially among affluent families moving in.

As its student body changed, the school’s community wanted to prevent its demographics from tipping too affluent or too white and ensure that children come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. It was among the first schools in the city a few years ago to pilot a diversity-based admissions policy, reserving a portion of its seats for students from low-income families.

Currently, roughly one in five students at the school qualify for free or reduced lunch. More than 70% of its students passed state math exams.

That’s in stark contrast to P.S. 305, where 94% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch. P.S. 305 has seen declining enrollment as charter schools in the area have gained ground. Fewer than 20% of its students passed math exams.

The Arts & Letters/P.S. 305 merger was the best of three possible options, according to the letter. The other options included co-locating Arts & Letters in P.S. 305’s building or splitting Arts & Letters up, so that the lower grades would remain in P.S. 20’s building at 225 Adelphi St., while the upper grades would move to P.S. 305 at 344 Monroe St.

“We believe this plan would help grow enrollment, strengthen programmatic offerings, expand resources, and promote diversity and integration,” the working group wrote, noting there were also questions about how a merger would affect the schools’ teachers and principals.

“As the possible merger proceeds through the DOE process, there will be moments for us to come together to talk about it and for opportunities and concerns to be expressed,” the letter stated.

Additionally, P.S. 305 has room for 385 students, according to education department data, while Arts & Letters currently enrolls more than 500 students. But education officials told Chalkbeat that P.S. 305’s building would have capacity to accommodate a merger.

Schools consultant Szuflita thought the merger could benefit all parties.

“A merge helps A&L find a new permanent home and it helps bring thoughtful attention and popular muscle to 305, a local school that is drastically under-enrolled,” she wrote. “It also helps P.S. 20 where A&L was formerly co-located. They now have room to come into their own.”

In a district fighting for integration, a plan to merge two East Village schools falls apart

2019-10-10T21:32:44+00:00

An idea to merge two elementary schools in Manhattan’s East Village seemed to make perfect sense for a district that’s been home to a grassroots push for more diverse schools.

District 1’s East Village Community School is overcrowded, and full of mostly white and middle-class students. A block away, P.S. 34, which runs through middle school, has room to spare, and enrolls almost exclusively black and Hispanic students who live in the surrounding public housing.

But a preliminary proposal to combine the two campuses was tabled last week, after meeting stiff resistance from families at P.S. 34, who said a merger was tantamount to closing their school.

“Why do you want to come take this?” asked Shamear Gainey, whose daughters attend P.S. 34, about the initial proposal. “Go somewhere else.”

The pushback is another reminder of how difficult it can be to integrate New York City schools, which are among the most segregated in the country, and the toll that such efforts often take on communities of color.

It is notable for another reason: The education department — which has been persistently criticized for ignoring the voices of parents — heeded the concerns of families early in the process by pulling the proposal before it even formally came before the community rather than plowing ahead.

“We wanted to make sure that, whatever the idea was, that we did it with the community, not to the community,” said Carry Chan, superintendent of District 1, which also includes the Lower East Side and part of Chinatown.

Education department officials in recent years have relied on school consolidations, rather than closures, to address enrollment issues across the city. For school communities, however, it can feel like a distinction without a difference, especially when schools have their own long-standing approaches to teaching and learning that can be hard to blend into one.

At progressive East Village Community, parents are welcomed for guitar sing-alongs, and play is a central part of learning. At P.S. 34, the school’s website describes a focus on building perseverance through difficulties, and college and career readiness.

If the city moved forward with combining the two, parents at P.S. 34 worried about losing their school name, their culture, and even their middle school — which parents had previously fought to get.

Parents said P.S. 34 needed more resources to serve its own students well, not to be subsumed to make room for a better-resourced school.

Bounded by public housing and industrial buildings, P.S. 34 has the highest poverty rate of any school in the district: 99% of students come from low-income families. Just over a quarter of students passed their state English exams last year, and only 15 percent scored on grade-level for math.

Though white, middle-class families have largely steered clear of P.S. 34, they have flocked to East Village Community. Its building, shared with two other schools, is over 130% capacity. More than 57% of students there are white, versus the district average of 18%. Students there outperform the district average on both English and math exams.

In 2017, District 1 took steps to break up these extreme concentrations of students, winning approval for the city’s first districtwide integration plan that gives admissions priority to certain students. Unlike most other parts of the city, District 1 parents apply to elementary schools through lottery-based admissions. But even with the admissions priority, unless application patterns change dramatically, neither will student demographics. That’s a tall order when, research shows, parents consider test scores and racial composition of a school when weighing their options.

With the merger off the table, the original challenges still remain: East Village Community needs more space, and the district still wants to integrate its schools.

“Our reality of being cramped in an overcrowded building has not changed, but a new light has been shined on the inequity and segregation that exists in our small district,” East Village Community’s principal Bradley Goodman wrote in an email to his school’s parents. “I hope that we will continue to engage in this critical, albeit sometimes difficult and uncomfortable conversation.”

Patricia Marrero, who has two sons at P.S. 34, said integration is a worthy goal. But making that a reality will first require trust built across communities that have rarely had a reason or chance to interact, she said.

Efforts to change that are already starting in small ways: Marrero said East Village Community parents have invited the P.S. 34 community to come to their Halloween party.

“Communities need to be brought together,” Marrero said. “This is a start.”

I never talked about race in my seven years in the classroom. Now I work to make sure future teachers do.

2019-10-02T20:25:06+00:00

When I was young, my father used to call me Mrs. Malaprop, a reference to a character in an 18th century play famous for using words incorrectly. This was a reminder of how often I spoke when I didn’t know.

I remember the interruptions to my stories. “Susan, don’t speak when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But I do know,” I would insist.

“OK, then, what does it mean?” he demanded.

“I can’t explain it, but I know it,” I reassured him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Malaprop,” he would say, before ending my story midstream.

Thirty years later, as a teacher and teacher-educator, this lesson is one I still try — and often fail — to live by.

In my seven years of teaching, I prioritized understanding my students and their cultures. But it was only later, when I joined an organization deeply committed to culturally responsive pedagogy, that I truly began to unpack what that meant. I’m a white woman who grew up in a wealthy community, and I now train future teachers who will mostly serve low-income students of color. I do what I do because I never want another educator to come to recognize race and racism in the way that I did.

Even once I had become what many would consider a “good teacher,” I misunderstood what culturally responsive teaching meant. I taught lessons about the Civil Rights Movement, used familiar names in math problems, and allowed students to tell their own stories through personal narrative writing. I looked around my classroom — filled with student talk, learning centers, and differentiated instruction — and proudly thought, At least I can give these kids one good year.

But I taught about the 1960s and the power of protests without exploring issues of race and identity. I taught a unit on genetics and never looked at the myth of race being genetic. I read aloud to my students but never read a book set in the Bronx.

I remember one day when 10-year-old Josh referred to Ariana as “that white girl.” Ariana was offended; she did not think of herself as white and called herself Hispanic. There were so many directions I could have taken at that moment, but I chose the one that did nothing to further my students’ racial education. I simply said, “You’ve known her for months; it’s unacceptable not to call her by name.”

I was woefully unprepared when it came to cultural competency, but that changed when I began working with colleagues, in particular, people of color, at the East Harlem Tutorial Program and the Hunter College School of Education.

At EHTP, I learned how little I knew about racism’s effects on our country’s history and on my students’ lives. With the help of trainings, mentors, and interactions with students, families, and community members, I learned what makes a truly culturally responsive education: teaching children to celebrate their identities, recognizing how those identities affect their experiences, and navigating and transforming alienating spaces without compromising students’ well-being.

My colleagues and I wanted to create a new kind of training space, one that would put cultural responsiveness front and center. We called it the East Harlem Teaching Residency.

In our program, we teach residents the harm in correcting a student’s syntax by saying, “That’s not how we speak.” We help them consider our students’ values and experiences when they set expectations, create power structures, define right and wrong, and determine academic success. We immerse them in the East Harlem community, celebrating its history and addressing misperceptions about the neighborhood. And we recruit residents with backgrounds that resemble our students’, emphasizing the value of their presence in our classrooms.

This work is rarely easy and often emotional, and it requires constant reflection.

Inevitably, at the beginning of the year, we have at least one resident who resists racialization. A resident once identified her race as “human,” while another told us, “I don’t like the concept of race.” Therefore, we spend the first few weeks of the residency unpacking our identities and considering how people are perceived and categorized.

Sometimes, residents experience marginalization from their colleagues or students. Last year, a student of Dominican descent told a Haitian teaching resident that a wall should be built between their countries and that there was something wrong with her people. The resident had to take a breath, lean on colleagues for support, and face the student with understanding to elicit his ideas about race and racism and help him recognize the harm he had caused.

When that same resident was constantly corrected and spoken over by a colleague in the classroom, our team watched a video of the two teaching together and discussed the dynamics of power and privilege. Once the problem was identified, the participants had a restorative conversation and designed a more effective co-teaching structure that positioned the resident as a celebrated leader in the classroom, undoing the damaging message that had been sent to her students.

Often, I return to that conversation with Josh and Ariana — my fifth-grade students — with my residents. I cannot undo the damage I caused in moments like that, and so I work every day to develop teachers who will be better equipped to help students unpack race and identity. I approach this work with humility, with a commitment to learning from mentors, colleagues, residents, and students, and by honoring my father’s insistence that I constantly reexamine what I think I know.

Susan Gonzowitz is the founding managing director of the East Harlem Teaching Residency and an adjunct lecturer at the Hunter College School of Education. She was previously an instructional coach and elementary school teacher in New York City.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

The sponsor of de Blasio’s controversial SHSAT bill is backing a new strategy

2019-10-01T21:50:34+00:00

The state lawmaker who sponsored the bill backing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s controversial specialized high school plan is changing his strategy for diversifying the elite schools.

Assemblyman Charles Barron, whose bill failed in Albany last session, told Chalkbeat he and other lawmakers will abandon their push to amend the section of education law requiring the Specialized High School Admissions Test and will try instead to repeal it — taking the state out of the city’s school admissions rules altogether.

Barron’s acknowledgment that he won’t resubmit the controversial bill is another blow to the mayor’s plan, which de Blasio has signaled may need to be abandoned for another strategy for integrating the schools. On “Inside City Hall” Monday, de Blasio said of the SHSAT bill, “we didn’t succeed this time, and we’ve got to think of different approaches.”

While there is no bill yet, Barron said he and other politicians have spent the summer working on this new plan, even before de Blasio’s recent comments. Still, Barron said New Yorkers should expect legislation next session that would call to repeal the Hecht-Calandra law of 1971, which requires students to take an admission exam to get into the three most populous specialized high schools: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.

“Then the state is out of determining local school policy for New York City, and then it’s on the mayor and chancellor to determine the policy — then you’ll see where (the mayor) really is,” Barron said in an interview Tuesday. “To me, that is the better strategy.”

It’s unlikely Barron’s proposal will win over many opponents of the previous legislation, but it could gain more support among upstate lawmakers who don’t have a New York City constituency.

City Hall did not respond to a request for comment.

Barron declined to name the other politicians supporting the plan or potential sponsors of the future bill, emphasizing that the discussion is still in its “embryonic stages.” But he and others are planning to present this option to fellow lawmakers later this fall.

“To me it doesn’t matter who the sponsor is,” Barron said. “To me it’s like, we gotta get this done.”

After years of concern over how few black and Hispanic students were offered admission to these high schools, including who could afford pricey test prep, the mayor proposed an alternative plan in 2018: Get rid of the admissions exam and admit the top 7% of students from each middle school. Brooklyn Democrat Barron proposed a bill that would change Hecht-Calandra and institute the mayor’s plan.

But the effort immediately hit a deluge of opposition, particularly from some white and Asian lawmakers and families, whose children have earned a disproportionate amount of offers to these schools for years and have argued that the mayor’s plan would unfairly elbow them out. This year, 51% of offers went to Asian students and 29% went to white students, even though together they make up 31% of students citywide. In contrast, a little more than 10% of offers went to black and Hispanic students, who make up just under 70% of city students.

The bill advanced further in the legislature this year than it did in 2018, largely fueled by renewed outrage over admissions numbers – just seven of 895 offers to Stuyvesant went to black students, for example. A formal public hearing was held over the bill, and the issue was the subject of multiple town halls hosted by Queens Sen. John Liu, chair of the Senate’s New York City education committee. Barron’s bill made it out of the education committee and was even conferenced among Assembly Democrats – meaning, they debated its merits behind closed doors.

But the bill failed to make it to the Assembly floor and had little chance of going anywhere in the Senate.

So Barron said he turned to comments that lawmakers and the public made during the Democratic conference and during the public hearing in New York City.

“A lot of people said, ‘The state should get out of it,’” Barron said. “We said, ‘Hey let’s take that route.’”

My son didn’t get into any of the schools he wanted. My disappointment made me realize I’d been hoarding opportunity.

2019-09-30T19:06:36+00:00

When my younger son applied for middle school this spring, we knew things would be different from when his older brother went through the admissions process. Our Brooklyn school district, District 15, had just done away selective middle school admissions as part of a diversity plan, and our son was part of the first cohort to be assigned to a middle school via lottery.

