Chalkbeat

70 years after Brown, schools remain separate by race and class. One advocate says integration still matters.

2026-07-21T21:33:12+00:00

Ary Amerikaner is on a mission to make America integrate schools again.

A lawyer and education policy advocate who worked in the Obama Education Department, Amerikaner cofounded and leads an organization called Brown’s Promise. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education prohibited legally mandated segregation.

The group is hoping to influence the national conversation, while also making direct change in a handful of specific states.

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NJ Supreme Court won’t weigh in yet on school segregation case

2026-05-12T17:37:52+00:00

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This story was first published by the New Jersey Monitor.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to fast-track an eight-year-old lawsuit that alleges the state’s schools are unconstitutionally segregated by race, deciding that the case must first be heard by an appellate court before the high court can get involved.

Latino Action Network, a plaintiff in the case, had asked for the Supreme Court to step in “so that justice will not further be delayed — and thereby denied,” but court officials announced Monday that the justices decided not to weigh in yet. Lawrence Lustberg, attorney for Latino Action Network, said the plaintiffs are disappointed “given that it is such an important case and that any delay hurts New Jersey’s children.”

“We will continue our pursuit of justice in the Appellate Division, and are confident in the merits of our case,” Lustberg said.

Latino Action Network and the other plaintiffs — a group of parents and advocacy groups — filed the lawsuit against the state in May 2018. They claim that the state’s public school system is segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines, which violates the New Jersey Constitution requirement that students receive a “thorough and efficient education.”

In New Jersey, students typically attend schools in the districts where they live, which the plaintiffs argue has led to de facto segregation. They cite a University of California at Los Angeles study that found New Jersey has consistently ranked as one of the most segregated school systems in the nation.

The case has slowly wound through the court system. In October 2023, a trial court judge agreed with plaintiffs that there was a “marked and persistent racial imbalance” in New Jersey schools but said the plaintiffs failed to prove the state’s school system as a whole is unconstitutionally segregated.

The parties then entered a mediation process, which ran from late 2023 to early 2025 and failed to lead to any agreement or settlement.

Last year, an appellate court agreed to hear the plaintiffs’ case but a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

The Sherrill administration opposed the plaintiffs’ move to ask the Supreme Court to step in, saying they have “so far failed to present any administrable, constitutional remedy.”

How to make NYC’s high school process fairer? Add support and simplify, advocates argue.

2026-04-14T15:57:34+00:00

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Debates over how to make New York City’s high school admissions system fairer have often focused on the criteria schools use to select students.

But a new report released Tuesday urges the city to take a closer look at the application process itself, arguing that it favors families with time and resources.

Each year, tens of thousands of eighth graders choose 12 or more options from a list of over 700 programs spread across roughly 400 high schools, with varying admissions rules. Some families spend hours poring through information online, visiting schools in person or virtually, submitting supplementary application materials, or even hiring paid admissions consultants.

Many other families lack the time, money, language, computer access, or support to decipher the complex application system, leaving their kids with a more limited set of high school choices.

“That process is going to be complex no matter what,” said Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed and one of the report’s co-authors. “The more that we can do to recognize that and simplify it so that everyone has equal access to a public high school, the better off we’ll be.”

But simplifying the admissions process can only go so far, the authors said: The city must also do more to support families at the biggest disadvantage in navigating the admissions process, including those whose first language is not English and those living in temporary housing.

Middle schools should have counselors and curriculum dedicated to helping students prepare for the high school admissions process — similar to the way high schools have staff and classes dedicated to helping students transition to college and careers, the report by Appleseed and Fordham Law School’s Feerick Center for Social Justice contends. The report is the third in a series of admissions reform recommendations from a committee that includes academics, parents, and service providers. (Education Department staffers attend meetings, but don’t play a role in issuing recommendations.)

The authors identified some ways to streamline the process for families.

In many cases, a single high school offers multiple programs that require separate applications but in practice operate similarly, according to the authors. Some of those programs could be consolidated in order to cut down on the number of options applicants have to consider, the report argues. Bayside High School in Queens, for example, has eight programs that are all separate for admissions purposes.

The multiple program options within a single school was one of the things that caught Brooklyn parent Elysha Louison off guard when she began looking at high schools with her eighth grade son last fall.

“You click on a school, and then there could be 5-10 different schools within that school,” she said. “There’s no way you would have the time … to research all these schools.”

Education Department officials have taken steps toward making the application process more centralized and transparent, including standardizing the admissions criteria at most selective high schools, adding a tool that allows families to estimate their chances of admission, and listing information about schools on a central website, the authors said.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to support every student and family in successfully navigating the high school admissions process,” said Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull. She added that the city offers in-person admissions help at family welcome centers and has a call center with support in multiple languages.

For Louison, better preparation starting in seventh grade, when students’ grades in core classes count for admissions at selective high schools, would have made a big difference.

“They tell you in seventh grade, ‘You’re going to apply [for] high school, get ready’… but they don’t really tell you what the process is like,” said Louison, who got additional support with the application process through the youth development organization Boy’s Club of New York.

Helping middle schools to better support families through the high school application process will require additional funding and staff, the authors said. Guidance counselors are already stretched thin and have little extra capacity to serve as admissions counselors. As of this year, there was one guidance counselor for every 259 students on average across city schools, according to Education Department data.

The authors point to a model the city could emulate: Several nonprofits run “middle school success centers” devoted to supporting students in underresourced communities with the high school application process.

Berg hopes that by providing more and better information to families, the city can also start to chip away at another feature of the application process that adds to the stress: the “scarcity mindset” that drives a disproportionate number of applications to a small number of well-known, often selective, schools.

The Education Department’s “past and present policy decisions have fueled a false notion that only a handful of ‘good’ schools can meet a student’s academic needs,” Berg said in a statement. “That narrative must change.”

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

New Jersey appellate court will hear school segregation suit, bringing the case closer to resolution

2025-07-11T16:55:39+00:00

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A coalition of plaintiffs that sued New Jersey for the de facto racial and socioeconomic segregation that persists in its public school system has scored a win.

The state’s appellate court agreed this week to take on Latino Action Network v. New Jersey, a move that brings the case closer to a resolution after seven years of trudging through the court system.

The plaintiffs alleged in the suit that the state is responsible for the pervasive segregation that exists across its 600-plus school districts, entrenched in part due to a rule requiring students to enroll in their hometown school district. New Jersey’s constitution is unique in its explicit ban on school segregation.

“We’re confident the court will conclude that the trial court erred by not ruling in October 2023 that the egregious levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation that pervade New Jersey’s public schools violated plaintiffs’ constitutional rights,” said Robert Kim, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the executive director of Education Law Center.

Latino Action Network and NAACP New Jersey State Conference are among the social justice groups and families that filed the lawsuit against New Jersey in 2018. Five years later, a trial court judge issued a mixed opinion that stopped short of ordering the state to fix its segregated school system. The lengthy trial court opinion stated that the plaintiffs demonstrated persistent “racial imbalance in numerous school districts” but failed “to prove that the state’s entire educational system is unconstitutionally segregated.”

This case has been one of few nationally to address systemic racial and socioeconomic segregation in schools on a statewide level. A decision could have reverberations across the country at a time when policies to strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion practices are under threat by the federal government.

Following the trial court’s mixed ruling in 2023, the parties entered a mediation phase that ended earlier this year after they couldn’t agree on possible remedies to the segregated school system. An agreement through mediation would have avoided years of litigation and saved taxpayer money.

In May, the state pushed back on the plaintiffs’ motion to have the higher court review the trial court opinion. The state defendants argued that there is insufficient legal record for an appellate court to review the case at this point and that it should stay at the trial court level.

A few weeks later, the plaintiffs in court documents argued that the state’s opposition to have the appeals court step in was a stalling tactic in an effort to kick the case to the next governor’s administration.

“Regrettably, the state’s apparent goal in this litigation is to continue to stall its resolution so that the issue becomes the responsibility of the next administration. But its alarming denial of responsibility, in and of itself, cries out for review,” wrote the plaintiffs’ attorneys in court documents dated June 13.

Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, is serving the last year of his two-term tenure. Democratic candidate U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Republican candidate Jack Ciaterelli, a former state assemblyman, won their party’s nominations in June and will be facing off in November to succeed Murphy.

A court date had not been scheduled as of Friday.

School choice group’s brief approved to enter case

The New Jersey Policy Institute, a think tank that supports school choice, made a motion in May to enter a brief to the court record about a possible remedy the court should consider. The group wants to see an expansion of the state’s existing interdistrict school choice program as a way to create “greater diversity in New Jersey schools,” the brief stated.

The appellate court also granted that group’s motion, but noted that a merits panel will determine if and to what extent the group can participate in oral arguments, court records showed.

The voluntary interdistrict school choice program allows school districts to opt in as a “choice district,” but has been frozen since 2015 with a waitlist of more than 2,000 students, the group stated in its brief.

“By accepting NJPI’s brief, the Appellate Division acknowledges that the public interest is served by considering NJPI’s policy-based solution as a potential remedy,” said Rosemary Becchi, the group’s president and founder.

Are New Jersey’s schools segregated?

The plaintiffs’ lawsuit drew data from a 2017 UCLA Civil Rights Project study that found New Jersey ranked sixth in the nation in terms of the highest segregation of Black students and seventh in segregation of Latino students.

The suit cited enrollment data for 23 districts, including Newark, with significantly high percentages of Latino and Black students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. The state, the lawsuit argued, is in violation of its constitution, which is explicit in its ban on segregation.

But, the state countered, segregation in 23, or 3.41%, of the state’s 674 districts didn’t establish a statewide violation.

Despite New Jersey’s high ranking in segregation of Latino and Black students, most voters remain unaware of that data and of the lawsuit at hand, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll last year.

In a recent interview, Dan Cassino, the executive director of that polling center, said a ruling in this case ahead of the November gubernatorial election would “throw a bomb” into the race. “We’ve got candidates who are going to do their best to talk around the issue of racial segregation in schools but that issue is going to keep coming up,” Cassino previously said.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

In school segregation case, New Jersey opposes appeal as think tank urges court to consider remedy

2025-06-03T22:44:10+00:00

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The ongoing court case that accuses New Jersey of failing to fix de facto segregation in its public school system recently marked seven years since it was filed and is no closer to resolution, as two new filings signal more years of expensive litigation ahead.

In one of the briefs submitted to the courts last week, the state opposed the plaintiffs’ recent attempt for an appeal, arguing the case should continue through a trial court. In the other, a think tank asked the court to consider an expansion to the state’s existing interdistrict school choice program as a remedy to the racial and socioeconomic imbalance that the plaintiffs have noted in their lawsuit.

Both filings come amid a divisive political climate, as policies protecting diversity, equity, and inclusion are threatened and efforts to water down the country’s racist history are rampant under a second Trump administration.

The lawsuit, filed against the state in 2018 by families and social justice groups that comprise the plaintiffs, targets school segregation on a statewide scale — a rare occurrence nationally and the first of its kind for New Jersey.

Amid the ongoing historic litigation, the state’s political climate may also be shifting as a contentious primary race for the next governor heats up between five Republican and six Democratic candidates. Some candidates, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, have been outspoken on where they stand on school desegregation efforts. Baraka, for instance, supports those efforts.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged the state is responsible for the de facto racial and socioeconomic segregation that persists in its public education system of 600-plus school districts, and provided enrollment data for 23 districts with significantly high percentages of Latino and Black students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. The state therefore is in violation of its constitution, which is explicit in its ban on segregation, the lawsuit argued.

A 2017 UCLA Civil Rights Project study, cited in the case, found that New Jersey ranked sixth in the nation in terms of the highest segregation of Black students and seventh in segregation of Latino students.

The defendants, composed of the state school board, education department, and education commissioner, countered that segregation in 23, or 3.41%, of the state’s 674 districts didn’t establish a statewide violation.

A trial court judge issued a mixed opinion in 2023 that stopped short of ordering the state to fix its segregated school system and found the plaintiffs failed to prove segregation was statewide, which prompted the parties to attempt to reach a resolution in mediation.

That attempt ultimately failed earlier this year, leading to the plaintiffs motion in April to appeal the trial court judge’s opinion.

The state disputed the plaintiffs’ appeal in its brief last week for the appellate court to deny the plaintiffs’ request that called for the higher court to step in on the case.

Instead, the case should continue proceedings through the trial court, the attorneys for the state defendants wrote in the 46-page brief. Among the points raised, the state argued that there is insufficient legal record for an appellate court to review the case at this point.

“Rather, because of the significance of the claim, the interests of justice demand that this court review this matter only after a sufficient record is developed and the trial court has an opportunity to carefully examine the claim in light of such record,” the state’s opposition brief stated.

The state’s opposition came the same week the New Jersey Policy Institute, a new think tank group that supports school-choice efforts, filed an amicus brief, which is a legal filing to enter the court record from a party that’s not involved in the case. The group wants the courts to consider expanding the state’s existing interdistrict school choice program “as a vehicle for creating greater diversity in New Jersey schools,” the brief states.

The voluntary program, which allows school districts to opt-in as a “choice district,” has been frozen since 2015 but has a waitlist of more than 2,000 students, the group states in its brief.

The group also states that expanding the program “will produce no significant additional administrative burden for the state” since it’s been in place since 1999 and it “presents a ready-made solution that can be implemented almost immediately.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey school segregation case: Plaintiffs ask higher court to step in

2025-04-17T00:41:34+00:00

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A coalition of plaintiffs that sued New Jersey for its failure to fix deeply-rooted de facto segregation in its public school system has asked a higher court to reverse a trial court decision that denied a clear ruling in their favor.

Latino Action Network and NAACP New Jersey State Conference, among other groups and families that comprise the plaintiffs, sued the state in 2018. Using publicly available data, they argued that New Jersey’s public school system, one of the most segregated in the nation, was unconstitutionally segregated by race and socioeconomic background.

A trial court judge issued a mixed opinion in 2023 that stopped short of ordering the state to fix its segregated school system, which prompted the parties to attempt to reach a resolution in mediation.

But by February, after more than a year of meetings, the mediation discussions proved fruitless, bouncing the case back to the courts just as the Trump administration began directly targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices in K-12 and higher education spaces.

This case has been one of few nationally to address systemic racial and socioeconomic segregation on a statewide level. A decision on the case could have reverberations across the country at a time when policies to strengthen DEI practices are under threat by the federal government.

Now, the plaintiffs want the appellate court to step in and make a judgement on the state’s liability for allowing de facto segregation to endure in its school system despite it violating the state constitution — which is explicit in its ban on school segregation.

“Indeed, the trial court agreed with plaintiffs on the central constitutional questions before it and acknowledged that the state defendants failed to act to correct this segregation,” attorneys wrote in court documents filed on Tuesday in the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division. “But rather than reach the only logical conclusion that followed — that the state defendants violated plaintiffs’ constitutional rights — the trial court left the question of liability for another day.”

The plaintiffs are asking the higher court to grant its motion to appeal, allow for another full briefing and argument, and reverse Judge Robert Lougy’s decision “so that the parties can finally proceed to the remedial phase of this litigation,” the court documents stated.

Opposition briefs from the defendants, which includes the state’s Education Department and education commissioner, are due April 28.

When the cases were being argued in trial court, the state’s defense pushed back on the plaintiff’s data, saying it was relying only on demographics from a select group of school districts — which included cities such as Newark and Camden — and questioned if it was a far-reaching statewide issue.

State agencies had not responded to requests for comment by publication.

Plaintiffs argue judge’s ruling had flaws

In Lougy’s 99-page opinion, he stated that the plaintiffs demonstrated persistent “racial imbalance in numerous school districts” but failed “to prove that the state’s entire educational system is unconstitutionally segregated.” The attorneys for the plaintiffs argued in court documents this week that Lougy’s conclusion “defies logic” and “fails to fulfill the court’s duty” to order remedies for “constitutional wrongs like those at issue here.”

They also argued against another part of Lougy’s opinion about there being “no practical solution” to school segregation. That finding, they stated in their argument, was “premature, irrelevant to the question of liability,” and unsupported by what was on the record, according to court documents.

In challenging Lougy’s opinion on possible solutions, the plaintiffs pointed out the possible remedies they provided during the trial court argument that would help integrate schools. Those remedies included interdistrict magnet schools and removing the state’s residency statute, which prevents families from enrolling their students across municipal boundaries.

The plaintiffs also argued that there continues to be an injustice to students across the state who are enrolled in segregated schools — defined as 90% or more of the student population identifying as non-white — the longer this case remains in litigation.

Among the plaintiffs are students who were in the fifth grade when the lawsuit was filed seven years ago and are now about to graduate from high school in two months, the court documents show. Other students among the plaintiffs had not yet started kindergarten at the time the lawsuit was filed and will be headed to the seventh grade this fall, according to court documents.

“The protracted nature of this litigation…has already delayed the resolution of this matter and caused real and irreparable harm to students,” the attorneys for the plaintiffs stated in Tuesday’s court documents. “For some, including some plaintiffs in this case, it is too late.”

Not granting the appeal or addressing the issues they presented “would consign yet another generation of New Jersey students to a similar fate,” they added.

Few are aware of New Jersey’s school segregation

New Jersey was ranked as having the sixth most segregated school system for Black students and seventh most segregated school system for Latino students in a 2017 report on the state’s segregated schools from The Civil Rights Project. Even so, most New Jersey voters were unaware of the lawsuit and few were aware that the state has among the most segregated school systems in the country, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll from the fall.

Though not originally listed as defendants in the suit, representatives of charter schools and renaissance schools became intervenors on the case, meaning they have a stake in its outcome. In New Jersey, renaissance schools are a charter-district hybrid, run by a nonprofit but funded by the public school district at a greater rate than charter schools.

Charter school representatives have previously stated that charter schools could play a role in integrating public schools as they allow for enrollment across municipal boundaries.

Recent research has shown racial and economic school segregation has increased in the last 30 years nationwide, particularly in large school districts. A 2024 report out of Stanford and the University of Southern California found that policies favoring school choice and parental preference, in addition to the end of court oversight that required school integration for certain districts, were two major drivers of the increase.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado school attendance zones keep racial and socioeconomic segregation going, new report finds

2025-03-31T23:42:45+00:00

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Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones at least every four years with a “civil rights focus.” State lawmakers should increase funding to transport students to and from school. And attorneys, advocates, and community organizations should embrace the right to sue over school assignments that increase racial segregation.

Those are among the recommendations in a new report from the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “Examining the Racial Impact of Public School Attendance Zones in Colorado” concludes that the way Colorado draws school attendance boundaries and assigns students to schools mirrors segregated housing patterns and results in low-income families having less access to high-quality schools.

“This segregation fuels a widespread belief that schools serving predominantly white and affluent students are inherently better than those serving predominantly students of color or low-income families,” an accompanying policy brief said.

Other reports from local and national think tanks and advocacy organizations have reached similar conclusions. While some local school officials, such as the Denver school board, have talked about possible solutions, the federal Trump administration has framed efforts to increase racial diversity in schools as discrimination that could trigger civil rights investigations.

The Colorado Advisory Committee is a 10-person group of bipartisan appointed volunteers. Each state has an advisory committee that produces reports on civil rights issues ranging from housing discrimination to voting rights to the use of excessive force by police officers.

In its latest report, the Colorado committee found that “thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of Colorado students are likely to be assigned to schools in violation” of a federal law that says assigning a student to a school outside their neighborhood is unlawful “if it has segregating effects.”

The committee’s recommended solutions attempt to balance strong support for neighborhood schools with allowing families to choose the best school for their child. School choice, or the ability for a student to apply to attend any public school, is enshrined in state law.

The committee advocated for what it called “controlled choice,” which it said could mean that popular schools reserve seats for students who live outside the neighborhood or that schools give priority admission to non-neighborhood students who live the closest.

To produce its report, the committee held hearings in 2023 to gather input from national experts including university professors, the author of a book on school attendance zones, and representatives from think tanks across the political spectrum.

The committee also convened a group of 10 local experts including Brenda Dickhoner from the conservative advocacy organization Ready Colorado; Kathy Gebhardt, who was then a member of the Boulder Valley school board and now sits on the State Board of Education; former Aurora Public Schools superintendent Rico Munn; and Nicholas Martinez, a former teacher who heads the education reform organization Transform Education Now.

The committee’s other recommendations include:

The civil rights divisions of the federal education and justice departments should review options for enforcing “the permissible and impermissible use of race in drawing attendance boundaries and setting school assignment policies.”
Colorado lawmakers should correct “the systemic racial and ethnic disparities” caused by the state’s school transportation system, which does not require school districts to provide transportation to students who use school choice.
State lawmakers should improve Colorado’s school choice system, including by adopting a uniform school enrollment window statewide and providing families with more information about schools’ discipline policies, class sizes, and other factors.
Colorado school districts should revise their school attendance zones and student assignment policies at least every four years and “consider racial and ethnic integration as part of the rezoning process.”

“Redrawing school boundaries every few years can help prevent segregation from becoming entrenched while still allowing students to maintain a sense of stability in their educational environment,” the committee’s policy brief said.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey school segregation case: Back to the courts after mediation fails to forge an agreement

2025-02-19T02:10:34+00:00

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The nearly seven-year public school segregation case will head back to the courts after New Jersey and a coalition of plaintiffs could not reach an agreement after 15 months of mediation.