We did our due diligence and visited many schools and put eight schools on our list, confident he would surely get into one of them. Yet when acceptance emails went out, we were shocked and outraged that he was placed at a school that was not on our list at all.

The news launched our family on an emotional journey, one that made me realize that I, personally, had a lot of uncomfortable growth to do.

I was completely resistant when I researched my son’s assigned school and found it had “bad test scores.” As all parents do, I want my child to receive the best education possible, and I thought “bad test scores” could not be a part of that. But as a progressive activist, I had supported the diversity plan 100%. And I knew that “bad test scores” reflect an education system fraught with institutional racism, segregation, and glaring disparities in allocation of resources.

I struggled for a long time to reconcile these two feelings. How could I learn to trust that what is best for my child can and should be what is best for all of our children?

One thing that helped was a recent essay by my city councilman, Brad Lander, one of the biggest proponents of the diversity plan. “We will never integrate without protest. As Frederick Douglass knew, power concedes nothing without a demand,” he wrote on BuzzFeed earlier this month. “We’ve grown far too comfortable with segregated schools that announce themselves as a meritocracy but function as a system for hoarding white privilege.”

I needed this demand. I have been hoarding white privilege while hiding behind my activism as if working to make the world a better place exempts me from doing the hard work of examining how the color of my skin and my children’s skin gives us an automatic leg up in our society. I was certainly too comfortable with — and have always completely benefited from — our quasi-segregated school system.

I went to “good” schools with sufficient supplies and strong academic and arts programming when I was a public school student in Queens. I was in the gifted and talented class in elementary school, all of the honors classes in junior high, and got into one of the “best” high schools in Queens even though I wasn’t zoned for it. While there were always people of color in my classes, they were fewer than the fingers on my hand.

When we went through the middle school process with my older son, back when it was based on grades, test scores, and interviews, it never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t get into one of the top schools on our list. And why wouldn’t he? He went to a great public elementary school, spending many of those years in its (now defunct) gifted and talented program. The statistics were also on his side: According to the School Diversity Advisory Group’s report, white students were more likely to be in G&T programs and meet attendance criteria for the admissions process than black or Latino children.

When it came time to apply to high school, he had his heart set on one of the specialized high schools, but his practice scores were not in range for admission. We spent hundreds of dollars on test prep, and he got in. The numbers were on his side there, too — only 10 percent of enrollment at specialized high schools are students of color — and he had every advantage. He is bright and deserving, but so are so many, many other children who didn’t share his many advantages

All of the ways we measure our children’s success — grades, test scores, attendance—are immeasurably impacted by things outside of their control, particularly the institutional, structural, and day-to day-racism children of color face. Just like the phrase, “money begets money,” access begets access. Success begets success. Meritocracy is never just based on a person’s ability; its underbelly is all the ways those abilities have been supported (or not supported) up until that point. When we strip access, previous success, and, yes, money, out of the admission process, we move away from this false meritocracy and toward actual equity.

It took a wrenching disappointment for me to truly become aware of my family’s privilege and for me to become comfortable with letting go of all of the ways the deck was stacked in our favor. And I was primed to believe those things! So I know it will take some doing for other white parents to make the same journey.

But we need to go there. All children deserve an excellent education, and we have to fight the rigged system and our own rigged assumptions to give it to them. I’m grateful to all of the education advocates for this push in the moral direction for all of us who initially resisted it, and that District 15’s middle school diversity plan is just one of many steps being taken to desegregate our schools.

It’s early days yet, but so far my sixth-grader is extremely happy as a middle schooler in his not-on-his-list new school. He is engaged, excited, and, because so many white families chose the private or charter school route instead of taking a chance on his school, he is in a homeroom class of only 13 kids.

I can’t wait for him to continue in this new phase of his life in a system that is, at least, slightly more fair than it was before. My advice to New York City parents: Let’s keep pushing and letting ourselves be pushed where we need to go.

Lisa Raymond-Tolan is an activist and co-president of Indivisible Nation BK and a pediatric occupational therapist for students in Brooklyn. She is a native of Queens and a proud public school parent of two boys.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Two coveted Manhattan high schools, Lab and Baruch, tweak their admissions

2019-09-27T23:25:55+00:00

Baruch College Campus and Lab High School for Collaborative Studies in Manhattan’s District 2 are changing their admissions policies, in a move that might lead to slightly more academic diversity within the coveted campuses.

Students who meet the schools’ cutoffs for admission — fewer than 10 absences or tardies, grade averages of 85 or higher, and state test scores of at least a 3 — will enter into a lottery. Previously, Lab and Baruch had ranked individual students based on their prior academic performance.

Since both schools receive far more applications than the number of seats that open up, administrators had their pick of students, and often, only those with the uppermost test scores and grades got in. Now, students with a solid B average will have a better shot at admission.

The education department did not respond to a question about when the change was made or how it was announced. The new admissions system affects this year’s eighth-graders who are applying to high schools for next school year, according to the schools’ websites.

The changes have been met with mixed reactions.

Maud Maron, president of the Community Education Council in District 2, where the schools are located, called it “deeply unfair” to switch up admissions standards when students and parents are already in the thick of navigating the high school application process.

The changes also open familiar concerns over who should have access to the city’s most coveted public schools, with many believing that high-achievers are best served when most students are like them.

“I’ve heard parents say, ‘So it doesn’t matter what your grades are anymore. You don’t have to work hard,’” Maron said. “This is devaluing academics.”

Parents who are supportive of the changes said the previous system made distinctions among students that might not actually mean much in terms of their academic potential, and also encouraged a hyper-competitive environment in middle schools.

“I’m certainly not convinced that a kid with an 87 is in any way different than a student with a 93. I don’t know if the student pushed themselves to take a challenging class, or what it says about that student’s potential to grow and learn,” said Eric Goldberg, also a member of the local education council. “So I’m encouraged that the school leadership is recognizing that these are small distinctions, and that creating an academic environment where students are competing for every point is not a healthy way to educate their students.”

Academic segregation is rampant in New York City, where many high schools are allowed to select, or screen, students. A Chalkbeat analysis has previously found that most students who passed their state exams are clustered in just a few campuses. On the flip side, the system also concentrates those who have fallen behind, often making it harder for educators to meet the needs of so many students who may need extra support in the classroom.

The admissions changes at Lab and Brauch are unlikely to go very far in breaking up those patterns. Students who meet the schools’ test score threshold for admissions, a level 3, are considered to be learning on-grade level. And both schools will continue to give priority to students within the district, a point of contention for parents who live just outside the zone, and also for those who believe the preference helps drive segregation. District 2 — encompassing the Upper East Side, SoHo, and TriBeCa — is one of the whitest and wealthiest in the city.

An education department spokeswoman, Miranda Barbot, noted that “schools set their admissions criteria in consultation with members of their school community.”

“We support Lab and Baruch in their efforts to simplify admissions processes and create diverse, inclusive learning communities,” she wrote in an email.

City unveils map of proposed school zones in Brooklyn’s District 15, hints that a decision could be delayed

2019-09-25T04:12:37+00:00

The education department on Tuesday unveiled a proposal for redrawing elementary school zone lines to relieve overcrowding and encourage integration in Brooklyn’s District 15.

Along with a map of the potential changes, though, came suggestions that a decision could be delayed so that a more diverse group of families could weigh in on how to redraw attendance boundaries for seven area schools.

“We have certainly been making efforts to reach out to people but I don’t think that anybody in this room would say this room fully represents what District 15 has to offer,” Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark said, noting that the original timeline for moving forward in the 2020-21 school year could change.

District 15 includes the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Red Hook. There are two scenarios on the table that would affect schools across this uniquely diverse corner of Brooklyn.

I’m at a meeting where DOE is presenting it’s rezoning plans for District 15 elementary schools and WE’VE GOT A MAP of the potential zone pic.twitter.com/X2mRVlXKZU
— Christina Veiga (@cveiga) September 24, 2019

The first proposal would redraw zone lines, shrinking the boundaries at some sought-after schools, such as P.S. 29 and P.S. 58. Some students currently expected to attend P.S. 58 would instead be zoned for P.S. 15 in Red Hook or P.S. 32 in Carroll Gardens, according to the map presented at Tuesday’s meeting. And a portion of students currently zoned for P.S. 29 would be split among P.S. 15, P.S. 32, and P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill. For P.S. 38, the zone would expand to include students currently slated to attend P.S. 261.

The attendance boundary for P.S. 676 The Red Hook Neighborhood School, which has long struggled to attract students, would remain the same.

The second proposal would remove zone lines from all seven schools, moving instead to a lottery system.

Ultimately, it’s up to the education department to propose changes to zone lines, and to the local Community Education Council to vote on the city’s plan.

In both proposals currently being considered, an admissions priority would be given for up to 35% of seats for students who are homeless, learning English as a new language, or qualify for reduced-price lunch. That could help create more economic and racial diversity, and ensure schools enroll more equal shares of students who often need more support to thrive academically.

Parents who gathered Tuesday at P.S. 32 to learn about the proposals raised questions about the potential of having to travel long distances with young children in tow — or having to depend on the city’s notoriously unreliable school buses. Another recurring theme: whether affluent families would simply leave the public system if they lost access to coveted schools. P.S. 29 and P.S. 58 are in some of the most sought-after Brooklyn zip codes, and enrollment in those schools is about 74% white.

“The actual stakes in this fight are: Do people stay?” asked one father. “Things like busing are, I think, no question, a way to decrease the number of students in the district.”

Others in attendance worried the plans don’t go far enough to meet the city’s goal of a fairer school system.

Of particular concern is P.S. 676, which has seen its enrollment dwindle — there were about 120 students last year — but would not receive more students under the proposed redrawn zone lines. Education department officials have said the school needs to improve before it can attract more families. To that end, many have credited the principal there with making notable strides.

But some in the Red Hook community have said the city’s plan to keep P.S. 676’s zone lines in tact puts the burden on families of color to integrate into mostly white, affluent school communities. Last year, only two students at the school were white, and most students come from the surrounding public housing complex.

Goldmark suggested the city would listen to feedback if parents feel like additional time is needed to make sure more families know about the proposals and have had their say.

“We will be listening to voices not just in terms of the number of people who are in the room tonight, but we need to make sure that we’re hearing from every community,” Goldmark said.

Doing more parent engagement could help lead to a new rezoning option, some council members and parents said. The education department had originally planned to present its final proposal in early fall.

Delaying a decision could present a challenge for P.S. 32, which is slated to open an addition with room for another 400 children next school year. On the other hand, Red Hook activists have pointed out that P.S. 676 has had a glut of space for years, and have accused the education department of not sharing a similar urgency around filling it.

District 15 council President Camille Casaretti advocated for a temporary rezoning for the next year, coupled with more community outreach to possibly come up with other options.

“Community members are asking for more time — and we know there are repercussions to waiting,” Casaretti said. “If we delay, our overcrowded and underutilized schools are going to be left to struggle for another year while our goal of equity also gets pushed to the side.”

Mayor’s plan to diversify specialized high school could raise admissions standards at other campuses

2019-09-24T22:20:50+00:00

The mayor’s plan to diversify specialized high schools would likely work as intended, a new report has found, but there’s a catch: It could intensify academic sorting and reduce the number of black and Hispanic students at other high-demand city high schools.

Published by the Center for New York City Affairs, a research arm at The New School, the report says that if the mayor’s plan had been in effect during the 2017-18 high school application cycle, students who no longer met the new requirements for specialized high schools would be concentrated at a subset of other competitive city high schools. As a result, those schools could become less diverse and even tougher to get into, the study projects.

“That would up the ante at those schools — it would raise the bar for academic qualifications at those schools even more,” said Nicole Mader, a senior research fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs and one of the researchers behind the report.

Intense debate has brewed over the past year in response to de Blasio’s proposal to overhaul admissions at eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. His plan, created in response to years of concern over how few black and Hispanic students were admitted to the specialized high schools, would admit the top 7% of students at each city middle school. Currently, the sole criteria for getting in is a high score on the SHSAT exam. The mayor’s proposal alarmed some Asian and white parents who fear their children — who received most of the offers this year to specialized high schools — could be unfairly elbowed out.

Since the admissions exam is enshrined in state law for the three elite specialized schools that enroll the most students, the mayor’s plan needs approval from Albany. But state legislators have been largely reluctant to tackle the issue beyond public hearings and internal debates.

If the plan were ever implemented, the report found it would diversify the specialized schools and connect newly enrolled students with more academic opportunities than they would have otherwise had, such as increased access to Advanced Placement courses. Also, the students who would no longer be offered a space at one of those elite schools would still be likely to end up at another top-performing high school.

But it could reduce the number black and Hispanic students who attend the rest of the city’s high-demand high schools.

Researchers used high school application data to create a model where the mayor’s plan was fully implemented during the 2017-18 academic year. Based on that, they looked at which students would have qualified for specialized high schools had de Blasio’s plan been in effect at the time and which ones would no longer be eligible.