The plaintiffs, a group of advocates and families, have until April 15 to file a motion that would begin the process of appealing a complex court ruling on the case from the fall of 2023.

In a joint status report filed on Tuesday to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, the parties stated that “it no longer appears likely that further mediation will be constructive.” They could not reach an agreement, which could have led to an overhaul of the state’s public school system.

The latest development comes as the Trump administration targets diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices in the education space, leaving questions as to how the state would encourage or enforce integration.

There are also shifts in political priorities looming in New Jersey, as Gov. Phil Murphy’s second term nears an end and a contentious gubernatorial primary in June heats up with four Republicans and six Democrats, including Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka, competing to be his successor.

The team of attorneys representing the plaintiffs said in a joint statement that they had aimed for an agreement “that would provide legal assurance that the state would take concrete steps” to offer all children “the opportunity to attend an integrated school that offers a high-quality education.” In addition, they also wanted the state to agree to “providing for the essential financial support and academic enhancement of all currently segregated school districts.”

“We are disappointed that an agreement could not be reached to settle the litigation in a manner that is consistent with these objectives,” wrote the team of attorneys in the statement issued Tuesday evening. Lawrence S. Lustberg and Ruth O’Herron of Gibbons law firm are the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Mediation discussions were under strict confidentiality rules and representatives from both parties have been tight-lipped about progress. In reports filed last month, the attorneys said an end to mediation talks would be near, but then later submitted a request to continue negotiations.

“The state of New Jersey is deeply committed to providing the highest quality education for all students of every demographic background,” said Tyler Jones, Murphy’s spokesman, in an emailed statement Tuesday night. “While the parties return to the litigation, the state remains steadfast in its efforts to provide the most robust educational opportunities possible for all students and continues to be open to reaching a mutual resolution of the matter.”

New Jersey was ranked as having the sixth most segregated school system for Black students and seventh most segregated school system for Latino students in a 2017 report on the state’s segregated schools from The Civil Rights Project. Yet, most New Jersey voters were unaware of the lawsuit and few were even aware that the state has among the most segregated school systems in the country, a Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll from November showed.

The case stretches back to 2018. The Latino Action Network, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, and the Urban League of Essex County, among other groups, joined families of nine students who attended schools across New Jersey, including Newark, in a lawsuit against the state that claimed its segregated school system violates the state constitution, which is rare in its explicit ban on school segregation.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs highlighted state enrollment data that showed 30% of Latino students and 25% of Black students attend schools where the non-white student enrollment is between 90-99% — the measure used by researchers to identify segregated schools. They also specifically noted 23 districts with high percentages of Latino and Black students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, which included Newark and Irvington, among others.

In its defense, the state argued that segregation in a handful of districts didn’t establish a statewide violation.

In the fall of 2023, after five years of litigation, a state Superior Court judge issued a lengthy ruling that avoided overwhelmingly favoring one side over the other and stopped short of answering key questions, including what the state should be required to do next.

Some possible remedies, such as creating new magnet schools that enroll students from multiple districts, could be expensive yet popular with families. Other potential measures, such as allowing students to transfer schools or redrawing district boundaries, have historically faced resistance from wealthy white parents and taxpayers in New Jersey who fear an influx of poor students of color will undermine their community’s schools and home values.

“A court judgment is now the surest way to achieve a remedy for this unacceptable reality, in which hundreds of thousands of the state’s children attend school in segregated settings,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in the statement.

“We are greatly disappointed with the collapse of the mediation,” said Javier Robles, president of the Latino Action Network. “We will continue to pursue every option to end the disgraceful legacy of segregation in New Jersey schools. This is a generational struggle, and we will do our part.”

Representatives from the other plaintiff advocacy groups also issued statements Tuesday night with similar disappointment and determination to continue the legal fight.

Harry Lee, president and CEO of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, said in an emailed statement that charter schools, which can enroll students across municipal boundaries, could be “part of the solution to ensure that all New Jersey students have access to high quality, integrated public schools.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Board proposal calls for adjusting Denver school boundaries every 10 years

2025-02-07T04:01:31+00:00

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Denver Public Schools’ superintendent would have to “analyze and adjust” school enrollment boundaries every 10 years or less under a proposal being considered by the school board.

Board member Scott Esserman, who introduced the proposal Thursday, said it was a long time coming. The district hasn’t systematically reviewed its school boundaries in several decades, since it was the subject of a school desegregation lawsuit that led to widespread busing.

The proposal, known as Executive Limitation 19, would require the superintendent to analyze and adjust school boundaries in conjunction with the federal Census.

It would direct the superintendent to solicit feedback from the community, create “safe and accessible” walking routes to school, and minimize the walking distance within each boundary to reduce the need for district-provided transportation.

The board has not yet set a date to vote on the proposal.

In 1969, eight Denver families sued the district over the rescinding of several resolutions to integrate Denver’s schools, including through boundary changes. The court case, known as Keyes v. School District No. 1, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in Denver Public Schools adopting a complex, cross-city system of busing to integrate its schools.

After busing ended in 1995, many Denver schools once again became segregated by race and family income. In the case of the East and Manual high school boundaries, former school board members have said their decision in 1995 exacerbated the divide.

The proposed Executive Limitation 19 would require the superintendent to avoid creating enrollment boundaries or enrollment zones — which are big boundaries containing several schools — that “socioeconomically segregate schools.”

But the power to prevent such segregation through boundary changes is complicated because about 42% of DPS students choose to attend a school that is not their “boundary school,” according to district data.

School choice, or the ability for students to apply to attend any public school, is enshrined in Colorado law. DPS’ one-stop application makes it easy — and in the case of students who live in enrollment zones, all but mandatory — for families to use school choice.

Board members on Thursday acknowledged that they’d have to grapple with school choice.

“I’m almost afraid to think of the complexity of how school choice layers into this conversation,” board member John Youngquist said.

Some parents and students have suggested that changing school boundaries could help address another problem: declining enrollment at some schools.

Students at West High School asked the district last year to reevaluate West’s boundary. Denver funds its schools per student, and West students said declining enrollment at their school meant it didn’t offer as many business, language, or art classes as larger high schools.

Low enrollment also puts schools at risk for closure. The school board voted in 2023 to close three small schools that year and again in November to close or partially close another 10 schools with low enrollment at the end of this school year.

But the pervasiveness of school choice could mean school boundary changes wouldn’t truly fix that problem, board members said.

District data shows that at some of the elementary schools set for closure this spring, a significant number of the students who live in the boundary chose other schools this year. At Columbian Elementary School, more than 80% of students who live in the boundary chose to attend a school other than Columbian, district data shows.

“I don’t think we can fix any of our enrollment issues by shifting enrollment boundaries,” Esserman said. However, he added that he believes shifting boundaries would allow the district to “improve the way that we’re serving students.”

The proposal is similar to one floated by a former board member in 2023. However, that proposal would have required the superintendent to analyze and adjust school boundaries every four years. It also would have capped elementary school enrollment at 600 students. The board voted in 2023 to postpone a discussion on that proposal and never returned to it.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

In New Jersey school segregation case, an end to mediation talks nears

2025-01-22T00:23:01+00:00

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Mediation in the legal battle to fix New Jersey’s segregated schools could conclude in February, marking a pivotal moment in the case after more than a year of closed-door talks to find common ground on remedies, court documents show.

The state and the group of advocates and families that comprise the plaintiffs began the massive undertaking to jointly seek solutions that would address New Jersey’s deeply-rooted racial and socioeconomic school segregation in November 2023.

The historic lawsuit, filed six years ago against New Jersey’s state school board, education department, and acting education commissioner, argued that schools statewide are unlawfully segregated. Lawsuits targeting school segregation on a statewide scale are a rare occurrence nationally, and this was the first one of its kind for New Jersey. A Superior Court judge in October 2023 issued a complex ruling that then prompted the parties to enter a mediation process.

Should an agreement outlining remedies result from mediation, there could be fundamental changes to the state’s education system that sets a path toward school desegregation efforts. However, if the parties don’t reach an agreement in mediation, more years of legal proceedings could be ahead, delaying any large-scale attempts at desegregation.

After 14 months of mediation talks, which were under strict confidentiality rules, a conclusion appears to be imminent.

“It may be that the parties are close to reaching the end of the mediation process,” wrote Lawrence Lustberg of Gibbons Law, the lead counsel for the plaintiffs, in a court filing earlier this month.

The outcome of these mediation discussions could have reverberations across the country at a time when policies to fortify and codify diversity, equity, and inclusion practices are being threatened by a second Trump administration.

Political changes and priorities in New Jersey are also looming, as Gov. Phil Murphy is in his final year at the helm and a pool of at least 10 candidates, including four Republicans and six Democrats, compete for his seat, including Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka.

Monumental lawsuit slowly moves through the courts

The case, which could lead to an overhaul of the state’s public schools, stretches back to 2018, when a coalition of advocates and families sued the state, claiming that its segregated school system violates the state constitution, which is rare in its explicit ban on school segregation.

Among the plaintiffs are the families of nine students that attended schools in Camden, Elizabeth, Highland Park, Hoboken, Newark, Paterson, and Union City, and five advocacy groups, including Latino Action Network, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, Latino Coalition, Urban League of Essex County, and The United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey.

In its defense, the state argued that segregation in a handful of districts didn’t establish a statewide violation.

Though not originally listed as defendants in the suit, representatives of charter schools and renaissance schools entered as intervenors, meaning they have a stake in the outcome of the case. In New Jersey, renaissance schools are a charter-district hybrid, run by a nonprofit but funded by the public school district at a greater rate than charter schools.

After five years of litigation, in the fall of 2023, a state Superior Court judge issued a lengthy ruling that avoided overwhelmingly favoring one side over the other and stopped short of answering key questions, including what the state should be required to do next.

“Novel and broad do not mean meritless. Plaintiffs maintain that ‘New Jersey’s schools are tragically — and embarrassingly — among the most segregated in the nation,’” said Judge Robert Lougy in his ruling, quoting the activists’ complaint. “That alleged condition, along with our court’s prohibition of de facto segregation, makes New Jersey a logical choice for such historic claims.”

Shortly after that ruling to avoid more years of expensive litigation, the parties agreed to enter a mediation phase, with former state Supreme Court Associate Justice Barry T. Albin leading those discussions. Since then, they’ve had 11 formal mediation sessions with Albin, in addition to meetings between sessions, to continue “good-faith discussions” to reach a resolution, Lustberg said in court documents filed this month.

As part of the mediation process, the parties updated the state appellate court monthly on their progress, court documents show.

While most updates showed all parties agreed that they were participating in fair negotiations, in September 2024, the renaissance schools’ attorney Thomas Johnston filed a letter to the court that stated his clients weren’t getting “adequate involvement” in the discussions. Still, the court continued to approve three-month extensions for mediation, which has been consistent throughout the process.

In court documents from this month, the parties changed course and asked for a one-month extension until Feb. 14, adding that mediation discussions could soon be done.

“We believe this will be our last extension request and that, if the mediation has not concluded by February 14, 2025, we will likely be asking the court to set an appropriate briefing schedule,” Lustberg wrote.

He added that the parties “wish to continue to attempt, for at least a brief time more, to devote their efforts and resources to this mediation process, rather than to litigation.”

Potential remedies could catch New Jersey voters ‘by surprise’

The case shined a light on the state’s residency statute, known as the “home rule,” which stipulates that every municipality must have its own school district and that children who live in that town are assigned to those schools. The plaintiffs argued that the “undisputed history” of discriminatory governmental housing policies made way for New Jersey’s residential segregation, which has been replicated in the school system.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs highlighted state enrollment data that showed 30% of Latino students and 25% of Black students attend schools where the non-white student enrollment is between 90-99%. They also specifically noted 23 districts with high percentages of Latino and Black students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, which included Newark and Irvington, among others.

State Sen. Jon Bramnick, a Republican representing Morris, Somerset, and Union counties, has previously said that this issue should be handled through the legislature, not through lawsuits. Bramnick, one of the Republican contenders running for governor, has also said he wants the home rule in the state’s constitution.

Despite the potential for state and national reverberations from the outcome of this case, a Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll from November showed that most New Jersey voters were not aware of the lawsuit. About 65% of voters reported they’ve heard “nothing” about the case and few were aware that New Jersey has among the most segregated school systems in the country.

“This case has been going on for years, with a lot of it behind closed doors,” said Dan Cassino, the executive director of the FDU Poll and government professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in a statement released with the poll results. “Eventually, though, we’re going to get an announcement that could fundamentally reshape public schools in New Jersey, and it’s going to take a lot of people by surprise.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Three big issues that could determine if Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gets his way on universal school vouchers

2025-01-10T23:23:48+00:00

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After the collapse of his statewide private school voucher proposal last year, Gov. Bill Lee is back with a similar plan to try to convince lawmakers that Tennessee students need another taxpayer-funded alternative to traditional public schools.

But while his new Education Freedom Act enjoys unified support among Republican leaders in both legislative chambers — a major difference from this time last year — it’s also generating many of the same concerns that contributed to the 2024 bill’s demise.

Complicating matters further are sagging tax collections that will make it harder to launch and sustain expensive new initiatives. Also, an existing smaller “pilot” voucher program remains under-enrolled in its third year, and the students in it are generally performing below their public school counterparts.

Lee, who is term-limited, has made the voucher policy one of his top objectives since taking office in 2019, and recently hinted that he may call a special legislative session to prioritize his proposal before lawmakers take up other business. The legislature would need to pass his bill in early 2025 to give his administration enough time to launch a universal program this summer, before the upcoming school year.

A recent poll conducted by Vanderbilt University shows Tennessee voters are mostly split over school vouchers.

Lee is trying to build public support, though, through statewide TV ads featuring him and paid for by the pro-voucher American Federation for Children, as well as radio ads paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political network founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Kansas.

Standing between the governor and the realization of his universal voucher program in Tennessee are three big issues:

Long-term funding uncertainty for public schools

State officials have estimated that about half of voucher recipients in the program’s first year would come from public schools, with the rest already enrolled in private schools or new students entering kindergarten.

To quell anxiety about the financial impact on public schools, Lee’s legislation includes a “hold harmless” provision that essentially would reimburse school districts for any funding they stand to lose when a student leaves to take a voucher and go to a private school.

Also, voucher money would not come out of the state’s existing funding formula for public schools, but rather from a separate line item in the budget that already has $144 million in untapped funds appropriated by the legislature last year.

But laws — and budgets — can change from year to year, and put those pledges at risk.

Flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders, Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25.

Under the legislation, it’s unclear how Lee intends to pay for reimbursements to public schools for the first year, and in future years, especially since participation is expected to grow.

A future governor and legislature could take away the reimbursements, particularly if overall tax collections continue to decline under Lee’s 2024 initiative to reduce corporate and business taxes in Tennessee.

At the same time, the state would be obligated to fund the new statewide education program for the foreseeable future. With Lee’s plan to add 5,000 vouchers each year, the program could direct up to $862 million in taxpayer funding toward private education costs during the first five years, according to an analysis by Ed Trust of Tennessee.

And because of the bill’s loose restrictions on who could receive the new vouchers, a large number of the program’s recipients are expected to come from families who already send, or plan to send, their children to private schools.

In Arkansas, which approved universal vouchers in 2023 under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 80% of last year’s enrollees had not attended public schools the previous year.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on Nov. 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

In an effort to garner more support for the Education Freedom Act, Tennessee’s bill includes several financial benefits for public schools.

One would redirect 80% of sports wagering tax revenue now going to pay for college scholarships to instead help fund school building and maintenance projects across the state, especially for emergencies and for rural districts in counties designated as distressed or at risk.

But that’s only about $70 million annually and wouldn’t go far toward addressing the state’s $9.8 billion backlog of school facility needs. (Building a single elementary school can cost up to $60 million these days, while a new high school can cost significantly more.)

A second enticement would give every public school teacher a one-time $2,000 bonus. Many teachers who would be eligible to receive the money dismiss that proposal as a diversion tactic and believe the larger goal of Republican leaders is to eventually defund public schools.

Uneven standards for testing and accountability

The bill would require the new voucher recipients in grades 3-11 to take annual state or national standardized achievement tests to track the program’s effectiveness.

That’s a departure from the state’s existing Education Savings Account program that requires recipients to take the same state tests as their public school counterparts in math and English language arts, which provides an apples-to-apples comparison of educational outcomes.

The testing issue creates a quandary for Republicans.

Holding government accountable for how it spends taxpayer money is a conservative principle. But private schools are less likely to participate in a voucher program if they’re required to administer any state tests that are based on state-approved academic standards.

With Lee’s new proposal, supporters now say that national tests are good enough to gauge how students who take voucher money are doing.

In Tennessee, public school students in grades 3-11 are required to take annual state tests in math, English language arts, social studies, and science under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Detractors say that sets uneven standards of accountability for different groups of students whose education is being funded with the same taxpayer money.

To some extent, the existing pilot voucher program already has a differing measuring stick. Participating private schools aren’t evaluated like public schools are under the state’s new A-F school grading system to help parents gauge their effectiveness. Moreover, in issuing grades to public schools, Lee’s administration has elevated the importance of academic proficiency based on state test results. But for private schools receiving public funding through education savings accounts, it has mostly touted surveys showing high parental satisfaction in the program.

Lee has repeatedly said his priority is to give parents more choices and control over their children’s education.

Which students would be included, and excluded?

Voucher supporters use the language of “school choice” to promote the policy.

But private schools get to choose the students they enroll, not the other way around — potentially reinforcing discriminatory practices and widening educational disparities between affluent students and historically underserved groups.

Lee’s proposal, for example, includes no guarantees of services and accommodations for students with disabilities.

Unlike with public schools, students who attend private schools are not protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees children with disabilities access to a free and appropriate education. Essentially, the federal law requires public schools to give those students specialized support and services determined collaboratively by school leaders and parents.

Lee’s proposal has no anti-discrimination language that would prevent schools from selectively admitting, or expelling, students based on criteria that may include color, disability, test scores, family income, religious affiliation, national origin, or sexual orientation.

State laws typically include anti-discrimination language regarding eligibility for education programs. Even Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law, which created vouchers for some students in Memphis and Nashville, and later in Chattanooga, requires participating private schools to certify that they will “not discriminate against participating students or applicants on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

The newest legislation isn’t so broad in its protections.

To satisfy far-right conservatives, for example, it specifically bars students who can’t show that they’re in the United States legally from participating in the proposed program. That would violate federal law and could set the stage for another protracted and expensive legal challenge to Tennessee voucher law.

Already, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, confusing admission policies, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

Without the non-discrimination language, Lee’s voucher policy as proposed raises the risk not only that Tennessee’s schools will become more racially and economically segregated, but also that tens of millions of taxpayer dollars could flow to so-called segregation academies that were established in the 1960s and 1970s for white children during the desegregation movement.

Some of those schools still exist, although Chalkbeat has not analyzed which private schools in Tennessee fit that definition.

North Carolina built its school voucher program the same way that Lee has advocated for Tennessee. When it launched in 2014, the program was only for low-income families, but in 2023, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school.

According to reporting by ProPublica, 39 schools that it identified as likely segregation academies have received taxpayer money from North Carolina’s voucher program.

You can read Tennessee’s voucher bill here and track its movement in the legislature here.

Correction: A previous version of this story said Americans for Prosperity paid for TV and radio ads promoting Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Act. The radio ads were paid for by Americans for Prosperity, while the TV ad was paid for by American Federation for Children, another pro-voucher group.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NYC ed panel delays SHSAT vote, teeing up public debate over admission to specialized high schools

2024-11-15T22:42:03+00:00

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New York City’s education panel is once again pumping the brakes on a roughly $17 million contract for a computer-based version of the admissions test for the city’s specialized high schools as its members seek additional input from the public on the proposal.

The proposed contract was initially slated for an October vote by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, which votes on major policy proposals and contracts. It was moved to the panel’s Nov. 20 meeting, before being pushed back again at least until December, PEP Chair Gregory Faulkner said this week.

The delay will enable the panel to hold a town hall and gauge public opinion, Faulkner said. The date for the town hall has not yet been set.

The Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, stands as the sole metric of admission to the city’s eight specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Last year, roughly 26,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT, and 4,072 were offered a seat. Of those, just 4.5% of offers went to Black students and 7.6% to Latino students, fueling continued concerns over the schools’ deeply segregated student populations.

Holding a town hall to solicit feedback on the contract is likely to reignite longstanding debates over whether the test should determine entry to the city’s specialized high schools. For years, that question has pitted integration advocates against fervent supporters of the current system.

Under the proposed nearly six-year contract, the test-making company Pearson would be tasked with making a computerized version of the SHSAT, and administering it over five testing cycles beginning in the fall of 2025. The contract includes an optional two additional test cycles, which if enacted would bring the total cost to more than $23.5 million.

Reigniting a longstanding fight over the SHSAT

Some advocates worry that the move to a computerized model for the SHSAT could worsen inequities in an admissions process that already produces highly segregated outcomes. The specialized high schools, which are considered some of the most prestigious public high schools in the nation, have long faced criticism for admitting staggeringly low numbers of Black and Latino students.

Education Department officials previously noted that many exams are now offered on computers — pointing to MAP tests administered twice a year for students in grades 2-8, as well as ongoing efforts to transition to digital SAT and Advanced Placement tests for high school students. The proposed contract also follows a statewide effort to phase in computer-based testing for New York’s 3-8 reading and math exams.

And supporters of the current system are urging PEP members to approve the contract. Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, a polarizing group that advocates for screened school admissions, has issued an open letter calling on the panel to approve the contract.

“Failure to approve the Pearson contract will leave no other means to administer the test,” the group wrote. “As such, eight NYC high schools will be without a freshman class starting in the fall of 2026.”

But critics have also questioned whether the city should award another contract to Pearson, which has developed the paper version of the exams for years. The national test-making company has faced controversy over high-profile missteps in New York and other states, and in 2015, the state’s Education Department stopped using Pearson for its standardized exams.

Pearson was one of just two vendors that submitted a proposal for the contract, and an evaluation and advisory committee made up of Education Department officials determined Pearson offered “the lowest price while proposing superior services,” according to city documents.

Though the current specialized high school admissions system has its share of critics across the five boroughs, efforts to overhaul it in past years have also faced fierce opposition and court challenges — signaling that the city’s families remain divided over the issue. The exam is mandated under state law, and though some, including former Mayor Bill de Blasio, have sought to overturn that law, such efforts have failed to gain traction in Albany.

Despite his own questions over whether the exam is a fair metric of admission, Faulkner acknowledged that the contract may still have to be approved, given the lack of clear alternatives.

“We have to really look at what it would mean if this were to be voted down,” he said.

Jessamyn Lee, a Brooklyn parent and PEP member who opposes the contract, expected it to be approved by PEP members when the vote is eventually held.

“There’s going to be some effort to listen to the public on this, but I don’t think that there’s really going to be any effort to modify state education law regarding the paths of entry to these schools,” she said.

Mayor Eric Adams has not expressed interest in trying to change the specialized high school admissions process and has instead focused on opening additional schools that screen students. Under the city’s mayoral control system, Adams appoints a majority of members to the panel. That system has faced criticism from some parents and educators, who argue the PEP functions as a “rubber stamp” for the mayor’s policies.

When the city’s Education Department met with PEP members earlier this week to discuss the SHSAT contract, not a single mayoral appointee attended, Lee said.

PEP to form legislative committee with eyes on state laws

With state law governing admissions to the city’s specialized high schools and other key education issues, Faulkner wants the PEP to play a more active role in advocating for legislative changes.

He plans to form a Committee on Legislation and Public Policy to engage with community members and advocates, the city’s Education Department, and lawmakers in Albany, as it monitors local, state, and federal education policies.

And regardless of whether panel members ultimately approve a new SHSAT contract, he hopes the PEP can spark discussions in Albany over potential reforms to the state law.

“We’re going to put together a legislative agenda, and this is going to be one of the items at the top of the agenda,” Faulkner said. “Ultimately, this has to go to Albany, and Albany has to give the city other options.”

Lee questioned whether the PEP might be able to exert more influence through direct action — pushing the city’s Education Department to further address concerns over inequities in the current system.

“If we were able to whip the votes and not approve this SHSAT contract whenever it’s going to happen, then we’ve created a problem for a $40 billion city agency,” she said. “To me, that seems like a potentially much more powerful tool.”

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

Tennessee governor backs Trump plan to abolish U.S. Department of Education

2024-11-14T01:44:47+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that he’d welcome closing the U.S. Department of Education under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, adding that states can do a better job of deciding how to spend federal dollars on students.

“I believe that Tennessee would be more capable than the federal government of designing a strategy for spending federal dollars in Tennessee,” Lee told reporters when asked about the prospect.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children. We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. does,” Lee said.

The Republican governor’s comments come as Trump assembles his cabinet after soundly defeating Vice President Kamala Harris last week to win a second term in office. As of Wednesday, he had not named his choice to be U.S. secretary of education.

During his campaign, Trump said one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” The Republican Party’s platform also calls for shuttering the federal agency, as does the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Tennessee’s governor called it “a great idea” to dismantle the agency, which was created under a 1979 federal law during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

“I think the federal bureaucracy that was built into the Department of Education starting in 1979 has created just that: a bureaucracy,” Lee said.

Tennessee has a template for spending federal funds

Trump has not provided a detailed plan for what would happen to federal funding or particular programs if the U.S. Department of Education were shuttered — a move that would require an act of Congress.

Lee suggested that education funding could be distributed to states similar to how Tennessee negotiated a Medicaid block grant waiver program with the first Trump administration, giving the state government more control over how it spent the money.

“We saved Tennesseans a billion dollars in taxpayer money over four years,” Lee said, “and we split the savings with the federal government.”

Federal funds typically make up about a tenth of a state’s K-12 budget. For Tennessee, that amounts to about $1.8 billion distributed to local districts for its public schools, most of which supports students from low-income families, English language learners, and with disabilities.

Lee said Tennessee would continue to spend that money to support its neediest students.

“I think that Tennessee is incredibly capable of determining how dollars should be spent to take care of kids with disabilities, to take care of kids that live in sparse populations, or with English as a second language,” he said.

Asked about the federal agency’s enforcement of civil rights protections — which some have suggested could pivot to the U.S. Department of Justice — Lee said the state would have a role in that work, too.

“The complaint process could and would still exist,” Lee said. “We would make sure that it happens in this state.”

Critics question the state’s commitment to special student groups

Tennessee doesn’t have a very good track record of educating and caring for its students who need significant additional support.

It was one of many states, for instance, that once had laws excluding children with disabilities from public schools. The premise was that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

Recently, the Tennessee Disability Coalition gave the state a “D” grade on its annual performance scorecard that includes education services.

Students with disabilities comprise a significant part of Tennessee’s public education system.

About a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, that’s intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

Federal laws protecting students with disabilities would remain on the books even if the education department went away, but it’s not clear how enforcement would work or what would happen to funding. The authors of Project 2025 suggested that funding be turned into something resembling a voucher and given to families.

Federal education funding has been hotly debated in Tennessee

Tennessee has gone further than any other state in recent history in exploring its relationship with the federal government.

A year ago, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that Tennessee should look into the idea, a legislative task force spent months studying the feasibility of saying no to federal dollars.

Citing testing mandates, Sexton had complained of federal strings attached to those dollars. And the governor voiced support for the panel’s work and complained of “excessive overreach” by the federal government.

But some critics said the bigger issue was the U.S. education department’s role in enforcing constitutionally guaranteed civil rights protections for students.

Ultimately, the panel’s Senate and House members disagreed about their findings and issued separate recommendations. The Senate report highlighted the risks of taking the unprecedented step of rejecting federal funding, while the House report recommended taking incremental actions to further explore the idea. Nothing specific happened in the ensuing months.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who served on the panel, said the Senate’s conclusions should give the governor pause.

“There are reasons why we have the U.S. Department of Education — to make sure that all kids have the opportunity to receive a public education and to have their civil rights protected,” Akbari said.

She noted that segregated schools existed less than 75 years ago across the nation.

“It’s unthinkable that we would move away from these very sacred and important protections, not just regarding race but gender, children with special needs, the handicapped community,” Akbari said.

Alexza Barajas Clark, who heads the EdTrust advocacy group in Tennessee, said the federal role in education is “to level the playing field for all students,” especially those from rural communities and low-income families or who have a disability.

“Let’s not lose focus about what is at stake,” Clark said. “At the center of every education policy decision is a student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

In a town full of segregation academies, one Black family grapples with the best school choice for their daughter

2024-08-22T09:05:00+00:00

This story was originally published by ProPublica and is republished here with permission.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The spry 76-year-old woman finds her spot at the dining room table, prepared to discuss a problem her family has confronted, in one form or another, for half a century. Back when Samaria “Cookie” Mitcham Bailey was a teenager in 1964, she was among the first Black students to desegregate public schools here in Macon, Georgia. She endured the snubs and sacrifices with hope that future generations would know an equality that she had not.

All these years later, that equality remains elusive. Cookie’s hope now centers on the child across the table.

Her 13-year-old great-granddaughter, Zo’e Johnson, doesn’t say much at first. Last year, when she was in sixth grade, Zo’e struggled at the public middle school, which she felt was “chaotic.” Her family canvassed their options for another school in Macon, most of them still largely segregated by race. They chose First Presbyterian Day School, known for its rigorous academics and Christian worldview. It also has a strong tennis program, a draw for a family of tennis standouts.

But FPD isn’t just any private school. It was among the hundreds that opened during desegregation as white children fled the arrival of Black students. Black students like Cookie.

Researchers call these private schools “segregation academies.” Macon was — and is — especially saturated with them. Using archival research and an analysis of federal data, ProPublica identified five that still operate in the city. They include the three largest private schools in town. For generations, they have siphoned off swaths of white families who invested their more plentiful resources in college-sized tuition, fees, and fundraisers. Today, most of Macon’s public schools are nearly all Black — and, because of the city’s persistent wealth gap, they grapple with concentrations of poverty.

At the dining room table on this March day, Zo’e’s family is torn over whether to keep her at FPD for another school year — whether they can afford it and whether the cost makes sense.

All of the schools founded as segregation academies in Macon, a majority-Black city, remain vastly white. FPD, with 11% Black enrollment as of the 2021-22 school year, has the highest proportion of Black students among them. Tuition at these schools can be insurmountable to many Black families. In Macon, the estimated median income of Black households is about half that of white ones.

Zo’e’s family makes it work largely because FPD helped them apply to get almost half of the roughly $17,000 seventh-grade tuition paid through a state voucher-style program — and because Cookie has been able to pay the difference. That’s about $900 a month.

But she isn’t sure she can keep paying. She recently cut her work hours as a medical laboratory supervisor with hopes of retiring in the next few years. At the table, her tone unusually subdued, she notes she’s had COVID-19 twice. Her memory sometimes falters.

“I’m older,” she says. “I’m getting old.”

Zo’e’s mother, Ashley Alexander, is a single parent who works part time and cannot foot the extra bill. She and Zo’e live with Cookie and her husband, a retiree who once worked as an attorney.

Ashley takes a seat between Zo’e and Cookie. “I feel like you get the better opportunity at the Caucasian school. The education is better,” Ashley says. “It’s just so expensive. We’ve been looking for some alternatives.”

But Zo’e doesn’t want to leave FPD. She likes the Christian emphasis. And she appreciates the structure and the calm, both important to a family that’s deeply protective of her.

Zo’e and her great-grandmother, Samaria “Cookie” Mitcham Bailey, after a game of tennis. A love of the sport runs deep in the family.

Zo’e in her bedroom. Among the things that she likes about FPD is its tennis team. Her old school doesn’t have one.

When Zo’e was 6, her father was shot and killed a mile away from this house. A mural of his face stretches across a nearby building, where she sometimes goes to take pictures and to pray. Her father had supported sending his now-adult son, who plays in the NFL, to another private school in town. It’s one reason Zo’e thinks he would be proud of her succeeding at FPD.

She also has made good friends — Black and white. She likes the challenging academics, the orderly classes, and, especially, its tennis team. Her old school doesn’t have one.

At the table, Zo’e speaks up: “I love FPD.”

***

Once sleepy, depressed even, downtown Macon is enjoying a rebirth in this city that is home to almost 157,000 people. Mercer University, Cookie’s alma mater, brings collegiate vibrance. Several grand churches, Catholic schools, and a hospital add to the bustle, along with the gleaming Tubman African American Museum. In a first-floor exhibit, Cookie’s high school graduation photograph hangs on a long wall that pays tribute to students’ work desegregating Macon’s public schools.

Just beyond the downtown streets lined with coffee shops and restaurants, and the circles of poverty that surround them, Cookie’s brick home sits in a mostly white middle-class neighborhood. She has lived in this house for three decades, trodding its handsome wood floors and adorning it with family photographs.

A few weeks before the dining table discussion, she arrives home wearing a green tracksuit from Florida A&M University, where one of her three daughters played tennis. Cookie just left a tennis tournament. In a tight match, Zo’e beat a fellow FPD player who had bested her several times before. The other player smacked her racket on the court, then kicked it. Cookie was thrilled. She and her husband met playing tennis, and they have multiple collegiate tennis players in their family.

Ashley and Zo’e walk in later with diminished enthusiasm. Zo’e lost her final match, and she’s exhausted and grumpy. She heads to her bedroom where a brown teddy bear awaits along with a poster labeled “Vision Board.” She decorated it with words like “Forgive” and “College” and “God Only.”

“She did good!” Cookie calls down the hall.

Zo’e first dabbled in tennis when she was 6, around the time of her father’s murder. On the court, she could live in the moment, thinking only of the match at hand. It provided relief and focus, especially when anxiety crept in.

She keeps with her a newspaper clipping about her father’s death at 39. To some who read news coverage of his killing, he was a gang leader who spent time in prison. But she and many in the community knew the man who wanted his children and others in the neighborhood to dodge the traps of life — traps she’d begun to encounter at the public middle school.

After Zo’e enrolled at FPD, Ashley began driving her each morning in the opposite direction of the public middle school, which sits a mile away past a strip mall anchored by a Family Dollar.

Instead, they cruised for 15 minutes toward the leafy neighborhoods to the city’s north. At a stretch of white ranch fencing, they turned and drove over gentle hills and then veered onto the main drive into FPD’s campus. Red flags emblazoned with its crest hang on street lamps that line the road as it passes brick buildings, an athletic center, expansive ball fields and a tennis complex along its 248-acre campus.

Although she felt strange there at first, Zo’e made good friends and came to like FPD.

Zo’e isn’t the first in her family to attend private school. Her older half-brother on her father’s side who plays football went to Stratford, a similarly elite school in town that also was founded as a segregation academy. And a cousin who coaches her in tennis and is now playing on a scholarship at Tuskegee University went to FPD his junior and senior years. He had a mostly good experience, a big reason Cookie took a chance on the school.

Even so, Zo’e felt strange arriving on campus. At her old school, almost 90% of her classmates were Black. Classes were in one building, all near one another. FPD looked like a small college bustling with white students. She worried about what they would think of her.

Yet, she felt welcomed. Most of the kids seemed nice. And they weren’t all white. About 1 in 10 was Black.

She didn’t know it, but after George Floyd was killed in 2020, the head of school had issued a letter warning: “I will not allow racism or a lack of respect of any kind towards anyone.”

As Zo’e settled in with a diverse new group of friends, academics proved her toughest adjustment. So she focused on learning study skills and discipline — and set out to prove herself on the tennis court, which only made Cookie prouder.

Zo’e has lived with Cookie most of her life. She calls her great-grandmother sweet nicknames like Precious. “You are the cookie to my monster!” Zo’e wrote in Cookie’s birthday card.

Much as she respects Cookie, the history of school segregation wasn’t at the forefront of her daily concerns as she assimilated at FPD. But she did notice that she hadn’t seen a single Black teacher at the school. The only Black staff members she saw worked as janitors or in the cafeteria.

***

Cookie’s own journey into the world of white education began in 1964 with an announcement over the loudspeaker at her all-Black high school. The voice sought volunteers to transfer to a school for white girls. Cookie raised her hand.

Her mother, Annie Mae Mitcham, had grown up in a rural outpost called Cat Ridge. As a child in the 1930s and 1940s, Annie Mae walked from her segregated all-Black school with its hand-me-down books to go clean the white kids’ classrooms. She and her husband, who had a third-grade education, raised their 10 children to focus on school achievement.

Cookie holds a photograph of her nine siblings and parents. Scholastic achievement was at the heart of their upbringing.

By volunteering to enroll at the white school, Cookie wanted to see if she was as smart as everyone said she was. She also wanted to know what advantages the white kids were getting — and that Black students ought to have, too. She enrolled her senior year.

When she arrived at the white high school, Cookie didn’t suffer the violence that many Black children who desegregated schools across the South did. But there was one day in English class that still, 60 years later, hurts.

A white girl turned to ask: “Do you have a tail?”

At her old high school, Cookie was an A student. She’d been in the marching band and the concert band. She’d played piano and was a stellar singer. Yet this white girl was comparing her to a monkey? It cut deeply enough to scar.

Something similar happened to Zo’e a semester into her own experience at a mostly white school. She came home from school one day upset. She told Cookie and her mother that she had found a friend, who is Black, crying in a hallway saying that a white boy had just called her a “monkey.”

A month later at the dining room table, the family revisits the monkey comment. Zo’e says she has since heard the boy who said it was suspended. Her mother points out that one student’s comment doesn’t define a school.

Cookie looks through her 1966-67 yearbook from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She was among the first Black students to graduate from the private university.

“Let’s not make too big an issue of it,” Ashley says. But for Cookie, it rips open the old wound from English class. She grows furious. “They’re still calling Black folks monkeys!”

At the white high school, Cookie’s teachers and most students had treated her well enough. The headmistress did not. The guidance counselor was the worst, with her pursed lips, pearls, and horn-rimmed glasses. When Cookie told the counselor she wanted to apply at Mercer University, the woman replied with a sneer and an insult.

“Go to your own school,” the woman said. In other words, a college for Black students. Cookie stormed from the office and marched to Mercer with a friend. She enrolled on her own and ultimately graduated, among the first Black students to do so from the private university. Yet, even by then, only a smattering of Black students had been admitted to Macon’s white public schools. White Maconites were battling full integration at every turn, especially in the courts.

More quietly, they were also busy forging another kind of resistance: They were organizing new private schools for their white children.

***

Macon sits 90 miles south of Atlanta in Georgia’s stretch of the Black Belt, a sickle-shaped swath of rich soil across the Southeast that once fueled cotton plantation riches. To preserve their control after emancipation, Georgia’s white leaders segregated every facet of life, including the classroom. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court upended that when the justices ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that state-mandated public school segregation is unconstitutional.

White residents responded with staunch resistance.

“Klan Urges State-Wide Private School System,” a Macon Telegraph headline announced in January 1960. Two months later, the newspaper reported that a local attorney was leading the charge to create an alternative to the county school system that served Macon. He planned a closed-door meeting with dozens of “persons interested in establishing a private school in case the public schools of Bibb County are closed by the desegregation crisis.”

That fall, Stratford Academy opened. Its leaders chose the name “because of the association of the name with Robert E. Lee and Shakespeare,” officials said at the time. The school — still among the city’s largest and most prestigious academies — was “besieged with applications.”

As white residents fought integration, Sylvia McGee was growing up in the segregated city. She had started her education at an all-Black public elementary school in Macon just a few years after the Brown ruling. She was about to start middle school in 1963 when Black parents sued the local school board in what became Bibb County’s key desegregation lawsuit. The case slogged on for almost seven years.

Finally, in February 1970, an appeals court forced local schools to desegregate — within days. McGee was a high school senior. Whites had fought integration for so long after the Brown decision that she had gone through her entire public school education during that resistance.

That fall, five private schools, including FPD, opened in Macon, doubling the number in town.

Their leaders rarely said publicly that the schools opened to preserve all-white education. Instead, they nodded to “quality” and “Christian” education.

Yet in fall 1970, leaders of the Southern network of the Presbyterian Church urged members to keep their children in public schools. In a statement, they called enforced racial segregation “contrary to the will of God” and warned against undermining public education by establishing and supporting private academies “whose deliberate purpose or practical effect is to maintain racial isolation.”

And even back then, some Southern newspapers called the new private schools “segregation academies.”

An article from The Macon Telegraph in January 1960. Two months later, the newspaper reported that a local attorney was leading the charge to create an alternative to the county school system that served Macon.

“Only the very gullible could deny that race was a factor,” Andrew Manis, a local resident and history professor, wrote in his book “Macon Black and White.”

But FPD’s current spokesperson denied the school was founded as a segregation academy. She told ProPublica it “was established based on the desire of Macon families to provide their children with a strong education, grounded in biblical principles.” The school has a tuition assistance program and a nondiscrimination policy, she added. She did not answer additional questions.

Indeed, in 1975, several years after it opened, FPD’s headmaster likewise told a newspaper reporter that the school had a nondiscrimination policy. FPD was willing to admit a Black student, he said, “but we’ve never had one to apply.”

To Black residents like McGee, that felt disingenuous. “The climate and the culture of the time said you don’t apply to FPD,” she said. Black parents would have feared for their children’s safety at the academies. Private schools also had to adopt such policies or risk losing their tax-exempt status.

McGee graduated in 1970 with the final class before full desegregation. Because so many white students had fled to private schools, by fall 1973, the Bibb County public school system was predominantly Black for the first time.

McGee, who became a social worker and ultimately acting superintendent until 2011, watched the district’s infrastructure crumble. Gone were many of the white parents who had money to pour into PTA fundraisers and time to fill volunteer needs.

In the early 2000s, decades after they opened, FPD, Stratford, and most of the other academies in Macon reported that about 1% to 2% of their students were Black each year.

Even in recent years, Black children have made up only about 6% of most academies’ students — in a county that is 57% Black.

“It holds everybody back,” McGee said. “I think people miss that point.”