Based on that, almost 3,100 students who didn’t take the SHSAT or didn’t earn a high enough score would get offers to the schools. Another 2,467 students who scored high enough on the exam to have been admitted under the current model would no longer be eligible for the specialized high schools; instead, they would have been matched to 151 different schools, with researchers assuming that every student attends the school they get matched with.

For example, 199 students who got into specialized high schools using the current criteria but who wouldn’t have gotten in under de Blasio’s plan, were matched to NEST+M; the same was true for 115 students matched to Midwood High School. These are indications that some sought-after schools are likely to grow even more competitive — and have slightly lower percentages of black, Hispanic, and female students, and those from low-income families. The percentage of Asian students at these schools would likely increase, according to the report’s projections, while the number of white students wouldn’t change.

“This would raise the academic qualifications required to get a seat even higher, crowding out students who would traditionally have been admitted, but have slightly lower scores,” the report states.

At the same time, 82 percent of non-specialized high schools would lose one or more “high-achieving” student to the specialized high schools. Most of these schools, such as Townsend Harris High School in Queens, are also screened, but their student bodies more closely resemble neighborhood demographics. While losing students wouldn’t really change their demographics, “the loss of so many high-achieving students might have had a significant influence on the students left behind,” the report said.

Asked for comment on the report and its findings about non-specialized high schools, education department spokesman Will Mantell said it’s “another independent confirmation that our proposal will expand opportunity for top-performing middle-school students, increase diversity, and maintain the academic rigor of our specialized high schools.”

It’s unclear how the specialized high schools plan will fare next legislative session — and how intensely the city will lobby in Albany for admissions changes. But it’s good to remember the ripple effects, Mader said.

“This is sort of an opportunity to say any changes to admissions does affect the whole system,” Mader said.

Brooklyn’s District 16 urges mayor, chancellor to phase out the gifted program they once fought to create

2019-09-24T00:34:59+00:00

Even as some parents and politicians mobilize to preserve gifted programs, the Community Education Council in Brooklyn’s District 16 passed a resolution Monday night calling on the mayor and chancellor to phase out those programs.

It’s a remarkable turn for a district that once fought for gifted classes in their schools, saying it was unfair that their historically black neighborhood didn’t have any.

But now the Community Education Council says its single gifted program, at P.S. 26 Jesse Owens, has not created more equity in their district, which includes the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Instead, they want the education department to pilot a schoolwide enrichment model in all of the district’s schools, an approach that tasks educators with identifying what interests students and building lessons around that.

NeQuan McLean, president of the council, said the current program forces schools to compete for enrollment and deepens divides among students.

“We’re taking the highest performing students and we’re putting them in one school. No. that doesn’t make sense. That’s not equitable,” he said.

Another issue, members said, is that parents aren’t choosing to enroll. Most city gifted programs begin in kindergarten. But in District 16 and a handful of other historically underserved neighborhoods, such programs don’t start until third grade — which often means parents would have to choose to transfer their children to a new school to take advantage of gifted classes.

Education Councilman Victor Iroh said his daughter was accepted to the district’s gifted program, but he wasn’t impressed with it, so he chose to stay put.

“I saw the program and thought, ‘You’re not really teaching anything special,’” he said.

The council’s resolution also calls on the city to support the recent recommendations of the School Diversity Advisory Group, a mayoral-appointed committee tasked with proposing ways to encourage integration in one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

Among the advisory group’s proposals: eliminating the single test that is currently used for most gifted programs, and phasing out the current model in favor of programs that are more inclusive. While most students in New York City schools are black or Hispanic, those children make up only about 20% of enrollment in gifted programs.

The proposal has sparked fierce pushback, including from the councilman representing Bedford-Stuyvesant, Robert Cornegy, who has argued the city should instead expand gifted to prepare more black and Hispanic students for slots at coveted middle and high schools.

District 16’s education council on Monday released a letter they sent to Cornegy asking him to now join them in their push for a different approach to gifted.

“Since we worked with you to establish G&T in [District 16], we have learned that there are expectations for G&T that were not met and require us to rethink what is best for all the children,” their letter states.

McLean said he expects the council’s move will be controversial. Still, he said: “We did the right thing.”

Brooklyn’s District 16 once fought for gifted programs. Now parents may support getting rid of them.

2019-09-20T22:36:47+00:00

A Brooklyn school district where parents once fiercely lobbied for gifted and talented programs may now support phasing out those very programs.

The Community Education Council in District 16, which includes the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, is voting Monday on a resolution that calls on the mayor and schools chancellor to overhaul the city’s gifted programs.

The resolution backs recommendations made by the School Diversity Advisory Group, which was appointed by the mayor to propose ways to better integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems. The advisory group’s proposals include changing admissions standards for gifted programs, phasing out those programs, and replacing them with schoolwide enrichment models.

Black and Hispanic students make up almost 70% of citywide enrollment, but account for only about 20% of students in elementary school gifted programs.

Opposition to the proposal to eliminate gifted programs has been intense and led partly by Councilman Robert Cornegy, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. He has argued that a more equitable approach would be to expand gifted programs so that more black and Hispanic students will be prepared for selective middle and high schools.

Not long ago, Cornegy rallied alongside parents for new programs in districts that had gone years without any — including District 16, in which 93% of students are black and Hispanic, and more than 82% come from low-income families. A gifted program finally opened there in 2016.

But NeQuan McLean, the president of the education council, said his district’s program has not made access more widespread or fair.

“That’s not working for our community,” he said.

Most city programs admit students based on a single test that students take before entering school, and classes begin in kindergarten. In District 16 and a handful of other historically underserved neighborhoods, gifted programs don’t start until third grade and admission is based on multiple criteria, including report card grades and teacher interviews.

McLean said that parents become invested in their child’s elementary school, so by the time they reach third grade, few are willing to leave for the district’s only gifted program at P.S. 26 Jesse Owens. McLean said more than 200 students qualified for the program last year, but only 25 accepted placements.

When students do opt for that gifted program, their original school loses enrollment — and therefore, funding.

Instead, McLean said the city should support models that provide advanced instruction to everyone.

“If we’re offering enriched learning at every one of our schools, the families don’t have to pick and choose,” he said. “The schools are not competing against each other, but everyone is learning this accelerated and rigorous curriculum.”

The District 16 council will vote on the resolution at its regular meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m. on Monday. It will be held at J.H.S. 57, which is located at 125 Stuyvesant Avenue.

To read the resolution, click here.

Listen to ‘School Colors’: a podcast on schools and race

2019-09-20T13:07:46+00:00

“School Colors” is an eight-part documentary podcast series about education in Central Brooklyn. It explores what schools in this neighborhood looked like in years and generations past — and why.

“When you go back literally 150 years or go back 50 years, it sounds like you’re talking about 2019,” said Mark Winston Griffith, a local community organizer who was surprised by how many issues bubbling up today have roots in debates and battles of yore.

Griffith, who runs the black-led organizing group Brooklyn Movement Center, co-hosts the podcast alongside journalist and educator Max Freedman. Both men have longstanding connections to Central Brooklyn: Griffith, 56, is the grandson of Jamaican-born immigrants who settled in Crown Heights, and Freedman, 31, is the grandson of a Ukranian Jewish immigrant who made his way to Brownsville.

Chalkbeat will be bringing you new episodes of the podcast here each Friday. “School Colors” is a production of Brooklyn Deep, a local journalism project of the Brooklyn Movement Center. More information can be found here.

Episode 1: Old School

Source: Weeksville Historical Society

The first episode takes listeners inside two very different District 16 elementary schools along Marcus Garvey Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant and dives deep into the schools that preceded them and the forces that led to this moment. As Freedman explains in the first episode, “District 16 is at a tipping point. And what’s at stake is a lot more than lines on a map. It’s the power to control not only how and what children learn, but what kind of city we’re going to live in and who that city is going to serve.”

Listen to Episode 1: Old School

Episode 2: Power to the People

Source: Brooklyn Deep

In the late 1960s, the Central Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville was at the center of a bold experiment in community control of public schools. But as Black and Puerto Rican parents there tried to exercise power over their schools, they collided headfirst with the teachers’ union — leading to the longest teachers’ strike in American history, 51 years ago this fall. That parent activism would go on to define political life in Central Brooklyn for generations. The second episode of “School Colors” explores this pivotal chapter in Brooklyn history.

Listen to Episode 2: Power to the People

Episode 3: Third Strike

Source: Brooklyn Deep

In the fall of 1968, New York City teachers went on strike three times, in reaction to an experiment in community control of schools in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn. The third strike was the longest — and the ugliest. The confrontation at Ocean Hill-Brownsville fractured the connection between teachers and families, between the labor movement and the civil rights movement, and between Black and Jewish New Yorkers. As the third episode explores, some of those wounds have never quite healed.

Listen to Episode 3: Third Strike

Episode 4: Agitate! Educate! Organize!

Source: Lumumba Bandele

In the wake of the 1968 teachers’ strikes, black residents of Central Brooklyn continued to fight for community control of local schools. The fourth episode of “School Colors” looks at two experiments in self-governance — one within the school system and one in the form of an independent school called Uhuru Sasa Shule — and the legacies of those efforts.

Listen to Episode 4: Agitate! Educate! Organize!

Episode 5: The Disappearing District

Source: Brooklyn Deep

The number of students in Brooklyn’s District 16 has dropped by more than half since 2002. There’s no single reason why this is happening, but the year 2002 is a clue: That’s when Michael Bloomberg became Mayor and abolished local school boards — thus putting the school system under mayoral control. In the fifth episode of “School Colors,” listeners hear from parents trying to save their local school from being closed and those who are leaving the district altogether.

Listen to Episode 5: The Disappearing District

Episode 6: Mo’ Charters Mo’ Problems

Source: Brooklyn Deep

Charter schools were originally dreamed up to be laboratories for innovation in public education. Instead, many see them as a threat — competing with neighborhood schools for space, resources, and kids. Is this really a zero-sum game? In this episode, the “School Colors” team talks to parents and educators on both sides of the district-charter divide to explore why charter schools seem especially polarizing in a neighborhood like Bedford-Stuyvesant, and what the growth of charter schools means for the future of this community.

Listen to Episode 6: Mo’ Charters Mo’ Problems

Episode 7: New Kids on the Block

Source: Brooklyn Deep

Even as the population of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, has been growing in numbers and wealth, the schools of District 16 have been starved for students and resources. That’s because a lot of people moving into the neighborhood either don’t have children or send them to schools outside the district. The seventh episode of the “School Colors” podcast looks at the forces of gentrification in the neighborhood and the effects on local public schools.

Listen to Episode 7: New Kids on the Block

Episode 8: On the Move

Source: Brooklyn Deep

The eighth episode of the “School Colors” explores the battle for school integration, which is back on the table for the first time in decades. But what’s the right approach — and what would desegregation mean for Central Brooklyn? This episode looks to the future.

Listen to Episode 8: On the Move

Bonus Episode: A Night at the Library

NeQuan McLean, Max Freedman, Mark Winston Griffith and Christina Veiga discuss School Colors at the Brooklyn Public Library on Dec. 17, 2019. PHOTO CREDIT: Reema Amin/Chalkbeat

In this bonus episode, recorded live at the Brooklyn Public Library, “School Colors” producers Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman talk with Chalkbeat New York’s own Christina Veiga. They are joined by a special guest, NeQuan McLean, president of the Community Education Council for District 16. Their conversation digs deeper into some of the themes of the podcast and pulls back the curtain on how the show was created — and what’s coming next.

Listen to Bonus Episode: A Night at the Library

What NYC can learn from my experience ending tracking — and running into the politics of ‘keeping white people happy’

2019-09-17T18:29:20+00:00

The hullabaloo over the recommendation to eliminate some gifted and talented programs in the New York City schools elicits an uncomfortable side of school system leadership. Most district leaders get into the business because they want to do big and bold things for children. Often, the moral imperative of serving traditionally underserved students of color increases the urgency of this mandate. In most cities and diverse districts, though, the power structures don’t necessarily reflect the student population.

Therein lies the rub: School system leaders must confront what Derrick Bell referred to as “interest convergence” — the idea that white people will only support acts of racial justice if there’s something in it for them.

When I work with district leaders now, I often share one of the most important lessons I learned while de-tracking the Stamford Public Schools: Leaders can’t take something away from white people without giving them something better in return. So the question before me, when I became Stamford, Connecticut’s school superintendent in 2005, was how to improve the system for everyone, while forcefully dealing with the urgent need to get rid of tracks that were hurting kids of color.

Eliminating rigid academic tracks that typically placed white and Asian students in upper-level courses and black and brown kids in lower-level ones confronted white people’s belief that they were entitled to the best teachers and the most rigorous courses, even if was at the expense of other people’s children. By staying in the public school system while regularly making it known that they had options outside of it, white people made it clear that they must be kept happy. Or else.

In low tones, over a cocktail at a conference with trusted fellow superintendents from different states, leaders might even admit to the political reality of having a “keep the white people happy,” strategy. But they’ll rarely admit it publicly, though coded language and resource allocation decisions might suggest otherwise.