***

One morning in May, with the end of seventh grade approaching, Zo’e arrives on FPD’s campus and heads to a hallway of art classrooms. It stretches quiet, the walls lined with impressive student artwork, classes not yet starting for the day. Several students sit on the hall floor, backs against the wall, engrossed in the papers or cellphones in front of them.

For weeks, Zo’e had been living in a tortuous state of uncertainty about whether she would return to FPD in the fall. She tried hard not to complain. She didn’t want to put extra financial pressure on Cookie, who is about to turn 77, or her mom, who has enough on her plate.

Ashley was doing her best to try to make things work for Zo’e. She was in the running for a full-time job at the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office that would give them more of a financial cushion — and enable her to pay FPD’s tuition.

Now, this morning, Zo’e is about to burst with joy. She spots a friend in the hallway and hurries over, stifling her smile. When they get close enough, she whispers, “You know how I told you if my mom doesn’t get the job, I’m not going to be able to stay?”

Her friend looks pensive. Zo’e wrings her hands in front of her.

“She got the job!”

Zo’e with classmates during lunchtime at FPD. She isn’t the first in her family to attend private school. Her older half-brother on her father’s side went to one in town and a cousin went to FPD his junior and senior years.

Her friend lets out a high-pitched squeal of joy, then glances down the hall.

Zo’e adds, “So I’m gonna be able to stay.”

But as the next few weeks pass, her hope fades. Delays creep in. Ashley’s starting date gets pushed back.

***

The multiple generations of women in Cookie’s family are quick to debate the bigger reasons why public schools struggle, including Miller Fine Arts Magnet Middle School, the one Zo’e went to.

“There’s a reason why the teachers at Miller are stressed out,” Cookie’s youngest daughter, Alyse Bailey, said after joining her family at the dining room table back in March. “There’s a reason why the kids are not acting how they’re supposed to act. What are those reasons? What are the root causes?”

“They’re a product of the environment,” Ashley responded.

“Right, but then, why?” Alyse asked. “It’s like you got to constantly be asking, why?”

Black children lack resources, Alyse argued, because of the wealth gap stemming from slavery and Jim Crow. “The more you go back, the more you see where it is rooted in systemic injustice.”

To many local families, Miller is the best option among public middle schools. While it functions as a regular neighborhood school, Miller also draws students from across the district who attend its fine arts magnet component. It often tops the district’s six middle schools on the state’s standardized tests. Almost three-quarters of its eighth graders read on grade level or above compared with the district average of 62%. (Private schools don’t have to release such data.)

Schools like Miller will soon find it even harder to retain top students, particularly those with more resources.

Starting next year, private schools will skim another layer of students from the public schools. In April, as part of a nationwide Republican push, Georgia adopted a new program that, similar to the existing one, uses taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition. At least 21,000 more students could receive up to $6,500 each. Last year, almost 22,000 students tapped into the current program. The average tuition grant was about $4,600.

While it functions as a regular neighborhood school, Miller also draws students from across the district who attend its fine arts magnet component.

Supporters often tout these programs as means for students to escape low-performing public schools. But the reality is, the tuition grants don’t often cover even half of private school tuition bills, especially for college prep-style schools like FPD.

Families like Cookie’s must come up with the difference — and, if they can, decide if the financial hardship is worth it.

As they wrestle with this question, Zo’e’s family puts her on a waiting list for a charter school that performs well and, like many of the private schools, draws large numbers of white children. But 40 students are ahead of her.

By the time summer break arrives, Zo’e faces reality. Her mom almost certainly won’t start the new job in time to pay looming tuition bills. Zo’e will return to the public school her family felt had fallen short of her needs. And FPD will have one fewer Black student.

In late June, Cookie’s birthday approaches. When her oldest daughter arrives from Florida for a visit, they lay in bed watching tennis together. In dispirited tones, Cookie mentions that she cannot afford Zo’e’s tuition anymore.

But her daughter presses her to think beyond FPD’s benefits to what public school can provide, if Zo’e works hard and stays focused: “It’s nothing she can’t get somewhere else.”

Cookie concedes, “She can get it somewhere else.” Including Miller. She decides that the family must focus on reinforcing the academic and social self-discipline that Zo’e will need to succeed at Miller. They can help train her in tennis.

Zo’e will return to Miller for eighth grade to give her mother time to save money for tuition. After that, when Zo’e begins high school, her family plans to send her back to private school.

In the next room, Zo’e watches Disney Channel cartoons in her bedroom while making a poster for her mom, who shares a birthday with Cookie. She glues photographs onto it along with a message of love in sparkly lime green letters. Then she writes her mother a birthday note. “You’re not only a life-giver but you are a hard worker,” she writes. She thanks Ashley for so much love. “You were the one to step in when my father had to step out. You have been my best friend, a laughing buddy and a role model.”

Zo’e works on the floor below her vision board. It includes a cutout of a tiger’s eyes, intent and fixed. They remind her of focus. As she accepts the likelihood of returning to Miller, she becomes determined to take the discipline she learned at FPD with her. She also remembers that, at this time last year, she had wanted to stay at Miller.

A few weeks later, in mid-July, Ashley gets the formal job offer. She will become a sheriff’s deputy with a start date of July 29. She is overjoyed and relieved.

It comes too late to send Zo’e back to FPD. Public schools are about to begin the new year. So, the family firms up their plan for her. Zo’e will return to Miller for eighth grade to give Ashley time to save money for tuition. After that, when Zo’e begins high school, they plan to send her back to private school.

Zo’e will return to Miller for eighth grade to give her mother time to save money for tuition. After that, when Zo’e begins high school, her family plans to send her back to private school.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

School desegregation is hard to tackle at the federal level. Advocates say states can still do a lot.

2024-07-25T04:01:00+00:00

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Fifty years ago, the landmark Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley made it exceedingly difficult to desegregate schools across district lines through the federal court system.

Subsequent court rulings and recent backlash to racial equity initiatives have only made the landscape more challenging.

But a report issued Thursday by Brown’s Promise, a group that advocates for school integration, says states can still do a lot to address segregation and school funding inequities — and offers a roadmap for officials and advocates to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

“We are, across the country, too comfortable right now with the idea that segregation in our schools is just a fact of life and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Ary Amerikaner, the co-founder and executive director of Brown’s Promise, a year-old initiative that’s housed at the Southern Education Foundation. “There’s a lot of other pathways to make forward progress.”

That call comes on the heels of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruling that held segregated schools are unconstitutional. Schools are less segregated today than they were 60 years ago. But over the last three decades, many have resegregated, especially as courts have released districts from desegregation orders and school choice policies have given parents more control over where they send their kids.

The share of intensely segregated schools — where 90% to 100% of students are kids of color — has nearly tripled to 20% over the last 30 years, according to recent research released by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. Hyper-segregated schools also have higher poverty levels — a kind of “double segregation” that translates to worse educational outcomes for kids.

To address that, Brown’s Promise is advocating a two-pronged approach: Filing lawsuits in state court — especially in places where the state constitution guarantees children certain educational rights — and changing state policy.

School segregation lawsuits are working their way through the courts in both Minnesota and New Jersey. And while Brown’s Promise is not involved in those cases, the group is watching for lessons from the litigation that could apply to other states.

The group’s state policy agenda includes what it describes as “inspiring yet imperfect” examples of recent and historic desegregation efforts:

In 2015, Mississippi combined a racially segregated and under-resourced district with a neighboring district that was more affluent and diverse. Most school segregation exists across district lines rather than within school districts, research has found, and what happened in Mississippi worked because the merger saved money and helped improve the quality of education for kids across the consolidated district.
Nebraska lawmakers created a regional structure that allowed 11 school districts in the Omaha area to share their tax dollars to provide more funding to disadvantaged kids. The effort ended in 2016 after around seven years in operation, but Brown’s Promise says it can serve as a model for others.
State grants, such as those offered in New York, can help school districts plan and carry out integration efforts.

Other ideas are lighter lifts designed to spur more conversation and awareness, such as publishing data related to school segregation and per-student spending on state report cards.

The report also lays out ways that states can avoid some of the mistakes of past school integration efforts. In recent years, there’s been a greater focus on the ways school desegregation plans often put higher burdens on Black families and other families of color.

To Amerikaner, those mistakes include the layoffs and firing of many talented Black teachers when schools merged, and the use of academic-tracking policies that tend to create classrooms starkly divided by race, even when a school is supposed to be integrated.

Part of the work now, she said, is paying attention to the “actual student experience in a school and the ability of a student to feel like a real part of their school community.” That could mean making sure kids feel comfortable participating in extracurricular activities or that families feel welcome to attend school events.

The group acknowledges how challenging and politically polarizing this work can be.

But its leaders point to the results of a poll they commissioned earlier this year that found most Americans are supportive of school integration — especially if it’s paired with providing more resources to districts that serve higher-need students.

That sentiment has been echoed as the group has met with families and advocates across the country, including in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Georgia.

“That feels like what is most important to us,” Amerikaner said. “This is long-term, multi-generational work.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s comparison of school choice to civil rights ‘deeply offensive,’ Democrats say

2024-07-17T21:42:42+00:00

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In one of the battleground states of the Civil Rights Movement, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is drawing heat for his description of school choice as “the civil rights issue of our time.”

Lee, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, made the comparison Tuesday during a four-minute speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as he attacked the Biden administration’s record on education, border security, inflation, and farm policies.

“They attacked parental rights. Republican governors fought back for a parent’s right to choose their own child’s education,” Lee told delegates. “President Trump was right when he said that school choice is the civil rights issue of our time.”

Back in Tennessee on Wednesday, the state Senate’s Democratic Caucus issued a joint statement calling Lee’s assertion “not only misleading but deeply offensive.”

“Tennessee has a proud history of leading in the fight for civil rights — from the lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides to school integration and labor rights,” the caucus said. “To label a policy that promotes segregation and inequality as a civil rights issue is a grave disservice to the legacy of those who fought for justice in our state.”

The verbal scuffle comes as Lee pushes for a universal school voucher bill, a key school choice policy, in Tennessee. It would provide taxpayer funding to pay toward private school tuition for any student who wants it, anywhere in the state, including those from middle-class and wealthy families.

Lee’s proposal collapsed in committees during the recent legislative session, but he’s vowed to bring it back in 2025. To try to change the outcome, he recently endorsed Republican legislative candidates who support vouchers in their primary races over fellow Republicans who oppose the policy.

With school choice as a pillar of his own campaign platform, Lee easily won two terms in office in a state that went from blue to deep red in recent decades. But the results of various voter polls on vouchers vary wildly in Tennessee, and opponents charge the policy amounts to social welfare for the wealthy.

“The true civil rights issues of our time are those that uplift and support all children, regardless of their background. Private school vouchers do the exact opposite,” the Senate Democratic caucus said.

But Republican voucher supporters say they’re needed to put parents in charge of their children’s education. Expanding parental rights and school choice is part of the Republican Party’s 2024 platform, which delegates approved on Monday.

Tennessee has a long and blemished record on civil rights issues.

In 1920, it became the 36th and final state needed to ratify the landmark 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave millions of women the right to vote.

In 1960, at the height of the movement to abolish legalized racial segregation and discrimination, a group of college students including Diane Nash formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Nashville. The chairman was a young John Lewis, a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, who went on to become a civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia before his death in 2020.

And the Rev. James Lawson Jr., who died last month at age 95, was the apostle of nonviolent protest who trained civil rights activists in Tennessee to withstand brutal responses from white authorities.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis to march with sanitation workers in their fight for equality, dignity, and respect. Instead, he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, which today is the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

The Tennessee portion of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail spotlights 14 churches, schools and other landmarks that played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century, where many civil rights leaders and supporters were killed or targeted because of their struggle for freedom.

Lee’s office did not respond Wednesday when asked whether his comparison of school choice to civil rights was appropriate.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Six popular Manhattan high schools will prioritize applicants from the borough

2024-06-20T22:01:47+00:00

Six of Manhattan’s most popular high schools will set aside 75% of their seats for students who live in the borough for the coming admissions cycle, schools Chancellor David Banks announced Thursday.

Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Millennium High School, The Clinton School, NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, The Museum School, and Baruch College Campus High School will all offer the borough priority, Banks said. All six schools also screen students on the basis of grades.

The policy shift comes after some Manhattan parents lobbied Banks to impose geographic admissions preferences at high-demand local high schools, arguing that competitive schools in other boroughs often give local students a leg up. Parents from District 2, which spans much of lower and midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side, point out that their children got into their top choice schools at the lowest rate in the city last year, according to Education Department data.

But critics contend that Manhattan’s high schools are the highest-demand in the city in part because the borough is an appealing destination and transit hub for students from across the five boroughs. They say the city shouldn’t restrict access to them.

At a press conference Thursday, Banks said he believes his new policy stakes out “a reasonable middle ground” by granting some geographic priority, while still keeping the schools open to a diverse swath of students.

“Manhattan parents generally were locked out of most of the seats in these schools even though they were geographically close,” he said. “So many Manhattan kids went to schools that were a long train ride away. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Schools previously had district preference

Most of the schools that will now offer the borough priority previously gave a leg up to students who lived in District 2 – a policy that former Mayor Bill de Blasio scrapped in 2020.

Several of those schools, including Eleanor Roosevel, Baruch, and Lab, have seen their shares of Black and Latino students, as well as those from low-income families, increase substantially since they dropped the District 2 priority and began setting aside a percentage of their seats for students from low-income families.

Schools with set-asides for students for low-income families will retain those policies, and officials said Thursday that by including the entire borough of Manhattan in the priority, rather than just students from District 2, they project that the percentage of Black and Latino students as well as those from low-income families won’t change significantly.

According to the department’s analysis, the overall percentage of Black and Latino students admitted to the six schools would stay at 26%, as would the percentage of students living in poverty, at 48%. The biggest change, according to the analysis, would come in the proportion of admitted students from Manhattan, which is projected to rise from 59% this year to 76% next year.

Principals at several of the schools now adopting Manhattan priority were vocal in their support of abandoning District 2 priority in 2020.

Patrick Sprinkle, a history teacher at NYC Lab School, said he was “disappointed” in the new decision. “I would like to see Manhattan schools open themselves to anyone who wants to attend instead of wall themselves off.”

An Education Department spokesperson said decisions about adding borough priority at the six schools were made “in tight coordination with the superintendent, principals, and with input of a wide-range of parent voice.”

Lisa Marks, the parent of a rising middle school student in District 2 who is part of a group of hundreds of parents that have been advocating for increased geographic admissions preference in Manhattan schools, said the decision was an “olive branch to Manhattan parents” and a “very positive development.”

“I think he’s clearly trying to strike a balance and address the parental feedback he heard,” she said of Banks.

She added that “only time will tell” if the changes can help lower the number of District 2 students who didn’t get into any of their 12 choices. Last year, District 2 led the city in its share of students not getting into any of their high school choices at 13%, though that number dips to 7% when accounting for students who got into specialized high schools, which use a separate admissions process, according to Education Department data.

Parents from other boroughs push back

Still, the idea of a geographic priority at some of Manhattan’s most popular high schools has stirred concerns among families of rising eighth graders in other boroughs, who say Manhattan schools are often the most accessible quality options for their kids.

Kim Gabriel, the parent of a rising eighth grader in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, noted the dearth of high schools in her neighborhood. Many of Brooklyn’s competitive high schools with geographic priority are located in southern Brooklyn and would be a far lengthier commute than schools in Manhattan, she said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said.

The Community Education Council in District 30 in Long Island City, Queens, passed a resolution opposing borough priority at selective Manhattan high schools, noting that “because of the layout of the New York City public transportation system, many high schools in Manhattan are a shorter commute away from neighborhoods in District 30 than comparable schools in Queens.”

The resolution noted that while Queens high schools have a deficit of seats, Manhattan high schools have thousands of open seats, even if they’re not at the highest-demand schools.

Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, a group that advocates for school integration, called the move “unsound policy, informed by limited community engagement and an even smaller group of select voices trying to reinstate gatekeeping relics from before the pandemic.”

Officials said on Thursday they heard from a range of parents and advocates, and noted that the schools will still leave some seats open to students from other boroughs.

“This change won’t make everyone happy,” he said. “But I believe it’s the right one and that it’s responsive to parents across the city with a diverse set of opinions and perspectives.”

Banks also pointed to his efforts to open more academically screened schools in parts of the city that have historically had fewer of them, and said he hoped to challenge the notion there’s “a handful of really great high schools in Manhattan and if you don’t get into those schools you’re doomed.”

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

NYC specialized high school offers to Black and Latino students inch up but remain stubbornly low

2024-06-18T22:32:11+00:00

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Despite a modest increase in the number of Black and Latino students offered admission for next year’s freshman class, New York City’s vaunted specialized high schools will remain deeply segregated, according to city data released Tuesday.

Just 4.5% of offers went to Black students and 7.6% to Latino students, a slight uptick from last year when 3% of offers went to Black students and 6.7% went to Latino applicants.

Education Department officials trumpeted this year’s admissions rates for Black and Latino students as “the highest levels since 2013.” About 65% of the city’s public school students are Black or Latino.

Asian American students received about 52% of the offers, and 26% went to white students. About 32% of the city’s students are white or Asian American.

The city’s specialized high schools represent a tiny fraction of the high school population. But they garner disproportionate attention because they are considered among the country’s most prestigious public high schools, even as they contribute to New York City’s status as home to one of the most racially stratified school systems in the country. Admission to eight of the city’s specialized schools depends solely on a student’s score on a single standardized test, which has long been blamed for cementing segregation.

In line with patterns in previous years, four of the eight schools that rely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, known as the SHSAT, admitted 10 or fewer Black students. Of the 744 students offered admission to Stuyvesant High School, 10 are Black. Just one Black applicant won a seat at Staten Island Technical High School out of 294 offers.

Overall, nearly 27,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT, and 4,072 were offered a seat.

City officials said in a press release that their “goal is that students in Specialized High Schools reflect the diversity of New York City.” But schools Chancellor David Banks has not advanced any major efforts to alter the racial makeup at the specialized high schools, nor has he made school integration a priority more broadly.

The Education Department noted that they invited students to participate in a longstanding program that offers students a chance at admission even if they just missed the test score cutoff, an effort to help diversity the specialized schools. However, that program, called Discovery, has historically done little to move the needle.

“They’re still intensely segregated schools, and it’s unacceptable that we’re allowing that to occur year, after year, after year,” said Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, a group that pushes for school integration. Though she acknowledged some small gains, “at the end of the day, you still have 10 Black students attending Stuysevant,” a situation she described as “egregious.”

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to scrap the sole admissions test in favor of a system that would automatically admit the top-performing students at each middle school, a reform that officials projected would reshape the demographics of the specialized schools. But that proposal hinged on approval from the state legislature, which took away the city’s authority to govern the admissions process to three specialized schools in 1971.

Pushback to de Blasio’s plan was fierce. Some members of the Asian American community blasted the mayor for not including their community in developing the proposal, and it never gained traction in Albany. Subsequent efforts by some state lawmakers to reform the admissions process have also failed. Efforts to diversify the city’s specialized schools have faced court challenges while others have sued in an effort to force the system to address segregation more broadly.

The specialized schools are often seen as a springboard into top colleges and other opportunities, though studies have found that students with similar academic qualifications who attend different schools end up with similar SAT scores and college admissions offers.

New York City is unique in its share of high schools that admit students based on their academic records and city officials also released statistics Tuesday on admissions offers to screened programs outside of the specialized schools.

Overall, those campuses have not seen their demographics shift significantly since last year. But screened schools have offered admission to a higher share of Latino students and students from low-income households, compared with before the pandemic when state test scores and attendance factored into admissions. The city generally only considers a student’s grades in core subjects, though there are a few exceptions for schools that use other assessments like essays.

Across all 72,000 eighth graders who received a high school admissions offer, 51% got their first choice, up from 48% last year. About 77% received one of their top three choices, up 3 percentage points.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

5 things to know about our recent investigation about migrant students in Chicago

2024-06-11T11:00:00+00:00

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For the past two years, thousands of migrant families fleeing political and economic turmoil south of the border have come to Chicago. And in that time, thousands of their children — most learning English as a new language — have enrolled in schools across the city.

But many of those children don’t have easy access to services they need to thrive in school.

A recent Block Club Chicago and Chalkbeat investigation found that many families have found affordable housing in majority Black communities where schools have traditionally served relatively few English-language learners. That’s left many migrant students without services that will help them adjust and advance in school.

Here are five main takeaways from the investigation:

1. Many migrant families are finding affordable housing in Chicago’s majority Black, low-income neighborhoods.

Officials’ main strategy to get migrant families into permanent housing is a state initiative called the Asylum Seeker Rental Assistance Program.

Run by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the Illinois Department of Human Services in partnership with Catholic Charities, the program covers three months of rent for people migrating from the southern border who are seeking asylum and arrived in the city’s shelters before Nov. 17, 2023.

Nearly 60% of the roughly 5,000 families using the program as of April to resettle in Chicago have found apartments in predominantly Black, low-income communities on the South and West sides, such as South Shore and Austin, according to data obtained through an open records request.

2. Many kids are enrolling in segregated schools that have little to no bilingual support.

Schools in these neighborhoods typically have not served a large number of English language learners, meaning they often don’t have staff certified to teach those kids. Now, as migrant students enroll in these schools, teachers are feeling overwhelmed and under-equipped to serve them. The lack of resources has left migrant kids struggling to learn and ask simple questions in class.