By the time I arrived in Stamford, the district had been assigning students to academic tracks for more than 40 years. (You can find more of that story here.) When I started there, I spoke with elected officials, prominent civic and business leaders, parents and, of course, every school principal. Half of them told me that if I didn’t eliminate tracking immediately, I’d be run out of town. The other half told me that if I changed the status quo, first all the “good” families would leave, and then I’d be run out of town.

Even though Stamford had adopted a voluntary desegregation policy in the late 1960s that ensured students of different racial groups were at the same schools, policy dictated that students be separated academically by their scores on a standardized test. Desegregated schools within a district with a complex bussing and magnet system had deeply segregated classrooms. In the era of No Child Left Behind, I had been hired to do something about it.

To be sure, I tell my story from a place of enormous privilege, as a white, male superintendent. A leader of color would not likely be able to operate in the same way. (Just look at the response New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza — full disclosure, a good friend — has gotten to his unapologetic efforts to confront institutional racism and bias.)

Early in my tenure in Stamford, I merely hinted at my intention to de-track, without stating it publicly. To get the buy-in I knew I needed to de-track successfully, I had to make a public case for change — including to teachers who were resistant to teaching heterogeneous groups. I had to build the infrastructure for improved teaching, learning, and professional development, all the while signaling to communities and families of color that tracking would be going away. Over the next few years, as we built momentum to de-track, it helped that student achievement had been climbing steadily, that parent surveys were mostly positive, and that we had increasing support from foundations and state agencies for our emerging approach.

This work took time, and it wasn’t until five years after I became superintendent that Stamford Public Schools succeeded in formally eliminating tracking.

While I had vocal critics in the process, no one could say that we weren’t completely transparent about why we were making the change, the details of the new approach, the research supporting it, and the timelines. A critical lesson and one that any leaders looking to make a transformative change should heed: Even those who don’t agree with you — and not everybody will — have a right to a transparent decision-making process.

During that process, I assumed that most parents were reasonable, and that most white parents weren’t part of the highly organized opposition, who told me that de-tracking would ruin the schools and chase “good” families away, that I was race-baiting, and that what vulnerable students needed most were not integrated classrooms but separate ones with additional resources. In fact, while we were making the changes, we conducted a parent survey, asking, “how likely are you to recommend your child’s school to another parent?” That number inched up every year, which enabled me to show the resistors that most parents were just fine with the changes.

As New York City leaders consider the realities of eliminating gifted programs, they need a plan to attend to the politics of entitlement and privilege, regardless of the moral imperative. I hate typing that sentence. Because if there’s a way to make dramatic, lasting change without attending to the political power structure that would prefer the status quo, please let me know.

New York City certainly isn’t Stamford, but there are essential principles that underpin any successful change like this. I didn’t have every teacher and principal in my corner, but there was a critical mass who were actively participating in designing the changes. Help from the outside can be crucial, too. Both the GE Foundation and the Connecticut state department of education publicly supported de-tracking. It took me time to get them both on record about this, but it was well worth the effort.

Evidence is another critical piece, as the case needs to be made repeatedly in many different ways, that the change will be good for children. For years, we held community forums, published the research base, and relentlessly presented evidence of the benefits of the changes and the destructiveness of the existing system.

We built a coalition that proved not just necessary, but personally rewarding. We built relationships with and activated communities of color that had never been asked to participate in this way before. We prioritized teacher voice and leadership, and teachers publicly had my back. We also found white allies whose own children benefited from tracking, but knew how wrong the system was; their help was immeasurable.

Yes, as a middle-aged, white man who has benefited greatly from the white supremacy that our public-school systems are organized around, I invite — and welcome — criticism for suggesting that New York City leaders should heed Bell’s warning of the need for interest convergence. I hope that if the chancellor decides to die on this hill, he’ll have enough support from communities of color and white allies, too.

Soon, a new mayoral campaign will begin in New York City. Gifted education is sure to be an issue on the trail, and those who have political power will exercise it in whatever ways they can. A new mayor and a new chancellor will have to decide whether and how to confront the institutional racism of the school system. They’ll need a long-term plan, as it’s not likely to truly transform in the span of one — or even two — terms.

Carranza has started to lay the foundation by speaking out on the issues. The School Diversity Advisory Group, which made the recommendations for New York City’s gifted programs — together with vocal student advocacy groups — have given the city a place to start the conversation. White allies need to continue to step up, educators need to get behind the change, emerging political coalitions need to be deepened and expanded, communities of color need to be placed front and center in the discourse, and national organizations need to support this work. Yet none of this will mean a thing if teaching, learning, and the student experience aren’t transformed for the better.

Joshua P. Starr is the CEO of PDK International. He was previously Superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland and, before that, Superintendent of Stamford Public Schools in Connecticut. Starr began his career as a District 75 teacher in New York City.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

Has the ‘culture war’ come for NYC schools? What you should know about that contentious Atlantic essay

2019-09-16T23:39:22+00:00

Over the weekend, The Atlantic published a 10,000-word story that argues New York City public schools have been overtaken by a “new progressivism” encompassing everything from state testing boycotts to school integration.

Written by George Packer, a longtime reporter for The New Yorker, the story focuses on his family’s experience at an unusually progressive elementary school in Brooklyn and has sparked fierce reaction.

This new progressivism, Packer claims, is essentially outrage stemming from “ongoing injustice against groups of Americans who had always been relegated to the outskirts of power and dignity.”

The piece draws a line from that ideology to a range of policies playing out at his son’s school: A new effort that made all bathrooms gender neutral, a push to opt students out of state tests on the grounds that they are harmful and even racist, and a districtwide plan to remove academic screening as a means of reducing racial and socioeconomic segregation.

“It was as a father, at our son’s school, that I first understood the meaning of the new progressivism, and what I disliked about it,” Packer writes.

Conservatives have embraced the piece as an argument against the excesses of “identity politics.” But some close observers of the city’s schools have struggled to recognize the school system Packer is describing.

Here are three pieces of context that are crucial to evaluating Packer’s argument:

The elementary school Packer describes is not like most city schools.

Packer spends a large portion of the essay explaining his experience at an elementary school that is unnamed, but which is clearly the Brooklyn New School based on clues about its location, descriptions of its admissions, and Packer previously identifying himself as a parent there.

He holds up the school as a prime example of some of the problems with the “new progressivism” he eschews. There is fierce opposition to state tests, a focus on hands-on projects instead of skills like spelling, and, in an effort to accomodate a transgender student, a policy that made the school’s bathrooms gender neutral — reportedly without informing parents.

The context: While coveted among progressive Brooklyn parents, the school is by no means typical in New York City — making it hard to generalize his experience into a broader argument about the city’s schools. Brooklyn New School makes no secret of its progressive ideals and was one of the first in New York City to pilot an integration plan that gives preference to low-income students. Families choose to apply for admission, and the school accepts students from across Brooklyn.

Some of those parents have also disputed Packer’s characterization of the school’s curriculum, which he suggested sacrifices some basics like civics in the name of “activism.”

Packer is correct that the school sits at the center of the opt-out movement — more than 96% of its students refused to take state tests, according to the most recent data, far higher than the 4.4% average citywide. Throughout New York City, the boycott movement has lost steam in recent years, making Brooklyn New School even more of an outlier.

New York City is seeing some local efforts to diversify its schools. Packer’s piece illustrates the uphill battle those plans may face.

Packer notes that his family chose Brooklyn New School partly because of its diverse student body. “We wanted our kids to learn in classrooms that resembled the city where we lived.”

When his son ended up at a middle school that was far less diverse, he thought there was a clear reason why: “Competitive admissions had created a segregated school,” he wrote.

Until this year, middle schools in District 15 set their own competitive admissions criteria, called screens, which allowed them to pick students based on their academic record or criteria like attendance. But under an integration plan that went into effect this year, middle school admission there became based on a lottery, with a priority given to certain disadvantaged students.

Despite the fact that Packer wanted a diverse school for his child, and acknowledging that screening had contributed to segregation, Packer voiced only tepid support for that plan — and acknowledged he might have opposed it, had his family been directly affected. “I would have been sorely tested if chance had put him in the first experimental class,” he wrote, noting that the plan wasn’t yet in place when his son started middle school.

The context: Packer’s argument — that he is supportive of integration but not at the expense of “meritocracy” — has been a key objection to some of the city’s highest-profile integration efforts, including a fight to overhaul admission to the city’s elite but segregated specialized high schools.

Part of what makes integrating New York City schools so challenging is the extent of its academic segregation, with a large chunk of middle and high schools choosing their students. The system was structured that way, in part, to entice more white and affluent parents to public schools — parents now invested in maintaining access to those schools.

‘Good’ schools and ‘bad’ schools are not always as they seem.

Packer’s piece makes note of the gaps in academic performance between racial groups that are pervasive in American education, and acknowledges the role that poverty can play in those outcomes. But he also appears to question whether integration could help narrow those gaps.

He eventually writes off a “mostly poor and black” neighborhood elementary school, saying his family “assumed it would fail our children, because we knew it was failing other children.” He added that a black neighbor warned them not to attend.

“It was as if an eternal curse had been laid on it, beyond anyone’s agency or remedy,” he wrote.

The context: It’s true that segregated schools that serve mostly students from low-income families often have fewer resources, less experienced teachers, and lower academic achievement. It’s rare that schools find ways to surmount all of the ways poverty can set students behind their more affluent peers. Sometimes, however, raw test scores or other performance measures can mask meaningful progress, even if students don’t fully catch up to their middle-class counterparts.

On the other hand, some schools with stellar reputations may be doing little more than taking credit for the performance of students who are already ahead. Research has shown that may be the case for the city’s famed specialized high schools, which found little effect on college-going rates or whether students were admitted to selective universities.

There is also a trove of studies that show more diverse schools have benefits for disadvantaged students, including higher test scores, increased graduation rates, and even improved earnings as an adult.

There’s little evidence that integration hurts white students, and it may help reduce racial bias and improve critical thinking.

Want to explore race and class in Central Brooklyn’s schools? There’s a podcast for that.

2019-09-16T21:02:48+00:00

Back in 2015, when DUMBO parents were making news for opposing a plan to change the zone lines for a local school, Max Freedman was a relative newcomer to another Brooklyn neighborhood undergoing rapid change.

A resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant who was eyeing a career in urban planning, Freedman was intrigued by the issues of race and class wrapped up in the divisive rezoning debate. So he went to a public hearing about the proposed changes.

“I saw a postcard from the future of Bed-Stuy,” he recalled recently. “I wanted to look at where Bed-Stuy is now and see those pieces moving into place, to see whether we can be in public dialogue before there is a crisis.”

So Freedman turned to the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community organizing group aimed at empowering black residents of Central Brooklyn, where he connected with the group’s executive director, Mark Winston Griffith.

At the time, Griffith was working through what to do with the center’s 2013 report about the challenges facing the area’s schools. District 16 had become known for its segregated, struggling schools. The report had urged involving local families, educators, and community groups in an effort to turn them around.

“So much was wrapped up in history, but parents were not involved, and there was no sense of organizational power among parents,” Griffith said. “It was really striking at a moment when white parents were reconsidering coming into the neighborhood.”

Four years later, Freedman and Griffith’s collaboration has yielded an eight-part podcast series, “School Colors,” that looks at the past, present, and future of schools in District 16. The first installment of this Brooklyn Deep podcast series launches Sept. 20, and the second episode, out on Sept. 27, offers a fresh look at the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict over community control that led to a citywide teacher strike and ultimately reshaped the school system.

Later, the podcast will take on what happened in the district after the city’s schools shifted to mayoral control, the complicated role of charter schools in the neighborhood and, finally, the issues presented by the current wave of affluent, often white families moving to the area. The Brooklyn Movement Center will host a discussion group, and Chalkbeat will update you when new episodes drop.

We spoke with Freedman and Griffith about what they learned reporting the podcast, what they hope readers will take away, and how they think School Colors can inform the mounting debate about integration New York City schools. Here’s the interview, condensed and edited for clarity.

How did you come to tackle this topic on a podcast together? And why this podcast about District 16 now?

Freedman: I moved to Bed-Stuy in 2012. I looked around and I thought, “Something’s happening here and I don’t understand it, but I am a part of it.’ I knew I wanted to do work in a community where I live and in partnership with an organization that was already established. That brought me to the Brooklyn Movement Center.

Griffith: The Brooklyn Movement Center is a black-led, direct-action community organizing group, working against the backdrop of gentrification, neighborhood change, displacement — these are themes in our work. [In our 2013 report], we found striking things: This district which was predominantly black was severely underenrolled, it was not a cohesive district, everyone was doing their own thing. So much was wrapped up in history, but parents were not involved, and there was no sense of organization power among parents. It was really striking at a moment when white parents were reconsidering coming into the neighborhood.

Freedman: I went to a public hearing [about the DUMBO rezoning]. It was very clear to me that the [city] was prepared for there to be pushback from wealthier families … but that they were not prepared for pushback from parents from the underenrolled school, who actually were not thrilled … even though it would mean the school would be quote-unquote integrated.

Whatever you want to say about gentrification — the good, the bad and the ugly — it certainly makes people feel like they don’t have any power to determine the direction of their community. And it often comes from ideology that says there was nothing good here before. There’s a lot of pride in this place and a rich history of parent power. We wanted to find out: Where did that go and what does it mean now that parents are trying to change that, from a few different directions?

The series takes listeners to the present day and into recent conversations about whether and how District 16 schools should be racially integrated. How would you say the podcast will be relevant to the renewed debate over segregation and the recommendations the city recently received about how to reduce it?

Griffith: We’re very aware of the timing of this podcast. It’s coming at a moment when integration and desegregation are coming to the fore. These issues have been simmering for a while. We have felt them as an organization. I have felt them personally. As a parent who lives in District 17 whose kids went to school in District 15, constantly having to navigate the racial dynamics of these districts, it was clear to me that New York had a racial problem in its schools. We see these battlefronts opening up in different places.

Part of the point of the podcast is to say we didn’t land here out of nowhere — that these issues have been going back decades or even centuries. We want to give people a better understanding of how points of view have evolved — and calcified, in some ways.

We want this not only to be something to listen to but also to sit down and talk about. How do we navigate this moment we’re in right now?

Freedman: Since we started doing this work the way we talk about integration in this city has evolved considerably. For most of history the conversation has revolved around the feelings of white people: A lot of the conversation is, ‘We can’t do this, white people and people with money will run away. And then the schools will be more segregated, not less.’ So much of our policy-making is based on the fear that people with money will take their money out. It’s not 1975 anymore. Part of the focus was to reorient the conversation about school integration — to look through the perspective of nonwhite people.

One of the main characters is the president of the [Community Education Council] for District 16 NeQuan McLean. One of the great things about doing this over a long period of time is that we’ve been able to see people evolve. In 2017, he said, integration is not the concern — we’re thinking about school quality. But he became a member of the School Diversity Advisory Group and now believes that G&T, which he fought to come back [to the district] under Bloomberg, is a problem and now is on board with these recommendations [to phase out gifted programs]. To have a voice from District 16 at the center of the conversation at all is dramatic, because this is a district that was forgotten for many years. Then to have him evolve on this issue … We’re very much in conversation with the recent developments.

Griffith: What’s hitting the headlines is being told through policy conversations. And I think that one of the things we want to do through the podcast is to make those policy conversations more human. If you live in New York or anywhere in this country, if you’re a parent, if you have had to confront issues of race, if you’re a breathing human being, it’s going to be hard to not hear yourself or identify with any of the struggles you’re going to hear about. We’re trying to help people make connections between what they’re feeling every day to the policy debates.

What do you think New Yorkers need to know about the history of schools in District 16? And what will listeners who already know a lot about the history of schools in New York City learn by listening?

Freedman: You can’t understand what happens now in the city without understanding Ocean Hill-Brownsville. It’s something people are afraid to talk about. So we’re going to talk about it.

Griffith: It ripped people apart. … It’s a part of history that I don’t think people are entirely prepared to own up to or be accountable for. It also integrates this tension between integration and self-determination, which is something that we want to deal with head on.

Freedman: I don’t think it’s a totally new version: Charlie Isaacs, a JHS 271 teacher who published a memoir about his experiences five years ago, had a big impact on how we shaped the story. But we also interviewed kids who were students at JHS 271 at the time whose voices haven’t been heard before. And there was a short version in “Eyes on the Prize” [a late-1980s miniseries about the Civil Rights Movement] — we licensed the original interviews, so tape that has never before been heard from them will be heard in the podcast.

Griffith: Everyone has a perspective and so do we. We’re trying to tell it in a way that will be fresh in the ways Max described, and centering it in the conversation about where we are today. You don’t hear much that traces community control, decentralization, mayoral control, to where we are today. That, I think, will be new.

District 16 in 1977.

Freedman: We focused on the community. That’s not to say we don’t talk to the teachers or to the union, but that’s our orientation. We want to talk about the aspirations of this community, and what they achieved. That’s really what gets lost: what they achieved, which was a lot.

Griffith: I’m a 56-year-old black man. Max is a 31-year-old white, Jewish guy. We found our own connections. My uncle was a teacher and later a principal …

Freedman: And my mom’s cousin was a teacher in Brooklyn and he was on the other side of the picket line.

Griffith: We infuse our personal stories that make the narrative so much richer.

What was most surprising to you during the reporting process? Any moments where you laughed or cried? Or a story from the reporting process that could get readers excited to listen?

Griffith: When we go back literally 150 years or go back 50 years, it sounds like you’re talking about 2019. That’ ‘s what we didn’t fully anticipate, and there’s so much drama, that we’ve discovered here, not just in the history but in what’s happening today. The characters — well, we’re not saying characters — they are 3-D people who exude all of this humanity, who are really striking and interesting people that people are going to be fascinated to listen to.

Freedman: What we did find here in the present is a lot of people trying to do the right thing and butting heads in the process. Here’s one example: Later in the series, we’re going to talk about the conflict on the PTA at one particular school. Every single person we talked to about it started crying or very nearly started crying — and it happened three years ago! It was incredibly emotional. We’re sitting on top of this deep and rich and complicated history of this country and it manifests as drama on a PTA.

Griffith: We were struck by the extent to which this is centered on schools and issues of gentrification, yet the extent to which these institutions are proxies for much broader issues that go far beyond education and in some cases have very little to do with what’s happening in the classroom. It is about the children but it’s not at the same time.

Freedman: Teachers might be frustrated listening to it, honestly. We’re talking very little about instruction or pedagogy.

Griffith: Hopefully we’re creating the context for some kind of policy change, but we’re almost at the end here but some of that is still evolving. I thought we would have been closer to solutions that we actually are.

Freedman: My naive hope is that listening to this will help people have dialogue across difference.

Griffith: None of us sees ourselves in the business of conflict resolution. Still there is some level of hope and expectation that listening — this is going to sound mad hokey — you are going to see the humanity in people you didn’t see the humanity in before. It could be a potential big gift to people in this neighborhood and this city and this country.

We are gifted education scholars. Here’s why we don’t think NYC should follow the school diversity group’s recommendations

2019-09-12T14:32:00+00:00

Many of the public school gifted and talented programs that serve high-ability students don’t reflect the diversity of their communities. New York City, with roughly 1.1 million students, is an extreme example.

While about four in six of its kindergartners are black or Latino, those children account for only about one in six of all public school students identified as gifted and talented.

Concerns about this underrepresentation recently led a School Diversity Advisory Group appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to recommend that the city’s school system phase out all gifted and talented programs in its elementary and middle schools.

We are scholars of gifted education and education policy. Between us, we have lived in eight states and worked with 11 different school districts.

Based on what we’ve learned and seen along the way, we believe that de Blasio shouldn’t follow the panel’s recommendations. In our view, they are inconsistent with the large body of evidence supporting the need for increasing access to gifted and talented services and instruction for students from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds who are ready for more advanced coursework. Ultimately, removing gifted programs would end up hurting students of color who are ready to be challenged and deserve that opportunity.

The core problem

To be sure, the mayor is right to be concerned. Most gifted low-income kids are much less likely than affluent children with similar academic abilities and potential to get access to the kinds of programs that will help them flourish.

It’s also become clear that many talented low-income and underrepresented students of color are not challenged enough. For example, a recent study one of us worked on showed what happened when 482,418 gifted 7th-graders took the ACT college entry exam and then took it again in high school. The researchers found that gains for students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds between 2005 and 2017 were smaller than for other groups.

We see those results as clear evidence that kids who are both gifted and facing economic hardship need more opportunities to develop their talents. At the same time, it also indicates a need to ensure that all schools have the ability to challenge the brightest students, including low-income children of color.

We fear that if New York City were to dismantle its gifted programs, low-income gifted students – who can and do come from all backgrounds – would suffer the most. Unlike the children of wealthy parents who can afford the tuition at private schools or to move to affluent suburbs with high-performing school systems, there are virtually no alternatives for them. This includes talented students of color, who could be better served by increased access to gifted programs broadly.

That’s why reforming – rather than eliminating – New York’s program makes more sense. How to respond to the diversity panel’s recommendations is up to de Blasio, who has said he is not in a hurry to take action. Fortunately, there are some models across the country that he could follow.

Universal screening

New York chooses students for its gifted programs by administering a single test when the kids are as young as 4 years old.

Another common way for schools to select which kids will take part in programs that serve gifted and talented students is through referrals from their teachers and parents. This is the approach taken in West Virginia, Oregon, and countless school systems. But research indicates that this conventional approach more often leads to parents and teachers selecting students based on their personal, often idiosyncratic, ideas about what giftedness looks like.

It turns out that testing all students most effectively identifies students from all backgrounds who are ready for a more challenging curriculum. For example, universal screening has greatly improved the identification of gifted and talented racial and ethnic minorities in Broward County, Florida.

Additionally, research shows that standardized testing for spatial reasoning abilities, such as mentally rotating three-dimensional objects, can help identify a large pool of currently neglected gifted low-income and underrepresented students. That’s because these abilities are less correlated with socioeconomic status than math and verbal skills are.

Another problem in New York City is that testing children who are as young as 4 years old is often unreliable and may even exacerbate demographic imbalances.

Draw from all schools early on

Recent research shows that school systems that identify gifted and talented students based on test scores and also comparing students to each other within the school building works. For example, the top fraction of scorers within each school would be identified as gifted and talented. This strategy has increased Latino and African American representation in gifted programs in 10 states across the country by 170% and 300%, respectively.

Taking this step can help disadvantaged kids who are highly talented enroll in programs that can boost their talent. When this happens early on, it can make it more likely for those underrepresented gifted students to later attend prestigious high schools.

That’s not happening in New York. Indeed, de Blasio created the advisory panel in 2017, as part of his school desegregation plan. African American and Latino students remain underrepresented at the city’s elite schools. This year, for example, only seven of the 895 students accepted at high-performing Stuyvesant High School for the 2019-20 school year were black.

We should note that for selective high school admissions, de Blasio has tried – unsuccessfully – to abolish the city’s high-stakes admissions test. He supports a new system that admits instead the top 7% of students from each public middle school based on student rankings as a function of grades, state test scores, and performance among peers.

This approach might work to some extent, but we don’t think throwing out admissions tests is a good solution at any stage of the education process.

All students should be tested and compared to one another within their own school buildings. Students could be screened for giftedness early, but not too early – perhaps in third grade — on math, verbal, and spatial reasoning measures. This would improve the talent development of disadvantaged students in the long run.

Perhaps most importantly, these solutions can work all across the country, not just in New York City.

This piece was originally published on The Conversation.

Jonathan Wai is an assistant professor of education policy and psychology and endowed chair at the University of Arkansas. Frank C. Worrell is a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

An integration push meets long-standing efforts to improve Brooklyn’s P.S. 676, bringing hope and fresh worries

2019-07-19T22:55:18+00:00

When it came time to enroll her grandson in school, Esther Fesale put his name in the lottery for a nearby charter. But as the summer wound down without a call or letter, Fesale figured she should get to know her grandson’s other option: P.S. 676 the Red Hook Neighborhood School, assigned to him based on the family’s address.

The buzz about P.S. 676, hemmed in by industrial yards topped with rusty barbed wire, was not encouraging. The red-brick building had housed another school, long shuttered for poor performance, and had struggled to shed its reputation for unruly hallways.

Fesale visited anyway and was pleased to discover a cheery welcome from the assistant principal and a pre-K teacher whom she described as “amazing.” She enrolled her grandson and, four years later, Fesale is one of the school’s biggest boosters — yet she finds it’s still often a tough sell to neighborhood parents.

“Some negative feedback seems to be in their head, blocking what can be,” Fesale said. “I’ll be like, ‘This is what we’re trying to get you guys to come out and see! It’s not that anymore.”

Fesale is part of a dedicated group of parents, school leaders, and community partners who have been leading a charge to grow and improve P.S. 676. Now, they find their efforts intertwined with another monumental challenge: integrating schools in a deeply segregated corner of Brooklyn.

The school is part of District 15, where officials are considering a sweeping redrawing of elementary school attendance zones. Facing a glut of seats at some schools, and severe overcrowding at others, the education department hopes that overhauling zone lines will help even out enrollment, and, crucially, lead to more diverse classrooms.

Whether either push can succeed — and for whom — remain open questions that could help or hinder integration efforts elsewhere in the city.

To become more diverse, P.S. 676 will need to attract a cross-section of students even as it faces significant challenges. Like many segregated neighborhoods, the school is cut off from the rest of the district by man-made barriers: an elevated interstate and the mouth of a tunnel connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Still ranking among the lowest-performing elementary schools in the city, enrollment at P.S. 676 has dwindled, putting pressure on the school’s budget. Last year, only 120 students attended, though the building has space for more than triple that.

With integration now on the table, parents and community members who have supported the school face new concerns — for example, that an influx of white, wealthier students could displace the black and Hispanic families who have been fighting for a turnaround.