As of April, Chicago Public Schools had identified more than 70 schools that lacked enough English as a Second Language or bilingual teachers. More than 40 percent of them were in majority Black, low-income neighborhoods where migrant families were getting apartments.

3. Other students are traveling lengthy distances to better-resourced schools.

Rather than sending their children to under-resourced schools, some parents are opting to keep their children enrolled at schools with more bilingual resources near shelters where they used to live.

Often that means families are spending up to three to four hours a day commuting to and from school. Some kids still aren’t getting enough language support at those schools, even though they have more bilingual resources.

4. Chicago Public Schools officials say they’re prioritizing extra support for schools without enough resources.

District officials acknowledge that dozens of schools need more bilingual staff, but they said a nationwide bilingual teacher shortage has made hiring difficult.

Officials said they’re trying to attract more bilingual educators by subsidizing the cost of earning bilingual or ESL credentials and extending early job offers to teachers who are completing their requirements.

CPS officials say they’re prioritizing schools on the South and West sides that are in so-called “language deserts.”

5. CPS has a long history of failing students learning English.

The school district’s struggles come after years of not being in compliance with state and federal laws for bilingual education.

In recent years, the vast majority of schools with bilingual programs that the district has monitored have failed internal and state audits. They’ve fallen short of a range of requirements, such as providing bilingual instruction in core subjects to all students who need it, having properly certified teachers, and teaching students about their native country and culture.

Now, the arrival of many migrant families continues to test whether the district can do better by students learning English as a new language.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mina Bloom is an investigative reporter at Block Club Chicago. Contact Mina at mina@blockclubchi.org.

NYC ponders giving Manhattan students admissions boost at some borough high schools, sources say

2024-06-07T19:49:09+00:00

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New York City education officials are weighing a plan to give students from Manhattan admissions priority at several of the borough’s most competitive high schools, according to four people familiar with the plan.

The list and number of schools that would offer the admissions bump is not finalized, but the campuses under consideration include Millennium High School, Beacon High School, Bard Early College High School, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School, according to one of the sources. Baruch College Campus High School, NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, and Clinton High School could also offer the geographic priority, the person said.

The geographic priority would apply to students across the entire borough of Manhattan rather than just those in District 2 — the zone spanning most of lower and midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side. Most of the schools that would be affected are in District 2.

A Manhattan borough preference would mark a major change in admissions policy at some of the city’s most in-demand schools and reverberate across the NYC education system. It would also be the latest chapter in a years-long debate over whether and how schools should consider where students live in admissions.

Several of the schools that could offer the new borough priority had previously given preference to District 2 students until former Mayor Bill de Blasio scrapped that policy in 2020. Other schools being considered, including Beacon and Bard Early College, have not previously offered any geographic priority.

It’s not yet clear how many seats at each of the schools would be held for Manhattan students. Education officials are hoping to finalize a plan by the end of the month. The policy would go into effect for the upcoming admissions cycle for students who start high school in the fall of 2025, according to the sources.

Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer declined to comment on the specifics of the plan. “Every year we engage parents around improving enrollment for all students and families in our schools. We will have more to say about updated policies soon,” Styer said.

In a forum with Manhattan parents Thursday night, schools Chancellor David Banks expressed support for the general idea of a Manhattan priority and sympathy for the borough’s parents.

“If you are a mom or dad and you have a child in District 2, I can only imagine how heartbreaking that is that you didn’t even have an opportunity to get your child into one of the District 2 middle schools or high schools as you’re watching kids coming from all around the city coming to the school and you live across the street,” he said. “I don’t think that is fair, and so I’m looking at a wide range of ways to try to find a common ground for everyone.”

Admissions proposal likely to draw mixed parent reactions

Giving preference to students across Manhattan instead of just District 2 — as Banks had previously hinted he might do — makes the priority available to a wider swath of kids who are more representative of the city.

Across Manhattan, 56% of K-8 students are Black or Latino, and 59% come from low-income families, according to state data. In District 2, 26% of K-8 students are Black or Latino and 35% come from low-income families.

Education Department officials forecast that socioeconomic demographics wouldn’t shift significantly in schools if they adopt the Manhattan preference, according to people familiar with the plans.

Many of the schools under consideration set aside a portion of their seats for students from low-income backgrounds. Those policies would remain in place alongside the geographic preference, the sources said.

Elissa Stein, a high school admissions consultant who works with many Manhattan families through her company HS 411, said “giving every family in Manhattan an opportunity to go to these schools is terrific,” and it’s “a really smart move to include more families” beyond just District 2.

Banks said in the Thursday forum he considered it a matter of fairness to give Manhattan students the kind of geographic priority that selective schools in other boroughs offer.

As of 2021, 235 of the city’s roughly 400 high schools offered a borough preference (Education Department officials didn’t provide an updated number). Another 30 schools, none of which are in Manhattan, prioritize students who live in the surrounding geographic zone, according to the city’s high school directory.

“We’ve got some enrollment policies in place in other boroughs that ensure that folks who are in those boroughs get some level of priority,” Banks said. “We don’t do that as much in Manhattan.”

But Maurice Frumkin, who’s also an admissions consultant and president of NYC Admissions Solutions, said he’s concerned the plan is moving forward without sufficient input from families outside of Manhattan. Such families apply in large numbers to Manhattan’s selective schools because of their strong reputation and their accessibility, and they could have strong negative reactions to the plan being weighed by officials.

“To think that they would be excluded potentially from many schools is really going to be a shock to their system,” said Frumkin, who previously worked in the Education Department’s office of enrollment.

Critics of the plan contend that instituting geographic priority in Manhattan’s most popular schools is more disruptive than adding geographic preferences in other boroughs, because Manhattan is a hub for kids from across the city in a way other boroughs aren’t.

More than half of the students currently enrolled in Manhattan high schools live in other boroughs, including nearly a quarter who commute from the Bronx, according to city figures. Fewer than 10% of students who attend high school in each of the other four boroughs commute across borough lines.

Manhattan also has a disproportionate share of the city’s most sought-after schools. There are at least eight schools in Manhattan that receive at least 10 times as many applications as seats, according to city data. No other borough has more than two.

Debate over geography and school admissions spans years

Some school integration advocates have pushed for years to eliminate all geographic weights in admissions, arguing that they exacerbate racial and socioeconomic segregation.

In December 2020, when he eliminated the District 2 priority, de Blasio seemed to be headed in that direction, promising to get rid of all “geographic screens.” But he reversed course in 2021 after significant pushback from families, and ended up eliminating only the district priority, but keeping the priorities for zones and boroughs.

Many of the city’s largest comprehensive high schools, like Francis Lewis High School in Queens and James Madison High School in Brooklyn, give out almost all their seats to students in their zone or borough. Other smaller competitive schools, like Millennium Brooklyn and the Academy of American Studies in Queens, admitted only students from their boroughs last year.

The city has recently opened several new high schools outside of Manhattan, including Bard Early College programs in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Both new Bard programs are located in lower-income neighborhoods and prioritize students from surrounding districts.

Manhattan has no zoned high schools. The high school directory doesn’t allow a search by borough priority. But a recent tally from the Citywide Council on High Schools, a group of parent representatives, found 19 schools in Manhattan that currently offer borough priority. Those schools tend to be less competitive.

Yael Denbo, a parent and member of the Community Education Council in District 3, which covers the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, said she’s been hearing from lots of families who “are concerned, rightly so, about their children commuting out of borough for maybe an hour or two per trip.”

Students in District 2 were admitted at the lowest rate in the city to one of their top three high school choices, with 55% getting in last fall, according to Education Department figures. District 3 had the fourth-lowest rate in the city at 63%.

Only 42% and 44% of high school students who live in Districts 2 and 3, respectively, attend a high school in their home district, the second- and third-lowest rates in the city, according to city data.

Critics of geographic priority point out there are plenty of open seats in Manhattan high schools — more than 18,000 last year, according to Education Department figures — but they’re just not at the schools that generate the most interest.

Students from other NYC boroughs brace for impact

The impacts of adopting Manhattan priority at some of the borough’s most popular schools would be widespread.

At P.S. 218 in the South Bronx, where more than 90% of students are Latino and come from low-income families, a large number of students apply annually to some of Manhattan’s most competitive high schools because the families know their reputations and they are easy to get to, said Nicole Jennings, who runs a high school admissions support program through the non-profit WHEDco based at P.S. 218.

“We do have a decent number of students who go to those schools, maybe five to six a year” from P.S. 218, Jennings said. “And if this change goes into effect, I’m imagining it will just erase that.”

Jennings said she appreciates the city’s efforts to open more academically rigorous schools in the Bronx, like Bard Early College Bronx. But she said many of the families she works with are wary of sending their kids there because of neighborhood safety concerns.

“Schools in Manhattan tend to be much more appealing … than ones in the Bronx, sadly,” she said.

Frumkin, the admissions consultant, said his broader concern is that continuing to add more geographic priorities will chip away at the fundamental purpose of the citywide choice system.

“You have this matching process that was pioneered to create this ‘fair and equitable’ citywide choice process,” he said. “And yet you’re overlaying these little intricacies on top of that.”

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

Perdidos en la traducción: Los niños migrantes luchan en las escuelas segregadas de Chicago

2024-05-21T11:00:00+00:00

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Este reportaje se ha redactado y publicado en colaboración con Block Club Chicago. Suscríbete a sus boletines aquí.

Gabriela Aquino Ruiz depende de una aplicación de traducción para aprender, pero algunas de sus maestras hablan tan rápido en inglés que el software no puede seguir el ritmo.

La niña de 12 años, de voz tenue, que sólo habla español, adora leer, pero en su escuela - la escuela Isabelle C. O’Keeffe en el South Side de Chicago - no hay libros en su lengua natal, y tiene dificultades para hacer amigos, ella dijo.

Gabriela extraña su escuela en Venezuela, de donde ella y su familia emigraron en octubre.

“Quiero aprender”, dice en español a través de un traductor. “Me siento frustrada cuando llego a casa.”

Gabriela es una de los casi 9.000 estudiantes migrantes matriculados en las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago hasta el mes de abril. Muchos de estos estudiantes están dejando los refugios y encontrando una vivienda que les proporciona la estabilidad que tanto necesitan.

Su familia se mudó de un refugio en Little Village a un apartamento en South Shore, el barrio donde más familias se han reubicado en Chicago a través de un programa estatal que les ayuda a cubrir la renta, según datos obtenidos por Chalkbeat y Block Club Chicago a través de una solicitud amparada por la Ley de Libertad de Información.

Pero la promesa de la vivienda tiene un precio: Las familias se están mudando a barrios más asequibles que también son algunos de los más segregados de la ciudad. Como resultado, los estudiantes están llegando a escuelas con poco o nada de personal bilingüe o de apoyo, según los datos obtenidos a través de solicitudes de registros públicos y más de 50 entrevistas con familias, profesores y expertos.

Esto ha provocado que algunos alumnos se retrasen aún más en sus estudios, que los conserjes asuman roles de traductores y que los líderes escolares se enfrenten a dificultades para cumplir el requisito estatal de impartir educación bilingüe si la matriculación de alumnos alcanza determinados umbrales.

El aumento de nuevos estudiantes, muchos de los cuales huyeron de la agitación política y económica en países de América Central y del Sur, está exponiendo las grietas en un sistema escolar que durante años ha luchado por cumplir plenamente con las leyes estatales y federales en torno a la educación bilingüe.

Incluso antes de que los autobuses con migrantes comenzaron a llegar en oleadas de Texas en 2022, las escuelas públicas de Chicago no cumplieron plenamente en múltiples auditorías internas y estatales relacionadas con la enseñanza bilingüe, muestran los documentos.

Las escuelas de CPS que ya tenían programas bilingües no han logrado cumplir una serie de requisitos, como proporcionar enseñanza bilingüe en las materias básicas a todos los estudiantes que la necesitan, tener maestros adecuadamente certificados y enseñar a los estudiantes sobre su país de origen y su cultura. Ahora, un número de escuelas adicionales que han matriculado oleadas de estudiantes migrantes necesitan reforzar su personal.

“Nos preocupan mucho los desiertos lingüísticos de la ciudad … donde no hay servicios para los estudiantes que aprenden inglés”, dijo Karime Asaf, jefa de la Oficina de Educación Lingüística y Cultural del distrito, que supervisa la instrucción para los estudiantes que aprenden inglés.

Hasta el mes de marzo, al menos 72 escuelas de kindergarten a 12º grado del distrito tenían vacantes para personal bilingüe o maestros certificados para enseñar inglés como nueva lengua, al menos una cuarta parte de las cuales se encuentran en los 10 vecindarios principales a los que se están mudando las familias solicitantes de asilo.

Los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que la creación de programas bilingües y el cumplimiento de las auditorías requieren encontrar maestros debidamente certificados, lo cual ha sido un reto a nivel nacional. Destacaron esfuerzos más recientes, como el reclutamiento de estudiantes actuales de CPS para convertirse en maestros, pero agregaron que CPS necesita más fondos.

“Siempre hay una necesidad de apoyo adicional y mejoras en el proceso y estamos trabajando para asegurar más fondos de los gobiernos estatales y federales para apoyar a todos nuestros estudiantes”, dijo Sylvia Barragán, portavoz de CPS.

Cuando se le preguntó por qué el distrito y la ciudad siguen con dificultades para proporcionar apoyo a los estudiantes migrantes, el alcalde Brandon Johnson dijo a Chalkbeat y Block Club que las familias solicitantes de asilo se están asentando en “vecindarios en los cuales históricamente no se ha invertido”, lo que ejerce “presión sobre ese sistema que ya está sobrecargado”, refiriéndose a las escuelas de los vecindarios que, en su opinión, carecen de los recursos adecuados.

Como ex maestro de escuela intermedia y ex organizador del Sindicato de Maestros de Chicago, la plataforma educativa de Johnson incluye invertir más dinero en las escuelas de los vecindarios.

Alumnos de la Escuela Primaria Chárter Erie, en Humboldt Park.

Ante la rápida llegada de estudiantes migrantes en los últimos dos años, CPS abrió un “centro de bienvenida” en la escuela secundaria Roberto Clemente y está trabajando con la ciudad y el personal de los refugios para ayudar a las familias con la matriculación escolar, dijeron los funcionarios. El distrito también está tratando de atraer a más educadores bilingües y está priorizando el apoyo adicional para las escuelas que tradicionalmente no han trabajado con estudiantes que aprenden inglés, dijeron los funcionarios.

Pero los maestros dicen que los esfuerzos del distrito no se han plasmado en más recursos concretos, y los niños migrantes se están quedando sin una instrucción vital. En la escuela primaria Laura S. Ward, en el West Side, que ha incorporado a docenas de estudiantes que aprenden inglés, una maestra de kindergarten y dos conserjes traducen para todo el colegio.

“Los dejaron en nuestra puerta, y se supone que debemos seguir adelante, aceptar a estos niños, educarlos y seguir adelante”, dijo Dewanda Watt, maestra de primer grado en Ward, una de las docenas de escuelas que CPS identificó como carentes de suficiente personal para los estudiantes que aprenden inglés.

“Debería haber habido un plan. No hubo ningún plan por parte de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago”.

Familias migrantes se reasientan en el South y el West Side

Como muchos migrantes, Gabriela y su familia se marcharon de Venezuela a Chicago en octubre para escapar de la agitación socioeconómica y política del país, dijo la madre de Gabriela, Yennifer Ruiz.

La familia vivió en la Comisaría del Distrito de Englewood durante unos meses antes de mudarse a un refugio de Little Village, un barrio históricamente mexicano. Ruiz matriculó a su hijo e hija en escuelas con un personal hispanohablante: la escuela primaria Eli Whitney y la Academia de Carreras Richards.

Pero cuando la familia se mudó a unas 13 millas al sureste, a un apartamento en South Shore, Ruiz decidió cambiar a su hija a la escuela O’Keeffe, una escuela predominantemente negra y de bajos ingresos que carece de recursos bilingües pero que estaba cerca de su hogar.

Al igual que los Ruiz, una de cada 10 familias solicitantes de asilo ha llegado a South Shore a través de un programa estatal de asentamiento llamado Asylum Seeker Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ASERAP), según datos obtenidos por Block Club y Chalkbeat.

Gabriela Aquino Ruiz, de 12 años, se prepara para ir a la escuela. Gabriela va a la escuela Isabelle C. O'Keeffe en South Shore, cerca de donde su madre consiguió un apartamento a través de un programa estatal de ayuda para cubrir la renta.

Dirigido por el Illinois Housing Development Authority y el Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Illinois en colaboración con Caridades Católicas, el programa de ayuda para la renta cubre tres meses de renta para las personas que emigran desde la frontera del sur en busca de asilo y que llegaron a los refugios de la ciudad antes del 17 de noviembre de 2023. La estrategia fundamental de la ciudad es conseguir que las familias consigan una vivienda permanente una vez que han dejado los refugios.

Los datos muestran que casi el 60% de las aproximadamente 5.000 familias que utilizan el programa para asentarse en Chicago están encontrando viviendas en comunidades predominantemente negras, de bajos ingresos en el South y West Side, vecindarios históricamente abandonados con escuelas que no tienen muchos estudiantes que aprenden inglés y que a menudo no cuentan con personal certificado para educar a esos estudiantes.

A través del programa estatal, las familias pueden escoger dónde vivir, y “en definitiva, el bajo costo de la renta es lo que determina la decisión”, dijo Daisy Contreras, portavoz del Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Illinois.

Las leyes estatales obligan a las escuelas a poner en marcha programas bilingües — educación en inglés y en la lengua natal del niño — cuando matriculan a 20 o más estudiantes que aprenden inglés que hablan la misma lengua natal. Las escuelas también deben enseñar a los alumnos la historia y la cultura de su país de origen.

Pero a medida que las familias se van de los refugios y encuentran un hogar en vecindarios segregados y relativamente baratos, se encuentran con escuelas segregadas que llevan años sufriendo un descenso del número de alumnos matriculados y recursos poco suficientes, y mucho menos programas bilingües con todo el personal necesario.

Este fue el caso de Nathaly García cuando recientemente se mudó de un refugio en el centro a un apartamento de tres habitaciones en South Shore con la renta cubierta por el programa estatal. Su hijo de 11 años, Santiago, estaba matriculado en la Escuela Internacional Ogden en Gold Coast, y la mudanza implicaba triplicar el tiempo de viaje a la escuela.

Pero García no quería matricular a su hijo en la escuela que estaba cerca del nuevo apartamento porque había escuchado cosas negativas sobre la escuela y creía que las puntuaciones de las pruebas de lectura y matemáticas no eran lo suficientemente altas, ella dijo.

La inmigrante venezolana Nathaly García prepara huevos en su apartamento de South Shore. Al igual que Ruiz, García consiguió un apartamento a través de un programa estatal. Pero en vez de enviar a sus hijos a las escuelas más cercanas, optó por mantenerlos en las escuelas cercanas a su refugio previo.

Incluso después de que las familias se van de los refugios, sus hijos tienen derecho legal a permanecer en la escuela en la que se matricularon originalmente porque las directrices del distrito clasifican a los estudiantes inmigrantes como personas sin hogar, lo que les proporciona ciertas protecciones federales.

Por consiguiente, García y su hijo toman ahora dos autobuses de hora y media de ida y vuelta para continuar yendo a Ogden. García dijo que nadie les dijo que podían solicitar el servicio del autobús amarillo.

En el caso de Yennifer Ruiz, nadie le explicó que su hija tenía derecho legal a quedarse en Eli Whitney, la escuela a la que iba su hija cuando vivían en el refugio de Little Village, ella dijo. De hecho, cuando Ruiz le mostró al personal de Eli Whitney a dónde se iba a mudar, le dijeron que estaría “demasiado lejos” fuera de los límites de asistencia, ella dijo.

Los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que ayudan a familias a matricularse o transferirse a otras escuelas que no están en su vecindario, pero que pueden tener mejores recursos, como programas bilingües. Asaf dijo que las familias migrantes, como todas las familias de Chicago, pueden elegir dónde enviar a sus hijos a la escuela.

“Son residentes individuales e independientes de la ciudad”, dijo Asaf, y añadió que el distrito se pone en contacto con los directores “en el momento en que oímos llamadas de la escuela pidiendo apoyo”.

El director de O’Keeffe ha solicitado ayuda al distrito, y Gabriela ha comenzado recientemente a aprender inglés a través de un programa extracurricular, dijo Ruiz.

El portavoz del distrito escolar dijo que O’Keeffe recientemente matriculó suficientes estudiantes que aprenden inglés para justificar un programa bilingüe y la escuela ha sido aprobada para contratar a un maestro a medio tiempo para trabajar con esos estudiantes.

No obstante, Yennifer Ruiz está ahorrando para que su familia pueda mudarse del barrio y estar más cerca de una escuela que asista mejor a su hija, ella dijo.

‘Tenemos que construir un programa de cero’

La escuela primaria Ward está en West Humboldt Park, un vecindario con viviendas asequibles y un gran índice de delitos de drogas y armas de fuego. Casi todos los alumnos de la escuela son negros y proceden de familias con bajos ingresos.