The stakes are high as the district is also rolling out a desegregation plan for middle schools, and both moves could become a model for the city’s broader integration efforts.

“This is the opportunity for us to do something groundbreaking,” the district’s superintendent, Anita Skop, told parents at a recent meeting to discuss the rezoning.

A district where integration is actually possible

Unlike most other city districts, where virtually all students come from similar low-income backgrounds, District 15 is one of the few where diverse demographics make racial and economic integration possible within its own boundaries. The district spans strikingly different neighborhoods, including Red Hook and Sunset Park, both immigrant enclaves along Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront — as well as Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, with their stately brownstones and tree-lined streets.

Yet that unique diversity is largely missing within individual schools. Although almost a third of students in the district are white, those students make up more than 74% of enrollment in some local elementary schools.

This spring, education department officials announced they were considering two options. The first is to redraw zone lines for seven schools, including in some of residential Brooklyn’s most coveted zip codes. The second is to simply remove attendance boundaries altogether, allowing families to apply to any of the seven schools whose zone lines are being reconsidered.

The task requires a delicate balance. Officials and many district residents have said the segregated status quo is not acceptable. But if white, middle class families balk at their school assignments or are denied their school preferences, they could decamp from the district altogether, taking with them any chance for integration. So as officials consider new boundaries, they are also trying to improve P.S. 676 to attract — and retain — families of all kinds.

“People vote with their feet,” Skop recently told parents. “It’s going to take a while to rebuild the curriculum and rebuild the belief system in this school.”

When segregation leads to concentrated poverty, like it has at P.S. 676, research shows that the result is often low achievement and fewer resources, which combine to make academic improvement difficult.

Integration, on the other hand, has been shown to help narrow test score gaps and boost graduation rates without dragging down achievement for white or more affluent students. Nationwide, despite at least two decades of focused efforts, it has proven remarkably difficult to lift the achievement of schools like P.S. 676 without first changing the mix of students inside.

It’s a challenge that people like Fesale have been tackling since well before there was much district concern about segregation, when the neighborhood’s focus was simply on keeping the doors open and turning things around for the students already in the building. With an attendance zone that wraps around the Red Hook West public houses, P.S. 676 has long served some of the city’s most economically disadvantaged students, virtually all of whom are black or Hispanic.

New leadership offers hope of needed change

Leading the effort is Principal Priscilla Figueroa, who started at the school in 2017 after serving as an assistant principal at M.S. 88, a District 15 middle school. She took a look around P.S. 676 and saw something “out of the ordinary” — and not in a good way.

“Students were not communicating with each other effectively. Safety agents were being threatened by parents,” she told the Red Hook Star-Revue in 2018. Through a department spokesman, Figueroa did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for an interview.

In short order, Figueroa helped reopen the darkened library. A new parent coordinator came on board; she stands in front of the school during dropoff and pickup to talk with families or hear their concerns. A sorely needed guidance counselor was hired, who now works on a crisis intervention team that has made a world of difference, parents say, for students who have emotional and behavior issues.

Latiayia Williams said her son had problems with bullying at the school, but now that he meets with a counselor there, things have improved.

“They’re trying,” she said of the staff. “When he goes, he’s happy now.”

Figueroa also began to look for outside help, and a network of Red Hook activists didn’t hesitate to respond, bringing new energy and programs to the school.

One local advocate who showed an early interest in the school was Carolina Salguero, who runs PortSide New York, a nonprofit housed on a historic, floating oil tanker docked in the nearby Atlantic Basin. Last December, students began walking over to the ship to read books and make art projects. Though many live in the waterfront neighborhood, many were disconnected from it, and couldn’t identify shellfish or seagulls. The field trips quickly led to a custom science curriculum, created by PortSide and P.S. 676 together, to introduce students to the sea.

“The kids are loving it, and obviously you need to be excited and enthusiastic to learn,” Salguero said.

Talks are now bubbling about turning P.S. 676 into a school that focuses on Science, Technology, and Math — or STEM — possibly with a focus on marine science, making a virtue of the neighborhood’s proximity to the harbor. That location could help create a ready pipeline for the New York Harbor School, which is a ferry ride away on Governor’s Island and does high-profile work with the Billion Oyster Project, a partnership with schools that involves students regrowing oyster reefs in city waters using shells donated by restaurants.

“I think that’s something that could be attractive not just to local parents, but also to Carroll Gardens and Park Slope,” said Edwin Pacheco, who runs a church called Red Hook Redemption, whose members volunteer to mentor students at P.S. 676 and to help improve their reading skills.

Big dreams, big challenges

For now, though, those big ideas are still largely in the incubator stage. And despite signs of progress, plenty of work remains to be done. Marie Hueston, the school’s parent coordinator, has offered facials on Mother’s Day and hosts regular chats about P.S. 676 over coffee, but getting parents to become more involved is still a struggle.

Many families are themselves wrestling with deep needs, so P.S. 676 has plans to offer GED classes, résumé help, and lessons on how to use computers. Such services may be vital for the local community. But they aren’t likely to have the same draw for middle-class, white families who may expect schools to play different roles and who are necessary to increase integration.

Among the school’s greatest challenges, said Tiffiney Davis, who runs a local nonprofit, is having the resources to meet the needs of the current student body. School budgets are based, in part, on enrollment. Last year, P.S. 676 had just 11 students in the first grade.

Davis has worked with neighborhood children for more than a decade, providing free art classes and homework help after school through the Red Hook Art Project. She said she was impressed when Principal Figueroa reached out to ask for help and was willing to name what the school was lacking.

“It’s hard because these students are talented — they’re great — but they’re not getting what they need,” she said.

Like many, Davis has faith that Figueroa could be the one to turn the school around. But that possibility also brings new worries.

The front doors of P.S. 676 open up a construction zone, where a stack of new condos is slated to open. Longtime residents worry about gentrification like they’ve seen near P.S. 15, where you may spy a Tesla parked in the driveway of new, single-family townhomes.

That school has already begun to undergo a subtle shift. Pre-K classes were almost 40% white last year, though many of those families ultimately enroll elsewhere for later grades.

Pacheco’s own daughter attends P.S. 15, and he said that navigating the changes hasn’t always been easy. He feels parents of color have pulled away as newcomers make the school their own.

“It just feels different,” he said.

Either scenario on the table — redrawing zone lines or simply removing them from all the area’s schools — is likely to be tough for P.S. 676.

If officials decide to redraw zone lines, sought-after schools such as P.S. 29 and P.S. 58 could see their attendance boundaries shrink. But the plans, so far, leave the lines around P.S. 676 unaltered. The district superintendent said at a recent public meeting the district has to focus first on making sure the school is strong enough to attract students that already live nearby — before opening up enrollment to other families.

“If they’re not going to choose it, it’s not going to change,” Skop said.

The district’s alternate proposal — removing zone lines entirely — could be even more destabilizing for P.S. 676. More of the currently zoned students would have an option to go elsewhere, increasing the competition P.S. 676 already feels from other schools. A charter that operates out of a gleaming new building, and Brooklyn New School, a district school that accepts students from across the borough, are both nearby.

Those who are hopeful for P.S. 676’s rebound see another possibility playing out. If the school experiences an upswing, people like Davis wonder whether longtime Red Hook families will be displaced to other schools.

Both of the scenarios being considered include an admissions preference for certain vulnerable populations of students, who would fill up to 35% of seats. That share is representative of the district average but could mean a dramatic demographic shift at P.S. 676, and with it, a new focus on a very different set of student and family needs.

“And then what happens to the black and brown students?” Davis asked. “If they want to make the school into something else, is it really going to serve the students who have been there?”

Correction (July 20, 2019): A previous version of this story misidentified the location of P.S. 15. This story has also been updated to provide more context about PortSide’s partnership with P.S. 676.

To boost diversity and address enrollment issues, Brooklyn’s District 15 may redraw elementary attendance zones

2019-05-29T18:47:08+00:00

On the heels of sweeping admissions changes aimed at integrating middle schools, District 15 in Brooklyn could soon redraw elementary school attendance boundaries as well.

The education department is floating possible zone changes that could affect which students attend seven schools in the northwest corner of the district, including some of the area’s most sought-after, such as P.S. 29 and P.S. 58.

The aim is to even out enrollment across campuses, some of which are currently overcrowded and some of which are under-enrolled — and also to boost student diversity in a deeply segregated district.

“We’re at the beginning of a community-driven rezoning process in District 15 to address the overall needs of students and families,” education department spokesman Doug Cohen wrote in an email. “We look forward to continued dialogue over the coming months.”

There are no firm proposals on the table yet, but the education department is looking to fill more than 400 new school seats created by an addition to P.S. 32, which may require drawing a substantially larger attendance zone around the Carroll Gardens school.

The city may also consider changes to the zones for P.S. 15 in Red Hook and P.S. 38 in Boerum Hill in order to fill unused seats and “promote diversity,” according to education department documents. The schools are currently among the most diverse in the area — though compared with the district averages, white students are underrepresented at both, and there are significantly fewer Asian students at P.S. 15.

Another aim: to relieve overcrowding at P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill and P.S. 58 in Carroll Gardens and also spur integration. Both enroll far more white students and affluent students than the district average and benefit from powerhouse parent organizations that have recently been among the richest in the country.

White enrollment at both schools is 74%, compared with the district average of nearly 31%. And less that 15% of the students at both schools come from low-income families, compared with the district average of about 55%.

Elementary school rezonings are often fraught — as evidenced by recent efforts in nearby District 13 and in District 3 in Manhattan, which garnered intense backlash.

But there’s precedent for District 15 taking bold steps: advocates there shepherded one of the most far-reaching integration plans in recent years in New York City. After more than a year of community discussions, the district chose to do away with competitive admissions screens in all of its middle schools, which are often blamed for exacerbating segregation. Preliminary enrollment numbers show the changes, now in their first year, have the promise to increase diversity at many schools.

“We have heard a lot of different perspectives on how the rezoning could take place,” the Community Education Council President, Camille Casaretti, wrote in an email. “However the implementation happens, the goal for this rezoning would be to improve learning conditions while promoting diversity and integration in our elementary schools.”

Other elementary schools that could be affected by the rezonings include The Brooklyn New School, P.S. 261, and Red Hook Neighborhood School. Along with redrawing attendance boundaries, the city is considering new admissions priorities to help integrate schools, according to city records.

Any changes are expected to go into effect for the 2020-2021 school year and apply to pre-K, kindergarten and students new to the district. But if students have an older sibling at a school that changes its attendance zone, they will be grandfathered into that school.

The education department has already held a number of meetings at local schools that could be affected by the potential changes to collect feedback from parents and community members. The next meeting is expected to be held at 6:30 p.m. on June 20 at P.S. 32.

“For us, our main priority is to get feedback from the community,” said Community Education Council member Elena Romero.

Ultimately, it’s up to the education department to propose any changes, and city documents show an initial plan is expected by June. The local Community Education Council is responsible for approving or rejecting any redrawn zone lines.

Entrenched positions and pleas for change: NYC council debates school integration

2019-05-01T23:18:05+00:00

City council members on Wednesday grilled education department officials on school segregation at a joint hearing of the Education Committee and Civil and Human Rights Committee.

The sharp questions and answer session took place just weeks before the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The atmosphere was a stark departure from just five years ago, when council members questioned education department officials about diversity issues in a school system that remains among the most segregated in the country. Back then, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his previous schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, steadfastly refused to even mention the words “integration” or “segregation.”

But Farina’s successor, Richard Carranza, has bluntly questioned the ways in which schools sort students and fiercely defended the need for and benefits of integration. But he has also faced criticism for overseeing only narrow steps to address segregation, focusing mostly on a city plan to change admissions at just eight elite specialized high schools.

Speaker Corey Johnson blasted the city for delaying specific reforms while waiting for an appointed advisory board to unveil more of its recommendations. But he also leaned on old ways of doing business, proposing his own task forces to study the contentious issue of integrating the specialized high schools.

Sokhnadiarra Ndiaye, a junior at Brooklyn College Academy High School and member of the advocacy group Teens Take Charge, chastised the adults in the room.

“What are you going to say to me today? You need more time to study the issue? You need another task force?” she asked. “Let us address segregation today.”

Here are some other highlights from Wednesday’s hearing.

Potential changes for gifted admissions

Enrollment in the city’s gifted and talented programs is almost the reverse of city demographics, with white and Asian students, who make up roughly a third of the system at large, filling most seats. Most programs begin in kindergarten, and children have to take a test when they’re about 4 years old to gain admission.

Experts say that testing children so young is unlikely to yield reliable results and more likely a measure of financial advantage. On that point, Education Committee Chair Mark Treyger agreed, calling for unspecified admissions reforms.

Carranza hinted that the city is already looking at ways to change the process. He said the education department’s Chief Academic Officer is considering “more enlightened” ways to determine admissions, and also surveying what other cities do. He seemed to favor an approach that provides enrichment to everyone in the same classroom, rather than separating children by academic ability.