Los datos muestran que casi 140 familias se han asentado en la zona de Humboldt Park a través del programa estatal.

Después de años de disminución en las matriculaciones, las cifras de Ward se estabilizaron este año escolar, ya que las familias inmigrantes encontraron apartamentos cerca de la escuela, dijo Watt, la maestra de primer grado de la escuela.

Watt ahora tiene nueve nuevos alumnos de Venezuela y Ecuador. Pero al igual que otros adultos en Ward, ella no habla español. La escuela primaria tiene docenas de estudiantes que aprenden inglés, pero no tiene ni maestros bilingües ni un programa bilingüe, según Watt y los datos preliminares de matriculación.

Es un predicamento “abrumador”, dijo Watt. Antes de este año, Watt, que lleva 25 años ejerciendo como maestra, nunca había dado clase a alumnos que no hablan inglés.

La escuela primaria Laura S. Ward en West Humboldt Park es una de las docenas de escuelas públicas con vacantes de maestros bilingües y de ESL, según el distrito.

Una auditoría del CPS de Ward en el mes de abril determinó que la escuela, que tenía alrededor de 20 estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés en ese momento, no estaba proporcionando la instrucción requerida a todos los niños que estaban aprendiendo inglés y carecía de suficiente personal certificado, según documentos obtenidos por Chalkbeat y Block Club.

Ward es una de 72 escuelas de kindergarten a 12º grado identificadas por CPS con vacantes de personal certificado para enseñar ESL o clases bilingües según datos del distrito hasta el pasado abril. Eso excluye la Academia Virtual del distrito. Una certificación de ESL no significa que el maestro habla otro idioma — sólo que están certificados para enseñar clases de ESL.

Esas escuelas han visto el número de estudiantes que aprenden inglés aumentar en un promedio de más del 40 por ciento en lo que va del año escolar, según un análisis de Chalkbeat y Block Club de los datos preliminares de matriculación.

A principios de este año, Ward matriculó a suficientes estudiantes que aprenden inglés para justificar un programa bilingüe y ahora está trabajando para establecer uno, según un portavoz del distrito. La escuela fue aprobada en octubre para contratar una posición de maestro de medio tiempo para trabajar con estudiantes que aprenden inglés y puede emplear a una persona de tiempo completo el año entrante ahora que la escuela ha matriculado a más de 50 estudiantes que aprenden inglés, dijo un portavoz de CPS.

En Ward, Watt y otros maestros dependen del personal hispanohablante que no tiene credenciales bilingües — la maestra de kindergarten y dos conserjes — para ayudarles a comunicarse con los estudiantes migrantes y las familias que buscan ayuda con las matrículas escolares.

Desde hace algún tiempo, la maestra de kindergarten tenía que ausentarse de su clase hasta cinco veces al día para traducir, ella dijo. El distrito proporcionó a los maestros dispositivos de traducción, pero los maestros de Ward afirman que no siempre funcionan adecuadamente y que no sustituyen el hecho de hablar el idioma.

La maestra de kindergarten, que no quiso ser identificada porque no estaba autorizada a hablar con la prensa, dijo que está dividida entre sus responsabilidades como maestra y su trabajo no oficial como traductora de la escuela. Watt dijo que algunos de sus alumnos migrantes progresan académicamente, pero otros tienen dificultades para entender sus trabajos de clase y aprender inglés.

“Algunos [maestros] están en escuelas en donde ya está en marcha el programa [bilingüe]; simplemente lo están continuando. A diferencia de nosotros, que tenemos que construir un programa de cero”, dijo la maestra de kindergarten.

Asaf, directora de la Oficina de Educación Lingüística y Cultural del distrito, dijo que CPS ha estado creando puestos de maestros para las escuelas que están matriculando a muchos más estudiantes que aprenden inglés. Reconoció que la ayuda puede no llegar de inmediato, y se necesita tiempo para construir programas bilingües.

“No es siempre fácil y no es siempre inmediato y no siempre es rápido”, dijo Asaf. “Este es un distrito grande, y estamos constantemente pendientes del número de [estudiantes que aprenden inglés] que tenemos”.

Una historia de alumnos bilingües que reprueban

Esta no es la primera vez que Chicago ha estado bajo escrutinio por la manera en que se ocupa de los estudiantes que aprenden inglés.

En 1980, un decreto federal de consentimiento obligó a CPS a elaborar un plan para eliminar la segregación en las escuelas y garantizar que los estudiantes que aprenden inglés recibieran el apoyo necesario. El decreto tuvo que ser modificado dos veces, en parte porque el distrito no proporcionaba suficiente personal y materiales para los estudiantes que aprenden inglés.

Las escuelas son responsables de examinar a sus alumnos para determinar cuáles de ellos están aprendiendo inglés como un nuevo idioma. Esos alumnos tienen derecho por ley a recibir apoyo adicional, como instrucción especializada en inglés.

Además de los requisitos estatales para los programas bilingües, las escuelas con 19 o menos estudiantes que aprenden inglés deben tener un programa conocido como Punto de Instrucción Transicional, que se les enseña a los estudiantes en inglés. No está claro cuántas escuelas de CPS están ahora obligadas a tener programas bilingües, pero aún no los tienen.

Un aula de la escuela primaria Charter Erie, en Humboldt Park. Erie es una de las 43 escuelas con enseñanza bilingüe de la ciudad, lo que significa que proporciona a los estudiantes que aprenden inglés y a los angloparlantes nativos instrucción en español e inglés.

La segregación puede tener mucho que ver a la hora de decidir si las escuelas cuentan con apoyo bilingüe para los alumnos.

Los inmigrantes de Chicago siempre se han establecido en barrios con personas que comparten su origen étnico o su lengua natal, dijo Jim Lewis, especialista senior en investigación del Great Cities Institute de la Universidad de Illinois en Chicago, que ha estudiado la segregación.

Pero algunos de los latinoamericanos recién llegados a Chicago, como los venezolanos, no tienen enclaves, dijo Lewis. Además, muchos vecindarios históricamente latinos se han vuelto inasequibles para familias que no disponen de ingresos estables, lo que puede llevar a los recién llegados de hoy a vecindarios segregados que han sido ignorados durante mucho tiempo.

Para obtener un apartamento según el programa estatal, las familias tienen que encontrar un propietario que participe en el programa o se les asigna uno a través de Caridades Católicas. La única condición es que la renta debe ser asequible, dijo la portavoz de Caridades Católicas Emily Dagostino.

Caridades Católicas no está involucrada en el proceso de matriculación escolar, dijo Dagostino.

Funcionarios del distrito dijeron que CPS trabaja con el Departamento de Familia y Servicios de Apoyo de la ciudad, los refugios y los directores para ayudar a las familias a matricularse en la escuela, y Asaf, jefe de la Oficina de Lenguaje y Educación Cultural del distrito, hizo hincapié en que las familias tienen opciones.

Pero la práctica del distrito de ayudar a las familias a matricularse en la escuela fuera de sus vecindarios no “sigue el propósito” de lo que CPS dice que pretende ofrecer: igualdad de acceso a las escuelas de calidad del vecindario, dijo Jesse Ruiz, ex director general interino de CPS y vicepresidente de la Junta de Educación de Chicago.

Santiago Orozco, 11, asiste a la Escuela Internacional Ogden en Gold Coast, a hora y media del apartamento de su familia en South Shore. Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Jesse Ruiz lideró la auditoría de todos los programas bilingües y de ESL del distrito en el 2015. Ese año escolar, el 71 por ciento de las escuelas auditadas estaban en grave incumplimiento de los requisitos estatales para la educación bilingüe, el Chicago Reporter informó en ese momento.

Los problemas han continuado.

Durante el año escolar 2021 — antes de que los autobuses de Texas comenzaron a llegar — la Junta de Educación del Estado de Illinois puso a CPS en lo que se llama un “plan de acción correctiva” después de que funcionarios determinaron que el distrito estaba incumpliendo con los requisitos de educación bilingüe, dijo Lindsay Record, portavoz de la junta.

En una visita de seguimiento el año pasado, el Estado constató varias mejoras. Pero el distrito seguía sin tener programas bilingües en todas las escuelas que debían tenerlos, ni suficientes maestros acreditados, según los documentos del plan de acción correctiva.

Ruiz, también ex presidente de la Junta Estatal de Educación de Illinois, dijo que entiende por qué las escuelas de bajos recursos no han tenido programas bilingües si históricamente no tenían a estudiantes que aprendían inglés.

“Pero ahora tienen estos estudiantes y eso es lo que dice la ley, que tienes que proporcionar servicios de educación bilingüe a esos estudiantes”, dijo Ruiz. “El distrito va a tener que proporcionar esos recursos”.

‘Ha sido un largo viaje’

María, una migrante venezolana que llegó a Chicago el verano pasado, se mudó de un refugio del centro de la ciudad en febrero a un apartamento en South Shore a través del programa estatal de ayuda para pagar la renta. Block Club y Chalkbeat utilizan un seudónimo para María por motivos de seguridad de su familia.

Tras la mudanza, la familia tuvo dificultades para matricular en la escuela a su hija de 8 años. La primera escuela no contaba con personal bilingüe, y en la segunda los rechazaron por vivir fuera de los límites de la zona de asistencia, cuenta María.

Desesperada por encontrar otra opción, la familia de María buscó ayuda en el Centro de Bienvenida de la escuela secundaria Clemente, donde un empleado los dirigió a la escuela primaria Chárter Erie, una escuela de enseñanza bilingüe en Humboldt Park, a 90 minutos en transporte público de su apartamento de South Shore.

El largo viaje hasta Erie no fue fácil, pero María dice que valió la pena porque su hija aprendía más inglés y “entablaba conversaciones”. Su hija dejó de asistir a Erie hace poco, cuando la familia se mudó a los suburbios.

Muchos de los 49 estudiantes recién llegados de Erie vienen de toda la ciudad, dijo Carlos Pérez, director ejecutivo de la escuela.

Una clase en la escuela primaria Chárter Erie de Humboldt Park, una escuela que cuenta con casi 50 alumnos recién llegados.

Erie está mejor equipada que otras escuelas para proporcionar formación a los estudiantes hispanohablantes que aprenden inglés. Como una de las 43 escuelas de enseñanza bilingüe de la ciudad, Erie les enseña a estudiantes que aprenden inglés y angloparlantes en español y en inglés. Ocho de los maestros de Erie provienen de países latinoamericanos, dijo Pérez.

“Ha sido un largo viaje que muchos de ellos han recorrido para llegar hasta nosotros. Este era su objetivo: traer a sus hijos a una escuela en Estados Unidos ... hay un peso y una responsabilidad que eso conlleva”, dijo Pérez.

Incluso con esos recursos, los maestros se enfrentan a grandes retos. La mayoría de los estudiantes migrantes llegan a Erie con más de dos grados atrasados, y algunos no han asistido a una institución educativa formal hasta por dos años, dijo Pérez. En el 2022, Erie no cumplía con los requisitos del programa bilingüe y ESL, según la auditoría más reciente de CPS.

Varios directores cuestionaron si las auditorías son eficaces. Pérez dijo que uno de los maestros que ellos consideran efectivo no está certificado para enseñar a los estudiantes que aprenden inglés, una de las razones por las que la escuela no cumple con los requisitos.

“¿Nuestro objetivo es el cumplimiento de las normas, o poner frente a los estudiantes a buenas personas que puedan educarlos?” dijo Pérez. “A menudo, esas no son cosas indistintas”.

CPS dijo que tiene alrededor de 7.500 maestros que están certificados para enseñar clases bilingües, ESL o ambos — una cifra que ha crecido en los últimos años. Muchos de los maestros certificados para enseñar esas clases están en puestos de enseñanza regular, dijo un portavoz.

Funcionarios del distrito dijeron que han tratado de atraer a más maestros bilingües mediante la subvención del costo para obtener endosos bilingües o de ESL y ofreciendo ofertas de trabajo temprano a los maestros que están completando sus requisitos. Pero es difícil cubrir puestos de docencia a mitad de año, dijo Ben Felton, jefe de talento del distrito.

Felton dijo que “simplemente no tenemos el talento” para que cada escuela tenga grandes programas bilingües “porque históricamente no han habido tantos estudiantes bilingües en estas escuelas”.

Un niño prospera, otra está ‘simplemente atascada’

Aunque Yennifer Ruiz cambió a Gabriela de colegio tras mudarse a South Shore, ella optó por mantener a su hijo Gabriel, de 16 años, en la Academia de Carreras Richards, que cuenta con un programa bilingüe.

Después de sólo cinco meses en Chicago, Ruiz dice que ha visto cómo esos recursos bilingües han ayudado a que Gabriel prospere — está aprendiendo inglés rápidamente e incluso se ha unido al equipo de béisbol de la escuela — y cómo la falta de servicios ha hecho que Gabriela se sienta perdida en la escuela.

Gabriela desearía poder volver a Eli Whitney, donde le gustaba poder comunicarse con sus maestros y otros niños, ella dice.

“Me siento muy mal porque el único objetivo de mudarme aquí era conseguir una buena calidad de vida”, dijo Ruiz en español a través de un traductor. “Yo sé que mi hijo está sacando su máximo potencial, pero ella está simplemente atascada”.

Traducido por Flavia Melisa Franco.

Yoha Salmerón Chaparro, pasante en el Centro de Acompañamiento para Inmigrantes y Refugiados de la Universidad de Loyola, y Alex Hernández, periodista de Block Club Chicago, proporcionaron ayuda de interpretación con hispanohablantes en este artículo.

Reema Amin es una periodista que cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago. Puede ponerse en contacto con ella: ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mina Bloom es una periodista de investigación de Block Club Chicago. Puede ponerse en contacto con Mina: mina@blockclubchi.org.

A court order forced Fayette County schools to integrate. Will progress continue without it?

2024-05-17T21:17:49+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

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As in many school districts across the South, where segregation was once the law, it took protests and a court order to desegregate public schools in Fayette County, Tennessee.

That order came nearly a dozen years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared legally mandated racial segregation in schools unconstitutional.

Fayette County, a place where new homes are sprouting like spring grass in towns on its outskirts, is still operating under the 1965 order. The order has led to racially integrated schools, with Black and white students proportionally represented in most of the four elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. Growing numbers of Hispanic students are also enrolling, and the current superintendent, Versie Ray Hamlett, is Black.

That’s a vast change from what 78-year-old Myles Wilson, a former Fayette County school superintendent and now a school board member, faced in 1963, when he was reading hand-me-down books at all-Black Fayette County Training School.

“The textbooks were terrible,” Wilson recalled. “Sometimes, entire pages would be destroyed. I guess they were tearing pages out because they knew they would be passed down to us.”

But, Wilson added, “We’ve made some great strides. We’ve had seven Black superintendents since 1984.”

Yet Wilson said he and other members of the community are worried that progress, so hard won, could erode once a new consent decree that the Justice Department issued in 2023 is satisfied – and the 1965 court order is lifted.

“A lot of Blacks feel like we shouldn’t be released from the consent decree, because they’ll go back to the old way, because that’s what’s happened in the rest of the country,” he said.

Many school districts across the country still have racially segregated schools, and school segregation has increased in the last three decades.

Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University and Ann Owens, a University of Southern California sociologist, released a study this month showing how an increase in school segregation has been driven by two factors: school districts being released from court oversight and an expansion in school choice policies, particularly the spread of charter schools.

That follows what Reardon and researchers at Stanford found in a 2012 study. According to their analysis, school districts released from desegregation orders in the two decades after 1990 began to resegregate. Ones that continued to be under judicial oversight did not.

“These results suggest that court-ordered desegregation plans are effective in reducing racial school segregation, but that their effects fade over time in the absence of continued court oversight,” the abstract said.

Fayette County’s long fight for civil rights

In Fayette County, the original court order to desegregate the schools was part of a protracted battle for civil rights, one that the New York Times described in 1969 as the “longest sustained civil rights protest in the nation.”

It began in 1959, when John McFerren and Harpman Jameson, both farmers and World War II veterans, attended the trial of Burton Dodson, a Black man who was accused of murder and had escaped a lynch mob.

McFerren and Jameson learned that because few Blacks were registered to vote, it would be impossible for Dodson to get a jury that wasn’t all-white. At the urging of Dodson’s lawyer, James Estes, McFerren and Jameson began to register Black sharecroppers to vote – a move that resulted in many of them being evicted by their white landlords.

Evicted families pitched tents on the outskirts of Somerville, the Fayette County seat, and activists from around the nation joined them.

The tent city disbanded in 1962 after the Justice Department sued the landowners, and the courts ordered them to stop interfering in the rights of Black people to vote or run for office. But the fight for racial justice was far from over – as Wilson would learn.

Myles Wilson poses for a portrait outside the Somerville Elementary School on Thurs., May 16, 2024 in Fayette County, Tennessee.

After graduating from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1967, Wilson was hired as a teacher at Fayette County Training School, arriving two years after the court order. He later sued the school system when he and all the single, Black male teachers were fired to prevent them from teaching white girls, he said.

The teachers were reinstated, and Wilson would file other lawsuits over the years to fight racial injustice in the system.

With his own battles for racial justice and desegregation behind him, Wilson fears that without the court order, Fayette County could backslide.

While the school district has satisfied many of the requirements of the court order, the new consent decree requires, among other things, that school officials work with the Justice Department and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to “develop an effective and sustainable student assignment policy to further desegregation in its schools.”

More white families are moving from Memphis to Oakland, a town in Fayette County, and demands are growing for a new high school there – even though the county’s only high school, Fayette-Ware High School, is under capacity, he said.

The school can accommodate 1,300 students, Wilson said, but currently enrolls about 833. Of those, 61% are Black, and 30% are white. He fears that the addition of a new high school could drive segregation.

Wilson also fears that the recent push for universal vouchers by Republican lawmakers – a battle that Gov. Bill Lee has vowed to revive next year – could also erode desegregation progress in Fayette County by giving families public dollars to enroll children in private schools.

One private school in the county, Fayette Academy, was established as an all-white school in 1965, as the desegregation order was handed down. In 1971, U.S. District Judge Robert McRae, whose orders led to school desegregation in Memphis and later upheld busing, called the school “a beautiful building sitting on top of a hill as a monument against the black people.”

The private Christian school remains predominantly white.

Daphene McFerren, daughter of John McFerren and whose brother John McFerren Jr. was one of the original plaintiffs in the desegregation lawsuit, said that if the order is lifted, it doesn’t have to mean the end of progress.

“I don’t want to speculate on where this can end up, because who knows?” said McFerren, who is the executive director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.

But, McFerren said, the fact that the school district is abiding by the consent decree means they are cooperating.

“That should be acknowledged,” she said. “But we should be vigilant in that the goal of this is to eradicate any form of discrimination where it exists in the education of our children.”

McFerren, however, described it as a “Catch-22″ situation. Satisfying the consent decree should mean that the district has met its desegregation goals. But will the district continue to maintain those goals once the mechanism forcing it to do so is gone?

“Well, as I always say, a case can always be reopened,” McFerren said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

‘Colorblind’ policies and vouchers could undermine impact of Brown desegregation ruling, professor says

2024-05-15T17:38:38+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

When Daniel Kiel was a student at Grahamwood Elementary and White Station High School in the 1980s and 1990s, he knew he was getting a good education.

What he didn’t know was whether most of the Black students in his school were receiving the same.

“I was in the optional program at those schools, but it was a school within a school, which meant there was a traditional program alongside it,” said Kiel, now a constitutional law professor at the University of Memphis.

“While Grahamwood and White Station were extraordinarily diverse compared to many Memphis schools at the time, my classrooms were not. My classrooms were 80% to 90% white students, which meant that the other classes were 80% to 90% Black students.”

That experience, plus many others, set Kiel on a mission to explore why his classrooms looked the way they did, the history behind it all, and a system that continues to grapple with how to provide a quality education for all students.

The mission took him to Harvard Law School and to private law practice in Boston before he received a Fulbright scholarship and became a professor at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at the University of Memphis. His scholarly work centers on race and education — work that led him to produce a documentary in 2011 titled “The Memphis 13,” chronicling the stories of the first Black students to attend all-white public elementary schools in Memphis in 1961.

That was seven years after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that declared that mandated school segregation was unconstitutional.

This month marks the 70th anniversary of that decision. In recognition of that milestone, Chalkbeat spoke with Kiel about how the ruling influenced his interest in educational equity, the current state of school desegregation, and how new laws and interpretations of racial justice are poised to undermine it.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did the Brown decision influence your life and decision to pursue constitutional law?

By the time I was graduating college and entering law school, I was a huge admirer of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Defense Fund, and the idea of lawyers forcing the country to grapple with injustice. So it was that idea that took me to law school.

When I was in law school, it was actually around the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, so there was some interesting coursework that I was allowed to take. We had studied Little Rock, Charlotte and Detroit … . I knew there was a connection to Memphis, and I knew from my experiences there wasn’t education justice in Memphis.

It was at that point that I started digging into the Memphis schools as part of a curiosity project as to why my schools looked like they did.

Describe what happened in the seven years between 1954, when Brown outlawed legal segregation, and 1961, when the first Black children were enrolled in Memphis’ all-white elementary schools.