“What I’m not interested in doing is promulgating further segregation in our schools,” Carranza said. “I do think there is a role to play in creating enriched environments for students in every school — in every school — because every school has students who are on a spectrum of learning.”

But Peter Koo, who represents neighborhoods in Flushing, Queens, suggested things should stay as-is.

“We are all born with different talents,” he said. “You have to have G&T programs and you have to have the test.”

Any tweaks to gifted programs are likely to be met with fierce pushback, and de Blasio, who ultimately controls the education department, hasn’t shown any appetite for tackling the issue.

A new high school admissions method?

Carranza made waves when he described screens — competitive admissions standards used by many New York City schools — as “antithetical” to a public education system. Many blame screens for exacerbating segregation.

But Carranza said Wednesday that there are some “good” reasons to sort students.

When it comes to high schools that focus on particular themes such as the culinary arts, Councilmember Helen Rosenthal asked the chancellor whether it would be appropriate to ask why they’re interested in a school’s unique focus. Carranza said yes.

He appeared to be trying to find a way to allow schools to gauge a students’ genuine interest in different academic or vocational concentrations without requiring students to visit a school before applying. That approach was once part of a “limited unscreened” admissions policy that the education department recently eliminated because it could pose a burden for families challenged by transportation costs or inflexible work schedules.

Delay by committee

One of the most fiery exchanges was over the city’s School Diversity Advisory Group. The group, picked by the mayor, is tasked with putting teeth in the city’s diversity goals and plans.

The group’s first set of recommendations were released in February, and a second report on the thorny issues of admissions screens and gifted admissions is expected soon.

Treyger read a list of the group’s initial proposals and asked the chancellor whether the city supported each one. Carranza responded to each question by repeating that he thought the recommendations were good ideas but that he needed to discuss them with the group before committing to anything publicly.

Then Speaker Corey Johnson cut in.

“If you have the answers, and you know what the answer is, give the answer,” he told the chancellor. “It’s disrespectful to keep answering questions like that.”

What to do about specialized high schools?

Battle lines remained hardened around the what to do about the lack of diversity in the specialized high schools, a debate that overshadowed much of the hearing. Some council members tried to strike a delicate balance between the need for reforms and listening to the concerns of the Asian community, whose children make up a majority of the schools’ students.

Recent polling shows that most New Yorkers want to overhaul the single-test admissions system currently enshrined in state law. But before the hearing, a group of largely Asian-American advocates protested a city proposal to overhaul admissions.

One Asian-American student testified that her community shouldn’t be painted with a single brush and that she supported integration efforts.

“Integrating our schools will reduce racial bias and counter stereotypes,” said Bonnie Tang, who attended city public schools and is now in college.

Carranza touched on the undertones of the frequent argument that changing the admissions method would dampen academic quality.

“I will call that racist every time I hear it,” he said. “If you don’t want me to call you on it, don’t say it.”

Consensus around investments in schools

One rare point of agreement throughout the hearing: The city should do more to make sure black and Hispanic students get a strong education, starting early in their school careers. Positions on how to do that, however, once again varied — touching not only on arguments about gifted programs, but also on the need for more social workers, discipline reforms, and more teachers of color.

Education department officials repeatedly highlighted the city’s expansion of pre-K as an initiative that could help level the playing field.

As de Blasio weighs a presidential run, will his New York City education record be an asset or liability?

2019-05-15T21:51:00+00:00

Update: Multiple outlets are reporting that Mayor Bill de Blasio is launching a run for president

In South Carolina, he boasted about boosting funding for needy schools to a roomful of teachers. Next, a tiny crowd in Nevada gave him a standing ovation after touting his push to make free pre-K available for all of the city’s 4-year-olds. Then he heralded that same signature education policy as he sat around a long wooden table with about 20 culinary union members in downtown Las Vegas.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has traveled the country in recent months as he flirts with a possible 2020 presidential run, and the city’s public school system is among his most reliable talking points.

Though his frequent trips have drawn scorn locally — a recent poll found 76 percent of New Yorkers don’t think he should pursue the Democratic nomination — his education agenda could resonate nationally. Unlike some other Democratic candidates, such as Sen. Cory Booker, who supported education reforms that have since fallen out of favor in the party, de Blasio finds himself on the ascendant side of many education policy debates today.

He eschewed closing schools, a pet intervention of his predecessor, and instead poured nearly a billion dollars into trying to improve them. He has pushed to reduce suspensions and introduce restorative justice practices — a favored cause of civil rights and community groups. He rolled out an ambitious and costly pre-K program and ceased open hostilities with the city’s main teachers union, in part by doing verbal battle with charter schools.

A City Hall spokeswoman defended the mayor’s record, pointing to lower dropout rates and a climb in college enrollment. Proficiency rates on state tests have also trended up (though comparisons are hard to make due to constant changes to the exams), as have graduation rates.

“This didn’t happen by accident, but is the result of a clear plan to improve our schools and deliver equity and excellence to all New York City children,” spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie wrote in an email.

But looking more closely, de Blasio also has real liabilities when it comes to his education record. Renewal, his program for boosting struggling schools, has shown such mixed results that the mayor is ending it at the end of this school year. The charter sector, although capped for now, serves predominantly low-income families of color who have voted with their feet to attend the privately run schools. And his reluctance to tackle segregation more aggressively has led many to question his progressive bonafides.

His pre-K initiative has seen more success, but a union that represents a subset of teachers is threatening to strike, and providers say they are struggling. Graduation rates have also been rising across the country — meaning the jump may not be owing to de Blasio-specific policies.

“I don’t know that he’s done anything wrong necessarily, but I don’t think it’s clear he’s done anything right,” said Joshua Starr, the CEO of PDK International, an association for educators.

An end to bipartisanship

Twenty years ago, Republicans and even many high-profile Democrats seemed to agree on what schools needed: more accountability for teachers and schools, and more school choice in the form of charter schools for families dissatisfied with low-performing neighborhood schools. The suite of policies came to be known simply as education reform — and they were pursued by Republicans such as President George Bush and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Democrats such as President Barack Obama and Booker, a former Newark mayor who is now mounting his own bid for the White House.

But the reform agenda began to fray in New York City and beyond, thanks to sustained opposition to school closures, the pressure that growing charter sectors put on traditional school districts, and backlash to standardized testing. Organized opposition sprung up from Democrats, who supported a testing “opt-out” movement and opposed charters, championing a return to neighborhood schools. This was the wave de Blasio rode into office as a self-described political progressive.

“He is someone who has been a proud progressive leader for a long time. I think this is his moment in that regard,” said Richard Buery, a former deputy mayor who worked for de Blasio and is now with the KIPP charter network.

De Blasio’s predecessor aggressively closed large high schools with dismal graduation rates, prompting long-running battles with the teachers union and the families of displaced students. After taking office in 2014, de Blasio promised a different approach to improving schools. His solution, Renewal, called for a longer school day and wraparound social services for students, such as mental health supports or even washing machines on campus for homeless families.

Five years later, the needle on student learning barely budged for schools in the program, and de Blasio has moved to shutter more than a dozen of them.

Aaron Pallas, education policy chair at Teachers College, noted that school turnaround has proved difficult for leaders across the country, but that de Blasio is still likely to get knocked for Renewal’s lackluster results because the mayor made it a centerpiece of his education agenda.

“I think the mayor will take a lot of political hits if he does enter the race based on the fact that this cost a lot of money and didn’t seem to produce much in the way of positive effects for kids,” he said.

De Blasio’s stance on charter schools also resonates with many progressives, who are enjoying a rising voice in the party, even while this view has many detractors in some Democratic quarters of the city. De Blasio has constantly butted heads with the charter sector. Operators have accused the city of withholding public space for their schools, and the mayor has discounted charter schools’ generally high test scores by criticizing their focus on test prep and repeating an often-heard claim that charters don’t serve the neediest students. (The research paints a far more complicated picture.)

His critique may not matter much, as ultimately, the mayor has little say over the sector, which is largely regulated at the state level.

A genuine victory shows signs of strain

Even those, like Starr, who have been underwhelmed by programs like Renewal, say the mayor deserves credit for his push for universal pre-K.

“You have to give him a lot of props,” Starr said. “Pre-K is something he can certainly hang his hat on.”

Early childhood education has become a rare point of bipartisan agreement, and Democratic candidates have latched onto the issue with calls to expand access and affordability. On the national stage, de Blasio has the distinct advantage of having accomplished what others have only proposed: free, universal pre-K for all of the city’s 4-year-olds.

But what should be a clear win for de Blasio has begun to show strains from a surprising constituency: organized labor and pre-K operators themselves.

Most children enrolled in universal pre-K attend community-run programs, which have seen a steady drop in enrollment — and the funding that comes with it — as the city opens its own classrooms. Operators have also complained of what they say is dismally low per-student funding.

Teachers also say they are struggling. Those who work in community-run programs make up to 60 percent less than their counterparts who work in public schools, and are often women of color — an important base of the Democratic party. They have voted to strike in May if their demands for higher pay are not met.

Low salaries are an issue nationally for teachers of the country’s youngest students. Notably, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for affordable childcare also calls for early education teachers to earn salaries comparable to their K-12 colleagues.

In New York City, the threat of a work stoppage overshadows not just de Blasio’s most high-profile and successful education push. It also clashes vividly with his insistence that he wants to make New York City the “fairest big city in America.”

Kim Medina, who heads District Council 1707, which represents about 7,500 teachers in community organizations, said the pay gap her members are protesting represents “a policy that is dishonest, misogynistic, and racist.”

“My members understand that this administration only gives lip service to women of color,” she said at a recent rally on the steps of City Hall.

The question is whether any of these tension points matter to a broader electorate, especially when de Blasio has enjoyed almost universal praise for launching pre-K, and doing it in just two years. So far, the program has earned high marks for quality both locally and nationally. Parents have indicated they’re satisfied with the care and education their children are receiving — and that their families are now saving real money on childcare.

“It’s a winning issue and he definitely has a strong track record,” said Shael Polakow-Suransky, president of the Bank Street College of Education. “There’s a lot of demand for quality childcare in the country, whether you’re in a red state or a blue state.”

Integration progress — or a plan designed to fail?

The education story on the mind of many New Yorkers, however, has to do with the small number of students, disproportionately white and Asian American when compared to demographics citywide, who attend the city’s elite, specialized public high schools.

De Blasio has only reluctantly taken on efforts to spur more diversity in classrooms, even while overseeing one of the most segregated school systems in the country.

Early in his tenure, he described segregation as an intractable problem borne of “400 years of American history” and said the city should “ respect families who have made a decision to live in a certain area oftentimes because of a specific school” — an argument that seems to dismiss the need for redress.

Then he appointed a new chancellor, Richard Carranza, who in his first year has wasted no time calling out policies that have long been blamed for segregating students. Soon after Carranza’s arrival, the mayor proposed a contentious plan for integrating the city’s specialized high schools, which enroll only 10 percent black and Hispanic students. Citywide, those students make up almost two-thirds of enrollment.

Some cynical observers have mused that his ambitious proposal seems designed to fail: It relies on state officials to act and has been met with a court challenge. Lawmakers and the public have fought bruising battles over whether to overhaul admissions to the schools, with accusations of racism lobbed on both sides: A majority of specialized high school students are Asian. Meanwhile, the city hasn’t enacted any significant reforms that fall squarely within the mayor’s power to decide — though locally driven efforts have recently gained ground.

His stance on integration has ignited a firestorm locally. Although many progressives support integration, and some would knock him for not going far enough, it’s not clear how the issue would play among the different factions within the party nationally.

“I can’t even remember in my lifetime any presidential candidate saying anything about integration,” said Matt Gonzales, an integration advocate with the nonprofit New York Appleseed. “I don’t think it’s going to be relevant enough to make an impact.”

Alex Zimmerman and Sara Mosle contributed reporting.

These numbers show how much New York City middle schools might change with two new integration plans in place

2019-04-15T22:27:34+00:00

The first hints of whether two high-profile middle school integration plans are working came Monday when the education department revealed the latest admissions offer data.

After years of advocacy, and some harsh pushback, many schools in Brooklyn’s District 15 and Manhattan’s District 3 appear to be making progress towards enrolling a more diverse student body, the data shows.

[Read more about the integration plans here.]

But each school has a different story to tell, with some poised to shift their incoming sixth grade classes dramatically and others more likely to remain mostly the same. These early numbers could change, however: Families still have to decide whether to accept their child’s admissions offer, or choose to enroll elsewhere.

Here’s how admissions offers have shifted from year to year in the neighborhoods spanning Park Slope and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, and the Upper West Side and part of Harlem in Manhattan.

New York City can move forward with specialized high school changes aimed at integration, judge rules

2019-02-25T22:26:00+00:00

Plans to integrate New York City’s specialized high schools can move forward as a lawsuit targeting the admissions changes winds through court, a judge ruled on Monday.

The judge denied a temporary injunction meant to halt the city’s expansion of the Discovery program, which offers admission to students who scored below the cutoff on the exam that is the sole entrance criteria for specialized high schools. For now, the judge’s ruling will also enable the city to change who is eligible for Discovery, “which may in turn increase racial diversity” at the schools, the city argued in legal filings.

The decision came in time for the education department to begin informing students of their high school placement offers in March.

Parents and community organizations filed suit in December against the city’s plans, saying they violate the rights of Asian students.

But in his ruling, Judge Edgardo Ramos wrote that the plaintiffs were “not likely to succeed in showing discriminatory intent,” nor to prove their claims that the city’s changes violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Rather, Ramos wrote he believes “it is more likely than not that achieving racially diverse classrooms will be shown to be a compelling government interest.”

The Discovery changes are just one piece of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent push to integrate specialized high schools, where Asian students make up 62 percent of enrollment but black and Hispanic students constitute only 10 percent. Citywide, 16 percent of students are Asian and almost 70 percent are black and Hispanic. The mayor has also launched a lobbying effort to eliminate the entrance exam, which would require a change in state law, and instead offer admission to top students in every public middle school.

In previous legal filings, the city has said it will offer 528 spots through the Discovery program, a significant increase over the 250 students who entered through the program this year. With more seats dedicated to Discovery, the cutoff for admission based on the specialized high school exam alone (for students who don’t qualify under Discovery) is expected to be 486 out of around 700 — about five points higher than if the expansion were halted.

The judge wrote that the city’s changes to Discovery “are exactly the sort of alternative, race-neutral means to increase racial diversity,” that courts have suggested governments may use.

But Joshua Thompson, a senior attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, the firm representing the plaintiffs in the case, said Asian students will suffer because of the city’s moves.

“Absent the injunction, hundreds of Asian-American kids will be denied the opportunity to attend life-changing schools solely because they are from the ‘wrong’ race,” he said in an emailed statement.

Lawyers representing the city had asked for a ruling by Feb. 25 in order to send high school admissions offers to families by March 18, which is about two weeks later than originally planned. In New York City, students must apply to high school and are matched to their top choices, a process that is often stressful for families vying for the most sought-after schools.

“It has been a confusing, anxiety-ridden, complicated year in admissions for parents,” said Robin Aronow, a consultant who helps families navigate the application process through her company, School Search NYC.

Aronow said a delay in admissions could be especially problematic for parents who are considering private schools, many of which have set a March 14 date to accept offers.

“The longer it takes, the more anxious everyone becomes,” she said. “ They want to know how it’s going to directly affect their kid’s admissions.”

De Blasio: No decision yet on ‘Chief Integration Officer’ or other diversity recommendations

2019-02-22T22:00:02+00:00

Among the concrete suggestions that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s diversity task force made when it delivered its report earlier this month was one for a new executive at the city education department.

But de Blasio hasn’t yet decided whether to hire a “Chief Integration Officer,” the mayor said Friday during his weekly appearance on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. The radio show marked at least the third time since the School Diversity Advisory Group released its report Feb. 12 that de Blasio publicly said he planned to review the recommendations, without committing to any of them.

“Chancellor [Richard] Carranza and I are going to meet with the task force. I’m looking forward to carefully reviewing what they’ve come up with,” de Blasio said. He added, “I’m not ready to say yet what specific actions we’ll take.”

The comments echo similar ones he made last week during a weather briefing and at a press conference kicking off parent council elections.

But de Blasio signaled that he could take up at least some of the recommendations, which include setting local integration targets and adding ethnic studies courses. “Obviously, you know, I named them,” he said about the task force. “I wanted to see them do this work.”

The mayor also said again that changes could be coming to the city’s screened schools, which choose students on the basis of grades and test scores in a practice that has contributed to extreme academic and racial segregation. In September, also to Brian Lehrer, de Blasio said the city was “in the process of coming up with a series of changes around the screened schools.”

On Friday, more than five months later, he suggested that that process remained in the future. “We’re going to be reevaluating the whole approach to screened schools,” he said.

Here’s a list of five things the city could do to tackle screening. And here’s Lehrer’s entire exchange with de Blasio from Friday morning:

Lehrer: Also, on education, your school desegregation task force issued its report last week. I was going to ask you about that last Friday but then the Amazon deal broke down and that kind of took over from everything else for a few days. And your task force recommended among other things every school see if its population represents the district-wide and borough-wide population, and it recommended you name a Chief Integration Officer for the school system. Will you or Chancellor Carranza order that all schools take that inventory and will you appoint a Chief Integration Officer? Mayor: We’re going to – Chancellor Carranza and I are going to meet with the task force. I’m looking forward to carefully reviewing what they’ve come up with. Obviously, you know, I named them. I wanted to see them do this work. I’m not ready to say yet what specific actions we’ll take until we have that meeting to have a chance to really to think about. I do think what’s important here is to recognize we are in a much stronger place today than fine years ago because we have found a variety of ways to encourage diversity, to integrate our schools better, that many of which are grassroots based and therefore I think the ones that will work the best. Look at what happened in School District 1 in Manhattan, District 3 in the West Side of Manhattan – 1 is Lower Manhattan – District 15 Brownsville, Brooklyn, where the solutions came from the grassroots. And this is what we want to replicate. We’re working with a number of other districts to do that. While we’re working on the big citywide issues, obviously I put forward the idea to Albany of changing admissions for the specialized high schools which I think are one of our worst examples of segregation that can be fixed straight away by better policies. And I think the proposal we put forward would do that and would end the overreliance on a single standardized test. We’re going to be re-evaluating the whole approach to screened schools. There’s a lot going on but in terms of what the next steps will be I want to really sit down with the task force and talk it through with them.

An NYC task force released a new school diversity report. Here are 4 questions we’re asking about the city’s plans.

2019-02-12T23:56:22+00:00

A task force charged with tackling school segregation in New York City released a series of proposals Tuesday designed to make the city’s schools more representative of their broader neighborhoods.

At the center of the report is a push for each school in New York City — home to one of the most segregated school systems in America — to be more representative of district- and borough-level demographics.

To jump-start that process, the School Diversity Advisory Group zooms in on nine of the city’s 32 separate geographic districts as ripe for integration and argues those regions should be required to come up with diversity plans.

But the group’s recommendations do not clarify how they should be implemented, and the responsibility for translating them into policy will fall to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has shown little appetite for sweeping integration initiatives during his first five years in office.

Here are four questions we’ll be watching about what happens next:

Mayor Bill de Blasio has not prioritized desegregation. Will that change?

Since his election in 2013, de Blasio has only reluctantly talked about school diversity, refusing to use the words “integration” or “segregation” in public statements or even in policy documents. He has repeatedly said that segregation is the result of housing patterns and “400 years of American history” — factors he argues are beyond his control.

But advocates in recent years have helped elevate the issue, now seen as one of the city’s most high-profile education problems, and the task force’s report could create new pressure to act.

There are also some more recent signals the mayor may be open to changes. He has proposed overhauling the admissions process at the city’s elite specialized high schools to make them more racially representative (though the change requires cooperation from state lawmakers).

The city has approved diversity initiatives that are more limited in scope, such as middle school integration plans in part of Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Harlem. And his new schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, made an appearance at the press conference unveiling Tuesday’s report and has repeatedly said segregation is “unacceptable.”

“The criticism of my predecessor Chancellor [Carmen] Fariña was that she didn’t do anything about this,” Carranza said last May, referring to school segregation. “And here I am in my first month actually engaging in this conversation.”

The report says nine districts should be required to come up with desegregation plans. Will the education department embrace top-down mandates?

De Blasio and his first schools chief, Fariña, supported hyper-local efforts to promote integration, but argued such plans needed to happen “organically” instead of as mandates from the education department.

Some local communities have embraced that, including one swath of Brooklyn that chose to eliminate selective admissions across all of its middle schools in an effort to make them more diverse — an effort that bubbled up from parents and activists.

The mayor’s advisory group, however, is recommending that nine districts across the city be required to create diversity plans. With the specialized high school plan as one big exception, de Blasio has not embraced that kind of policymaking, instead emphasizing that any proposal should come from the local level. He did not attend the press conference announcing the report Tuesday.

“I really do believe that from the ground up is the best way to make lasting change,” de Blasio said in September in response to a question about top-down segregation efforts.

Even if the mayor embraced a more active city role in crafting integration efforts, how would that work?

The biggest question mark at the center of the new report is what tools should be used to ensure that schools are more representative. Its authors hint at some possibilities: taking a look at selective enrollment policies that exacerbate segregation; new admissions procedures that take demographic factors and parent choices into account; and shaking up racially divided gifted and talented programs.

But while the advisory group says a more detailed report will come later this school year, their first set of recommendations do not offer a clear answer, and the policy options they suggest could come with tradeoffs and political headaches.

Take selective admissions, a process where some schools use test scores, attendance, and other factors into account in enrolling students. Screened programs proliferated under the Bloomberg administration, partly to keep more affluent and white parents enrolled in public schools. Though Carranza has suggested that screening is “antithetical” to public education, reducing screens could also make integration more challenging if it causes middle class families to flee the system.

Still, the advisory group emphasized that the report is just a first step, and Carranza said he is eager to dive in.

“I look forward to working with Mayor de Blasio in making the recommendations in the report truly the topic of conversation,” Carranza said. “I’ll have a lot more to say about the specific recommendations and how we move forward together.”

How quickly could changes get off the ground?

De Blasio’s second term is already underway, so any changes under his watch would have to come within the next three years.

Previous local integration efforts have taken years to gain traction. In Manhattan’s District 3, for example, an effort to redraw local school zones required scores of community meetings and years of advocacy efforts. Additionally, a city grant program designed to help districts create their own integration plans is already behind schedule.

For its part, the mayor’s advisory group says its efforts are designed to be systemic and last beyond de Blasio’s tenure. The recommendations include hiring a chief integration officer, who would be responsible for ensuring schools make progress toward their integration goals and who could help ensure continuity after de Blasio leaves office.

Christina Veiga contributed to this story.

De Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group issues its first report — but it doesn’t touch the SHSAT or gifted and talented

2019-02-12T12:00:24+00:00

After integration advocates found themselves underwhelmed by official plans to spur more diversity in New York City schools in summer 2017, city leaders promised more work would be done.

Tasked with that work: a School Diversity Advisory Group, appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, that many hoped would push the city to act more boldly and systemically to integrate in one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

More than a year of meetings and months of delays later, the advisory group on Tuesday released its recommendations for how to do that, calling for action that is “more ambitious” and “aggressive” but also “realistic.”

“We need schools that meet the learning styles and needs of all our students and to do that, our children must be learning together and from each other,” the report notes.

Among the recommendations, the group of students, parents, academics, and advocates calls for new, more tailored integration targets for elementary and middle schools based on district- and borough-level demographics, before aiming to mirror citywide enrollment.

In districts with an overwhelming number of disadvantaged students, the group says the education department should focus on measures to ensure schools are serving similar shares of the most needy children, such as homeless students.

But the report zeros in on nine districts where group members say student demographics are ideal for integration, saying those districts should be required to devise diversity plans. Those districts are 1, 2, 3, 13, 15, 22, 27, 28, 31. Some of those places — districts 1, 3, and 15 — have already changed admissions systems to encourage integration.

Other recommendations include: the creation of a task force to consider ways to make PTA fundraising more equitable, using diversity measures in school quality reports, and robust ethnic studies courses for students.

The report is only a first step. Some of the most explosive issues — such as what to do about gifted and talented programs and selective admissions processes called screening — are expected to be addressed later. The report also steers clear of the mayor’s proposal to overhaul admissions at specialized high schools in a bid to better integrate them, an effort that has sparked intense backlash and prompted a lawsuit.

Many of the recommendations don’t come as a surprise, as they echo the calls of a growing community of integration activists — many of whom are on the committee.

The report traces a long history of segregation in New York City schools and draws on dozens of research studies to make the case that more diverse schools benefit all students.

Its view of integration is expansive and based on a definition created by student advocates who have called for looking beyond enrollment policies that simply move children around. Instead, they argue that integration efforts should also create more equity within schools by focusing, for example, on the resources available to them and discipline policies.

“We believe it is necessary to tackle the issue of segregation in New York City public schools from all angles of a student’s experience,” said Julisa Perez, a member of IntegrateNYC, a student advocacy group. “Having this report address all of these issues is a big step.”

The group’s definition of diversity is also broad, including race and economic status but also students with disabilities, those who are learning English as a new language, and cultural and religious differences.

Whether the report will lead to real change remains to be seen. The recommendations are not binding, and with just three years left in de Blasio’s term, time to act is dwindling for the current administration. Other controversial school reform efforts have gotten stuck in committees under the mayor’s watch, including recommendations for updating a 1998 agreement that governs how police officers do their jobs in city schools.

While de Blasio has avoided aggressive action to undo segregation, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has been far more blunt about the need to take on the issue. At Tuesday’s press conference, the chancellor said he would be weighing in on the suggestions in the coming “weeks,” but did not offer a specific timeline.

“I look forward to working with Mayor de Blasio in making the recommendations in the report truly the topic of conversation as we move forward,” Carranza said. “I’ll have a lot more to say about the specific recommendations and how we move forward together.”