For the first few years, and not just in Tennessee, there’s this thought (in Southern states) that they won’t have to abide by the ruling. Then the (Tennessee) legislature took race out of school assignments, with freedom of choice (a plan in which schools still had the discretion to deny Black student requests to enroll in all-white schools), but that still allowed local schools to maintain segregation.

That spurred the 1960 Memphis lawsuit Northcross v. Memphis City Schools, and led to the first Black students being allowed to attend white elementary schools in 1961. After the courts ordered desegregation efforts to be stepped up in the late 1960s, the process accelerated.

Still, in the 1970s, most students were still operating in segregated environments.

How do your students react to lessons about school segregation and how it was the law of the land before Brown?

They’re surprised. My students come with a range of familiarity with that story, so there’s definitely students who know that story well and aren’t surprised by it, and know how things unfolded afterward, but there also are those students who think that when the Supreme Court ruled, that was that, and all of a sudden segregation went away.

For some of my students, a lot of unlearning has to happen before they’re learning. In a particular course I teach, Education and Civil Rights, we use the Brown story and narrative as a case study to set up other kinds of pushes toward educational justice that have occurred in the United States, whether they are based on poverty, immigration status, or disability, or sex. It’s a touchstone case that the students enjoy grappling with methodically.

Recently, the Tennessee legislature tried to pass a voucher law permitting anyone, regardless of income, to use public money to pay for private school for their children. What are your thoughts on whether this universal voucher bill — which Gov. Bill Lee has vowed to reintroduce next year — will worsen school segregation?

Vouchers are hard to talk about, because the theory behind them is an attractive one, which is to give every student a chance at opportunity regardless of their circumstances. But there’s a risk involved in disabling the schools that are more likely to serve large numbers of disadvantaged students — especially in Shelby County, and in the state more broadly.

But I think about history and the way things pop up repeatedly in different guises, and in the 1950s, one of the first responses to Brown in Virginia, and one of the ways they resisted the court order, was for the school system to shut down and not have public education anymore. While that seemed awful and shortsighted, what made it worse was that they provided vouchers to students who wanted to attend private schools. But of course, the private schools were openly discriminatory and exclusive, so what vouchers were, in that instance, (was) a mechanism to maintain segregation.

Vouchers, in their 21st century form, aren’t those things precisely, but they are consistent with the idea that it’s not us, the people, the community, that is responsible for education, but that education is an individualized thing. You create an unequal playing field when you give an individual control of those things, because the way that those laws get passed, and the way vouchers typically show up, is that not every school has to take them. Students and families are often responsible for their own transportation, so that’s an access issue, and then the things that happen inside schools once they’re there can be hateful and hurtful and stigmatizing, and there’s no support for that within a voucher program.

I think the theory behind vouchers is an attractive one. It sort of draws me to the work of pushing for education equity more broadly, but in practice it has never served that goal.

What other developments do you believe can undermine the promise of Brown?

It’s not hard to look at the landscape of the way we do education and find disparities that look like the disparities from 70 years ago. They’re not the same in that the law doesn’t specifically mandate them, but it’s easy to find those disparities, and they’re discouraging.

In my space, I look at the way the U.S. Supreme Court has, in particular, transformed the Brown decision not into a decision about remedying historical injustices, but into a decision about colorblindness and government race-neutrality. I feel like neutrality didn’t get it done in 1955, and I don’t think neutrality is likely to get it done today.

The law is moving in a direction where it’s a little harder to see where you can push for the kinds of educational investments that are needed to produce equal education opportunities today. That’s one thing. But I think part of the reason why the disparities still exist is a broader lack of will from all of us that something should be done.

It’s easy to say equal opportunity should exist, but it’s harder to turn that into action and policy and results. It’s not impossible, but one thing I think is important is to lift up teachers and families and community groups and advocates who are pushing for this every day, and who are succeeding.

So, how should we view the Brown decision through today’s lens?

The story that most people want to tell about Brown is one of missed opportunities, and I think there’s something to that. But there’s been a huge increase in educational attainment in our society since 1954.

If we’re looking at high school graduation and college attendance and employment figures, achievements that were unthinkable in Black communities are now the norm. There has been a lot of progress.

I try not to lose sight of the fact that a lot has changed since 1954, and that a lot of people are still working on that.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

The 12 Black women behind Brown v. Board often go unrecognized. A new exhibit aims to change that.

2024-05-13T22:38:21+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

To unearth the forgotten history of the Kansas women who served as plaintiffs in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, Donna Rae Pearson had to dig.

Without published scholarship to go on, Pearson and two other researchers hunted down the women’s obituaries, cross-referenced their details against Census records and city directories, and pored over newspaper clippings, oral histories, and court transcripts.

It was no easy feat: Some women’s names had changed, and some had moved as far away as Oregon.

The result of their work is “The Women of Brown,” which recognizes the lives and contributions of the 12 Black mothers who signed their names, alongside Oliver Brown, to the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court.

Twelve Black women participated in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, but they often get overlooked. A new exhibit aims to shine a light on their lives and contributions.

A pop-up exhibit showcasing their findings is traveling across Kansas to mark the 70-year anniversary of the landmark decision. That includes a stop at Topeka Public Schools’ commemorative event this week.

Pearson hopes that students and others who see the exhibit will leave curious to find out more about the Black women who committed acts of “everyday activism” to further their children’s education.

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

“I don’t think Black women — I don’t think women — get the credit that they are supposed to have when it comes to these kinds of activities,” said Pearson, a museum curator at the Kansas Historical Society and a former local history librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. “I think that’s becoming more and more of a conversation that we have today: How did they contribute to these movements?”

The documents Pearson and her team collected will be housed at the Kansas Historical Society State Archives and Topeka’s local library, so future researchers won’t have to do as much legwork. Pearson is also starting to hear from relatives and others who knew the women, which she hopes will contribute to the scholarship, too.

“We just needed to bring them out of the dark,” she said. “We needed to say their names out loud again.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Pearson about why the 12 women joined the lawsuit and the challenges of researching Black women’s history. She also has thoughts on how students and teachers can keep the conversation going (see sidebar).

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did the 12 Black women who became plaintiffs in the Brown case come to be part of the lawsuit?

We don’t know exactly how all of them came to be part of it. Lucinda Todd, one of the plaintiffs, and actually the first plaintiff to sign up, was heavily involved in the NAACP. She was on a special committee when talk of this lawsuit started happening, and she helped recruit parents.

We also identified different locations throughout the city [of Topeka] where these women could have possibly met. They were all involved in formal religious activities. Some of them went to church together. Some of them were involved in social clubs together. So we believe there was this network where they could have been simply having coffee or tea and saying: ‘Hey, I decided to sign up. How about you?’

Why have they historically gotten less attention than Oliver Brown?

In our legal system, ‘et al’ can hide a lot of things. That means ‘and more.’ Et al really covers up, initially, the fact that these women were part of the case.

But then you go into a little bit deeper reasons. These are Black women. And our history is not recorded as well as the majority’s history.

The case, initially, was not necessarily as well-received, for different reasons. Why this case happened does not fit our prevailing narrative [in Kansas] of being a ‘free state,’ a state about civil rights. We were actually one of three northern states that allowed permissive segregation, which means, by law, they could segregate.

What were the ways in which the women saw that their children were not getting equal opportunities as white children at school?

When you read the transcript from the local court trial, you’ll find that there were problems with the busing system and being able to pick up their children in a timely manner. The Brown children had to walk almost a mile by railroad tracks just to get to their bus stop. These long commutes would have interfered with their schooling. You’re going to get up earlier than a person who’s going to walk two minutes. That’s eating time before school and after school.

[Students who lived far from their schools] couldn’t go home for lunch. They had to bring lunch, and supposedly the lunch wasn’t going to be as nutritious as a hot, home-cooked meal.

There were other things, in terms of activities that were not available. What sparked some of this was Lucinda Todd was super mad about the fact that her daughter, Nancy, could not participate in the district-wide [music] program. There were 18 schools, but only 14 of them were participating. What schools did they leave out? The four Black schools. It was because of Lucinda Todd’s complaints that they were finally able to get [music programs].

There were sports available at the upper levels in Topeka, but the [activities were] segregated. So there was a Black basketball team and a white basketball team. There was a Black prom and a white prom. Even though they all went to school together, all those activities were actually segregated. [Kansas law at the time permitted segregated elementary schools, but high schools were supposed to be integrated.]

Initially, the women were featured in some news coverage, but then their voices just kind of dropped out. What were you able to glean from what they did share over the years?

As the secretary of the NAACP, Lucinda Todd sent out this very long press release that explains the case to the community. But over time, you see the male figures that were involved with the case, they continue to be elevated. But the women, you don’t see them asked as many questions later on, or any questions.

Toward the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the historic site was being lobbied for and built here, they brought them back again. Locally, the one disarming piece that I found was an article that was talking about them, and it tried to give a status update. It kept saying: ‘No information known.’ And we discovered that some of these women were actually still alive, living in the city.

But I also have to remember … the challenge with doing women’s history — not just Black women, but women in general — is we are [often] forced to change our names. In some cases, especially then, they were not referred to by their first and last name. They’re referred to as ‘Mrs. Brown.’ And it’s like: ‘Well, Mrs. Brown surely has a first name!’ So that made it a little bit challenging.

How do the women who participated in this lawsuit fit within the larger tradition of African American women participating in advocacy and organizing in their communities?

It’s kind of a culmination of all the experiences they were able to have. Colored women’s clubs were here as early as the 1890s. Black women are the backbone of those [church] organizations. When you decide to have an event at church, and you’re the one in charge, you start organizing. You start getting people on board, you start raising money.

Among "The Women of Brown" is Lucinda Todd, whose letter to the national NAACP sparked the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court.

We had Black women who were involved in entrepreneurship. There were women who owned their own businesses. They were not used to necessarily sitting on the sidelines here. I think as organizers, they were in a community where it was acceptable for them to sign up and do things like this.

What lessons can we draw from ‘The Women of Brown’ about the significance of everyday activism?

I think we need to broaden our definition of what activism is. It is not always Martin Luther King, standing at a pulpit. Everyday activism is really the little things that you can do in your own community to make a difference. It’s when we take a stand for something that we believe in.

Some would say what I’m doing right now is being an activist. I’m bringing up a story; I’m posing challenging questions.

Did you make any personal connections to what you learned about the women of Brown?

As a historian, I very intentionally did not talk about the decision [in the past]. Part of the reason was because of the way it is portrayed in the media. Yes, it is a celebration of sorts. But y’all have to remember, the reason why this case happened is because there was blatant segregation in this state for an extended period of time, within our lives.

My class, when I entered elementary school in the ‘70s, was considered the first truly integrated class. My older brothers, my older sisters, in particular, went to segregated Black schools. And this was post the [Brown] decision. These are things we are still wrestling with.

I didn’t think we were looking at [the Brown decision] from a very truthful perspective. I don’t think we were looking at all the nuances, and the impact that it created on different communities.

During this time period, you had a couple of things happen to the Black community. Redlining forced us into one community. With desegregation of schools, you were breaking up that school network, that bonding of a community. Then the next step was urban renewal — that totally wiped out some of these communities.

I needed to look closer at the decision from another perspective, so I could understand it.

What would you like for students who are going to see the exhibit to take away from it?

I hope it’s a conversation-starter for them. I hope that they can relate to the women.

They were ignored. Hopefully, this will again bring them to the forefront and shine some light on them. Hopefully, it makes you curious enough to want to learn a little bit more about them.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Latinx students in public schools face barriers to college, access to counselors, report finds

2024-05-09T10:00:00+00:00

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Latinx students in New Jersey make up over a third of the public school population but face educational inequities such as less access to school counselors, disparities in academic performance, and low college enrollment rates, a new study found.

Addressing the needs of these students is “an urgent matter,” said Dr. Vandeen Campbell, co-author of the report and associate director and assistant research professor at the Cornwall Center.

“This report couldn’t be more timely because it gave us the opportunity to zoom in and start thinking about solutions for the Latinx population,” Campbell added.

The report, “The Latinx Experience in NJ Schools: A Preliminary Overview,” released last week by the Latino Action Network Foundation and the Joseph C. Cornwall Center at Rutgers University, shows that the state’s Latinx student population is steadily increasing, with those students attending schools where they are less likely to be around students from different backgrounds and less likely to have access to advanced courses and basic resources like mental health professionals.

Latinx students are attending “increasingly hyper-segregated schools” and those schools are more likely to experience higher levels of poverty, the study found.

Latino Action Network, the policy arm of the foundation that co-commissioned this report, is also advocating for solutions through a legal route. The organization is part of the coalition of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against New Jersey, currently before a state Superior Court judge, that argues the state needs to fix its heavily segregated public school education system. That case has been on pause for six months as plaintiffs — who also include the state chapter of the NAACP, families, and other advocates — continue to engage in mediation discussions with state officials.

The report comes as Newark, the state’s largest school district, sees a steady increase in Latino students and expects more than 11,000 English language learners to enter the district next school year.

According to the report, the percentage of schools enrolling more than 75% Latinx students has gone up from 5% in the 2013-14 school year to 8% in 2022-23. Of those schools, on average, 77% of students enrolled received free and reduced-priced lunch, which low-income children are eligible for.

Compared to other racial groups, Latinx students have one of the lowest graduation rates at 85%, six percentage points below the statewide average of 91%. In Newark Public Schools, that rate is 83%, a data analysis component of the report showed. The state’s Latinx students are also graduating high school at a rate equal to the national average for public school students, but enrolling in college at a rate lower than the statewide average, the report found. Those trends point to barriers in the college admissions process and the student-to-guidance counselors ratio in public schools, co-authors of the report said.

During the 2019-20 school year, on average, a counselor in a heavily Latinx school was advising 166 more students than in a typical school, the report found. The statewide ratio of students to counselors has improved since and is now at 339 students per counselor and 491 students per counselor in heavily Latinx schools, according to the report. But those numbers represent a disparity with counselors in Latinx schools advising about 152 more students than the typical school in the state, according to the report.

“If this is their first time going to college, they need the infrastructure to help them complete applications and find funding to apply,” said Swati Dontamsetti, a co-author of the report and doctoral candidate at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

The higher the percentage of Latinx students in a school, the more English language learners in its student body, the report found. Dr. Claudia Castillo-Lavergne, a co-author of the report and post-doctoral associate at the Cornwall Center said it’s important to understand the needs of these students who are a subgroup within the Latinx population in schools.

In the last decade, the overall percentage of English language learners increased by around 5 percentage points, from 4% of the state in the 2013–14 school year to 9% in 2022–23, according to the report.

“There’s certainly a greater need, I think, for supporting and understanding how they’re learning,” Castillo-Lavergne said. “How do we think about cultural responsiveness in connection to what they already know?”

Despite sobering trends, the study also found positive outliers in student achievement and enrollment in career and technical education courses. The co-authors of the report say those outliers are important to learn from to improve the trajectory of students. In career and technical education, Latinx students seem to enroll at higher rates than other student groups, the report found.

Additionally, recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the state’s learning assessments show that the pandemic wiped out academic progress made over the previous decade, the report says. But Latinx students in 36 districts closely met or outperformed the 2021-22 school year state average in English language arts proficiency, while 23 districts had these students performing better than the state average in math, the report found.

“I think this is really connected to our future workforce and that question of how exactly do we expect these families to come out of poverty and integrate into society if the systems are set up against them?” said Dr. Jesselly De La Cruz, executive director of the Latino Action Network Foundation.

The report is meant to inform policymakers about the state of Latinx students in New Jersey’s public schools and help create better policies to support them, report co-authors say. They will also hold an event on Saturday, May 11 at Rutgers-Newark to discuss their findings and possible solutions.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Study finds segregation increasing in large districts — and school choice is a factor

2024-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

Read more of Chalkbeat's coverage of the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

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Over the last three decades, school segregation has been increasing — and it has increased the most within the large school districts that enroll many of the nation’s students of color.

Schools have become more segregated in these communities even as neighborhoods have become more racially mixed and as economic inequality between racial groups has declined.

Two main factors are driving the increase: the end of most court oversight that required school districts to create integrated schools, and policies that favor school choice and parental preference.

Those are the findings of new research on school segregation from Sean Reardon of Stanford University and Ann Owens of the University of Southern California. Their analysis coincides with the 70th anniversary this month of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legally mandated racial segregation in public schools and overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal.” They said the findings should “sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

“Although school segregation is much lower than 60 years ago, both racial and economic segregation are increasing,” the authors wrote. “Those increases appear to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions. They are not the inevitable result of demographic changes — and can be changed by alternative policy choices.”

The analysis includes an interactive map that allows users to see school integration and segregation trends in their communities.

Reardon and Owens looked at national school enrollment data, including going back to 1967 for communities where older data was available. School segregation fell sharply after the Supreme Court’s Green v. New Kent County decision in 1968. The decision banned “freedom of choice” plans that states had used to undermine integration efforts and mandated desegregation plans in many districts.

The study measures segregation using a normalized exposure index, which compares the demographic makeup of schools attended by students of a particular racial group. The number 1 represents complete segregation and 0 represents fully integrated schools.

Overall, schools remain far more integrated today than they were before 1973, the analysis found. The 1970s saw widespread busing programs to create racially balanced schools, programs that continued into the 1990s in some communities.

Between 1991 and 2019, Black-white segregation increased by 3.5 percentage points in the 533 districts that serve at least 2,500 Black students, an increase of 25% from historically low levels. But in the 100 largest school districts, which serve about 38% of all Black students, the analysis found segregation increased by 8 percentage points — a 64% increase.

Hispanic and Asian American students attend more integrated schools on average than Black students, but rates of white-Hispanic and white-Asian American segregation have nearly doubled since the 1980s, the analysis found.

In Denver, advocates found that Latino students and English learners are especially likely to attend very segregated schools. A study last year that looked at wealthy California school districts found that white families move away as more Asian American families move in — and fear of academic competition may be a factor.

Economic segregation increased considerably in that same time period, Reardon and Owens found. In 2019, the average Black student attended a school where the rate of students receiving free- or reduced-price lunch was 18 percentage points higher than in schools attended by white students in the same district.

Segregated schools affect student opportunities

The high rates of poverty in predominantly Black and Hispanic schools contribute to the test score gaps and opportunity gaps associated with segregation, Owens said.

“It’s not that sitting next to a student of a certain race makes the school good or bad,” she said. “But we’ve never done ‘separate but equal.’ Until we eliminate broader systemic underlying inequalities in our society, we haven’t shown an ability to actually serve kids equitably.”

Owens said previous research on contemporary school segregation has focused more on metropolitan areas, finding more segregation between school districts than within them. That continues to be the case. But those analyses obscured how much segregation was increasing in large school districts where most Black and brown students attend school, she said.

Smaller school districts tend to have fewer schools overall and serve relatively fewer students of color. The result is that those schools are more racially integrated.

In larger school districts, neighborhood segregation contributes to school segregation — but it hasn’t driven the increases in school segregation over the last few decades, Reardon and Owens said, because neighborhood segregation has been declining during the same time period.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, their analysis found that the end of widespread court-ordered integration efforts, along with other voluntary school integration policies, has played a major role in schools becoming less integrated. School re-segregation accelerated starting in 2000, after court oversight ended in the 1990s. They estimate that school segregation would be less by about 20% if court orders had remained in place.

The researchers also found that charter school expansion was strongly associated with less integrated schools. The study did not look at the impact of private school choice programs, such as school vouchers, or district open enrollment policies. Instead, the authors treated charter expansion as a proxy for a robust school choice system, as those policies often go hand in hand.

Studies have found that school choice policies can accelerate gentrification, allowing affluent families to buy homes in low-income communities while opting out of the local schools — one reason racially integrated neighborhoods don’t always lead to racially integrated schools.

Reardon said they didn’t look at whether charter schools themselves are more segregated than district-run schools. That type of analysis can be misleading if, for example, a school district closed schools that mostly served Black and Hispanic children and replaced them with charters. Instead, they looked at the growth of charter schools over time within a school district and whether the district as a whole became more segregated. They found a strong association between the two.

The analysis estimates that school segregation would be less by about 14% without charter expansion.

Previous research by Brian Kisida of the University of Missouri and Tomas Monarrez and Matt Chingos of the Urban Institute also found that charter schools contribute to segregation. However, the effect was more modest, accounting for about 5% to 7% of school segregation. Students crossing district lines to attend charter schools offset some of the segregating effects.

In a separate paper, the same authors found that in neighborhoods with more Black and Hispanic representation, charter, private, and district schools contribute equally to school segregation, while in neighborhoods with less Black and Hispanic representation, private schools contribute the most to school segregation, though charters also play a role.

Brian Gill, a policy fellow at Mathematica who has studied charter schools, said people should not make a leap between charter schools contributing to less integrated schools and charter schools contributing to achievement gaps between students of color and their white peers. Many parents of color choose charter schools because they believe they will better serve their children. The better outcomes urban charter schools produce for Black, Hispanic, and low-income students should be considered alongside the potential harms of less integrated schools, he said.

“Whatever we have now is nothing like the legally imposed separation that existed before Brown,” he said.

Reardon said he’s not arguing that charter schools are bad or that parents having choices is bad.

“We’re saying that one consequence, empirically, of the expansion of this kind of choice regime is that it leads to more segregation,” he said. “And that should be taken into account in policy thinking about how we design school systems.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC 5th graders receive middle school offers, as city considers changes to admissions process

2024-04-03T22:26:22+00:00

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Amanda Rinzel, a parent and educator who lives in Brooklyn, spent her spare moments on Wednesday nervously refreshing her MySchools account, waiting for the news of where her fifth grade son would attend middle school in the fall.

It was the family’s second time going through the middle school admissions process, but in some ways, this year felt different from her first experience. Her older son, a seventh grader at the Professional Performing Arts School, had always been interested in musical theater — making the Hell’s Kitchen school, which accepts students from across the five boroughs via audition, “an obvious choice.”

Stanley, her younger son, is “more well-rounded” in his interests, said Rinzel, who lives in District 17. They ended up ranking the Brooklyn Green School, a boroughwide program in nearby District 16, as their top choice. It drew them in with an administration that seemed especially receptive to student needs, as well as its strong arts and athletics programs, she said.

On Wednesday, Rinzel was elated to learn Stanley had been admitted to his top choice school.

“Middle school can be so hard,” said Rinzel, who teaches at a middle school in the Bronx. “It just seems like a happy place, and I’m so excited for him to be in a school that is uplifting.”

For many families, the Wednesday placements marked the end of the city’s middle school admissions process. In December, fifth grade families across the city ranked as many as 12 middle schools as they submitted their applications.

Over the next week, the city’s Education Department will host three virtual sessions for families to learn more about offers and waitlists.

Unlike the city’s notorious high school admissions process, many middle schools across the city feature district programs that are open only to students who live in the area — with some zoned schools only allowing applicants from within a smaller subset of the district. Other programs offer boroughwide admissions, allowing all students who live in the borough to apply, while other schools allow any student in the city to apply.

Some middle schools also use academic screens to determine admissions, sorting students as young as nine based on their grades. Those screens were initially paused during the pandemic, then brought back in some districts at the discretion of each of the city’s 32 local school district superintendents.

Further change to the admissions process may be on the horizon.

For months, the city’s Education Department has been floating a potential change to the process at parent leader meetings — soliciting feedback on a possible shift that would allow students to apply widely outside of their district. Students applying to schools in their own district would still have priority for seats, according to discussions at various meetings.

Still, it may be some time before any changes are enacted.

In a statement, the city’s Education Department confirmed its Office of Student Enrollment was considering possible changes.

“One of the potential changes we are exploring with parents, advocates and educators is allowing students to apply to middle schools outside of their districts,” a spokesperson said. “Conversations are ongoing and no decisions have been made.”

For Rinzel, a citywide process would have meant more options for her and Stanley to consider. She added they may have looked at more schools beyond their district and borough.

More options for students could also mean a more equitable system, opening up seats at schools that may have more resources than those close to home, Rinzel said. But still, she noted that traveling outside of the borough to attend school each day could add potential safety concerns for young students.

“There are a lot of factors that parents and kids have to take into account if they’re applying citywide,” she said.

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

Match day: High school offers bring excitement and anxiety to NYC’s eighth graders

2024-03-07T23:57:34+00:00

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For years, Anthony Block De Jesus, an eighth grader at the School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Brooklyn, has been dreaming of a career on Broadway.

He’s hopeful that he’s on his way: He learned on Thursday he’d been admitted to the vocal performance program at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, as well as the theater program at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn — two of his top ranked choices in the application process.

“The two choices are so strong, and so good, and have so much promise for a kid that wants to do Broadway, so he cannot go wrong,” said Monica De Jesus, his mother. “It’s a real blessing to us.”

Anthony was one of the thousands of eighth grade students across the five boroughs anxiously awaiting their high school placement on Thursday — one of the final steps in the city’s notoriously complex admissions process.

High school matches came months after eighth graders had narrowed down the city’s more than 400 high schools with 700 programs to roughly a dozen top choices. Some schools have extra hurdles for admissions such as essays or portfolios. And then there are the eight specialized high schools where a test is the sole basis for admissions, and LaGuardia, the famed performing arts school whose audition and application process is separate from other arts schools.

Families often describe the admissions process as stressful and confusing to navigate. It can also feel inequitable, as those with more resources can afford to hire consultants and tutors, while devoting more time to touring and evaluating the many options.

Still, the results can be exciting as students look ahead to their time in high school.

Marcia Abrams said she and her daughter Nomarra, an eighth grader at the Brooklyn Green School, were “happy and confused” after receiving their offer. They immigrated to the city about two years ago from Guyana, and it’s been difficult to make sense of the city’s many schools, Abrams said.

Nomarra, who wants to be a lawyer, said she was nervous throughout the admissions process. But she was thrilled to learn she’d been admitted to both of her top choices: Brooklyn Technical High School and Midwood High School.

“It’s hard to choose between the two,” Nomarra added.

NYC’s high school admissions process is notoriously complicated

There are a host of factors that come into play for admissions. Students receive a random number, often referred to as a lottery number, which admissions experts say is used as a sort of “tiebreaker” if there are too many eligible students vying for the same seat. For selective schools, the city also uses seventh grade GPAs to sort students into different tiers for admissions priority.

More than 40 high school programs also participate in the city’s “diversity in admissions” program, setting aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. Students with disabilities are also admitted through a different round than general education students.

The city’s Education Department did not immediately share the percentage of students who were admitted to their top choice schools, nor did they release demographic data on students admitted to competitive screened schools or the highly selective specialized high schools.

Last year, of the roughly 73,000 high school applicants, nearly half were admitted to their top choice school, while about 75% were admitted to one of their top three picks. About 95% of applicants were admitted to one of the 12 schools they ranked in their application, according to city data.

About 26,000 of last year’s eighth graders took the exam for the city’s specialized high schools, with roughly 4,000 of them getting offers based on the test, and once again the number of Black and Latino students remained small. Just 3% of the offers last year went to Black students, and 6.7% went to Latino students despite those students making up about 65% of the city’s school system.

Mixed emotions on match day

For families across the city, Thursday’s news brought a mix of tears and excitement. Many have already turned to waitlists — which students are automatically added to for all programs they ranked higher than the one they received an offer to — as “beacons of hope,” said Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411.

But she added it’s often a “long shot” to receive an offer through the waitlist.

Some families also found a sense of relief in knowing the outcomes. In anticipation of their offer letters, some parents commiserated in social media groups the night before over the immense stress— sharing clips of songs that expressed the overwhelming trepidation, like “Tomorrow” from Annie or “One Day More” from Les Misérables.

Anthony felt increasingly nervous as Thursday approached, worrying he’d be rejected from LaGuardia, De Jesus said. She decided to pull him and his brothers out of school on match day, distracting him with board games and other activities in an attempt to deflate the tension.

“I said, ‘Listen, even if you don’t get in, everything is going to be okay, and you are going to do great things,’” De Jesus said. “We just tried to make an environment like: This is just another day. We’re gonna take it as it comes.

“But we’re very excited for him,” she added.

One Queens family, though, hardly felt the match day jitters. Dennis Kelly said his son, William, didn’t have much of a reaction to learning he’d been admitted to the University Scholars program at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows.

“We really haven’t talked about it a lot,” Kelly said. “He came home, we got the letter, and then he ran back out” for his crew team practice in Port Washington, Long Island.

William had also been accepted to Brooklyn Tech, but it wasn’t an option they were considering, Kelly said. Instead, they’ll choose between Francis Lewis and a few Catholic schools that William had been accepted to, including one on Long Island.

“We know people that are pressuring their kids like, ‘If you don’t get into Stuyvesant, your life is over,’ and we’ve never felt that,” he said. “It is what it is. He’ll be fine. He’s always done well.”

Still, Kelly was glad to be nearing the end of the admissions process.

“There’s so many options, and everybody gets so crazy,” he said. “I almost feel like there’s too many choices. How am I supposed to look at 400 high schools and decide which one my kid should go to?”

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

Supreme Court will not hear case involving racial diversity at selective high school

2024-02-20T21:56:42+00:00

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The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will not hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a highly selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy on the grounds that it discriminates against Asian American students.

The high court’s decision not to take the case means that last year’s ruling by an appeals court upholding the admissions policy will stand. The case, known as Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, looked at whether the school board was legally allowed to change the entrance criteria for a prestigious magnet high school in Alexandria, Virginia, with the intent of enrolling a more diverse class.

The Supreme Court has long held that school districts can consider race-neutral factors to create more diverse schools. But the plaintiffs in this case alleged the school board used certain criteria as “proxies” for race, with the intent of reducing the share of Asian American students who were admitted to the school.

The case was closely watched because many school districts use similar methods to create diverse student bodies. If the Supreme Court had taken the case, it could have had sweeping consequences for magnet schools and other selective K-12 programs, legal experts say.

Still, observers say it likely won’t be the end of legal challenges to selective K-12 admissions. The same law firm that brought this case, for example, has challenged similar admissions policies for selective schools in Boston, New York City, and New York state.

“I do think given the number of cases that are percolating through different districts and courts of appeals, that it’s probably true that there will be additional attempts to revisit this issue before the Supreme Court,” said Cara McClellan, a practice associate professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, who has written about legal challenges to race-conscious admissions. “It continues to be a hotly contested issue.”

In a Tuesday statement, the chair of the Fairfax County School Board said the decision put to rest a three-year legal battle over the fairness of the admissions policy change.

“We have long believed that the new admissions process is both constitutional and in the best interest of all of our students,” Karl Frisch said. “It guarantees that all qualified students from all neighborhoods in Fairfax County have a fair shot at attending this exceptional high school.”

In a statement, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the libertarian law firm representing the plaintiffs, said by choosing not to hear the case, “the Supreme Court missed an important opportunity to end race-based discrimination in K-12 admissions.”

Admissions policy changed to include student ‘experience factors’

While the Supreme Court has shown a willingness to overturn years of legal precedent in other cases — notably by prohibiting colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in higher education admissions last year — it was apparently not willing to revisit its earlier decisions here. Notably, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that school districts can take certain steps to racially diversify their student bodies, so long as they do not explicitly consider the race of individual students.

In this case, the Coalition for TJ alleged that the Fairfax County School Board violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution in 2020 when it changed its policy to get into Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a top high school that draws from five Virginia school districts.

Known as TJ, the high school offers advanced math and science classes that put its graduates on the path for elite colleges and careers. Historically, to get in, applicants needed to do well on a series of standardized tests and essays, and obtain high grades and teacher recommendations. Typically, students from just a few middle schools won most of the slots.

In 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd prompted a racial reckoning at many schools, school leaders sought to change the enrollment policy, pointing out that very few Black and Hispanic students gained entrance. During the 2019-20 school year, the school of around 1,800 students was 71% Asian American, 19% white, 5% multiracial, 3% Hispanic, and 2% Black, state data shows.

After months of debate, the Fairfax County School Board approved a new enrollment policy that set aside a certain share of seats at TJ from each middle school in the attendance area.

Students eligible for those seats were evaluated based on their grades, an essay, a description of their skills, and a set of “experience factors,” including whether they came from a low-income family, were an English learner, had a special education plan, or attended a middle school that had historically sent few students to TJ.

In 2021, the Coalition for TJ, which includes parents of students who had applied to TJ or planned to, sued the school board. The group argued that the middle school seat set-aside and experience factors were being used as “proxies” to “racially balance” the school, with the goal of reducing the share of Asian American students.

The appeals court disagreed, and said the school board had used enrollment methods permissible under prior Supreme Court rulings.

According to Fairfax County Public Schools, in the most recent freshman class, which started last fall, Asian American students received 62% of offers to attend TJ, while white students received 19%, Black students received 7% and Hispanic students received 6%. Students from low-income families made up 12% of the incoming class, up from 2% in recent years.

In a dissent issued Tuesday, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that the Supreme Court should have heard the Coalition for TJ’s case. Letting the appeals court decision stand, he wrote, was akin to agreeing that “intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe.”

“This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction,” Alito wrote.

Figuring out ‘the goals of public education’

Colleges and universities are still trying to respond to last year’s Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action in higher education admissions. And K-12 schools are evaluating what they can and should do to address high levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation — on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board decision.

“K-12 and higher ed is trying to figure out what to do,” said Erica Frankenberg, a Penn State education professor who studies school segregation. “There’s all of these things for us to really think about: What are the goals of public education in our society, and what [do] we want to allow school districts to take into account?”

Several other school districts with selective schools have come under scrutiny for admitting few students from low-income families or few Black and Hispanic students in recent years. Some of them changed admissions policies — only to face pushback from some parents and others who say those changes are unfair.

Chicago, for example, considers the demographics of the area where a student lives as part of the city’s selective high school admissions process, and takes steps to ensure high-performing students from both affluent and low-income areas have access. The city has taken steps to revamp that process to make it more fair for low-income students — and has signaled a desire to move away from the current selective schools system.

Philadelphia, similarly, overhauled its selective high school process to provide greater access to the city’s most coveted magnet schools, and moved to a lottery system that boosted the share of Black and Latino students who gained admission.

New York City, meanwhile, has come under fire from integration advocates for its selective high school admissions, particularly for eight prestigious high schools where a test is the sole basis for admissions. Some advocates have long criticized the test as a barrier for Black and Latino students. But other families have fought to keep the status quo, and parents in areas that are more affluent and have higher numbers of Asian American students have mobilized around the issue.

The University of Pennsylvania’s McClellan said the Supreme Court’s decision should encourage school districts that use methods like Fairfax County’s to create diverse schools to stay the course, regardless of future court challenges.

“School districts that are committed to diversity and inclusion shouldn’t become overly cautious,” McClellan said, pointing to examples of how colleges have rolled back diversity efforts that go beyond the text of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. “Part of the effect of having ongoing challenges to existing precedent is that there feels like there is a lot of uncertainty — even when the law is clear.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Sustainability, arts, math: ‘Themed’ middle schools are spreading, but do they help students?

2023-12-04T10:00:00+00:00

This story about themed schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

On a sunny Friday in early November, four 10- and 11-year-old boys stand on the corner of 26th Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, holding homemade clipboards and signs that read “Take our food equity survey.”

A young man rushes past the group, headphones on, eyes on his phone. Susan Tenner, executive director of the Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School, or BUGS, where the boys are sixth graders, suggests they let him pass. The next passerby is a runner — even more unpromising.

When a guy in his 20s or 30s in a puffer coat with fur trim comes along a half a minute later, Elias, a 10-year-old, remarks that he looks busy too. But Tenner urges the students to pounce.

“Everyone in New York City looks busy,” she tells them. “You guys are cute; people are going to want to help you.”

And the man does. After the boys call out as he passes, the man doubles back to take the student-made survey. Their first success.

Over the next half hour, the boys and a group of girls positioned a block up will interview a postman, a construction worker, a pair of teenage girls in fleece Snoopy pants, and several others about their access to healthy, affordable food.

BUGS, one of hundreds of “themed” middle schools spread across New York City and the nation, fully embodies the “green” school concept. There are gardens out front and hydroponic produce growing inside, an indoor tank for raising trout and recycled furniture in the classrooms. Students take a weekly sustainability class and participate in monthly field study days that send them into the community to conduct research on topics like land use, pollution and food equity.

Adopting a theme like sustainability, the arts, or math and science can cement a middle school’s culture, give coherence to its curricula, and boost student engagement at a time when many students are losing interest in school. Done well, proponents say, a theme can help students connect what they’re learning in the classroom to some larger purpose or vision of their future.

But not all themed schools are as distinctive as BUGS, and some aren’t all that different from mainstream middles. It can be hard to tell, based on a name alone, whether a self-proclaimed “green” school offers a fully integrated sustainability curriculum, or is simply located in a net zero building.

Attending a themed school offers no guarantee of success in the focus subject, either. At some STEM-themed schools in New York City, students score below the citywide average on the state standardized math test.

Meanwhile, some high-performing themed schools remain out of reach to many low-income students, due to screenings — such as tests or auditions — that favor families who can afford private lessons and tutors.

This variation in scope, access and outcomes means that students and parents need to do their research before choosing a school with a catchy name, said Joyce Szuflita, a longtime school consultant to Brooklyn families. “Buyer beware,” she advised. “Sometimes there will be a name on a school that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the building. It’s more like branding.”

There’s no national count of the number of themed middle schools, which are less common than themed high schools. But they’re cropping up across the country, particularly in places where families aren’t limited to their neighborhood school zone, according to Andrew Maxey, a member of the board of trustees of the Association for Middle Level Education, or AMLE, an organization that supports middle school educators.

In cities like New York, where students can choose among public schools, public charters, and private schools, a theme can be a way for a program to stand out from the competition. It can also help convince some middle-class parents to stick with city public schools for the middle grades, instead of fleeing for private schools or the suburbs.

A theme, said Maud Abeel, a director in the education practice at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, “is a signal to families and educators that you’re trying to make school relevant and engaging.”

It’s also a signal to business leaders, said David Adams, the CEO of the Urban Assembly, a school support organization that has opened more than 20 career-themed public middle and high schools in New York City since 1997.

When the Urban Assembly’s founder was looking for ways to get industry more involved in public education, back in the early 90s, he settled on themes as a way “to mobilize the private sector to invest in schools,” Adams said.

But there are downsides to proclaiming a specialty. Doing so can scare away parents who worry — sometimes needlessly — that their child will be pigeonholed or miss out on opportunities to explore other areas, Szuflita said. And claiming a theme creates real pressure to “live up to the moniker,” added Abeel.

“If you’re going to put it in your name, you have to show why it’s there,” she said.

Sophia, left, and other BUGS sixth graders talk with a construction worker for their food equity survey.

In New York City, where there are schools with straightforward names (the Middle School for Art and Philosophy), schools with clever or cute nicknames (BUGS), and schools that combine concepts in head-scratching ways (the Collegiate Academy for Mathematics and Personal Awareness), that “why” is more obvious in some cases than others.

On one end of the spectrum are schools like Ballet Tech, where middle schoolers dance five days a week, and Harbor Middle, where students pursue projects like boat-building and oyster reef monitoring.

On the other are schools that no longer fit their names, due to mission drift, leadership turnover or curricular change. A prime example is Brooklyn’s Math & Science Exploratory School, where leaders have asked the Department of Education for permission to drop the “Math & Science” from the name because “the curriculum has evolved” and the current name is “limiting and misaligned with the school’s value and goals,” according to a resolution in support of the change.

In between are dozens of schools that are implementing their themes in different ways and to varying degrees. Some, like the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, offer an additional period or two in the theme, along with extras, like hydroponics and coding.

Others focus their electives on the theme. At New Voices, in Brooklyn, students sample six arts forms in sixth grade, then pick a major for the last two years. But parents whose children attended the school said the arts theme isn’t infused into the core subjects.

Broadly speaking, themed middle schools set aside less time for their target subject than their high school counterparts. That’s mostly because the school day is “too full to pile things on,” said Maxey, who, in addition to his work as a board member for AMLE, is director of strategic initiatives at Tuscaloosa City Schools, where there is a performing arts middle school.

Maxey said the most successful schools take an integrative, rather than an additive approach, weaving the theme across all subjects.

“You don’t carve out time for the arts,” he said. “You make them the essence of the school.”

The research on the effectiveness of themed schools is thin; experts on middle school teaching say they aren’t aware of any rigorous studies comparing themed and mainstream middles.

But a pair of studies by the Research Alliance for New York City Schools — one on turnaround middle schools and another on small high schools — suggest that themes can lend cohesion to the curriculum and facilitate collaboration across disciplines, said Cheri Fancsali, the Alliance’s executive director. They can attract students, as well as teachers, to a school.

Yet the studies also showed that themes sometimes lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and alienate students who aren’t interested in the theme, Fancsali said.

Nancy Deutsch, a professor of education at the University of Virginia and an editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research, said she has mixed feelings about themed middles.

On the one hand, Deutsch said, letting students select schools that align with their interests might prevent some of the drop-off in motivation and engagement that often begins in middle school. On the flip side, attending a themed school might limit students’ future options, if they can’t take courses — Algebra I, for example — that would allow them to pursue different interests in high school.

“I would want to make sure that while there may be specialization, it’s not cutting off potential pathways,” she said.

Equity can be a concern as well. Some themed schools admit students based on factors like test scores or grade point averages, or require them to submit a portfolio or undergo an audition. Others have moved away from such screening methods, in an effort to build more racially and socioeconomically balanced classes.

Brooklyn’s District 15, where almost half the middle schools have themes, switched to a lottery system a few years ago. The change has reduced segregation in the district’s schools, but it has also coincided with a sharp drop in test scores at some themed schools, including the Math & Science Exploratory School, which had historically drawn a disproportionate number of white and higher-income families. This has led to speculation that the move to change the school’s name was motivated by declining test scores — a charge the school has denied.

Even so, the school’s pass rate on the state math exam — 64% in 2021-22 — was still twice the citywide average for middle schools of 32% (and climbed back to 80% during the last academic year, recently released data show). Several STEM-themed schools weren’t even meeting that low bar.

BUGS, which shares a building with a District 15 public themed middle school, the Carroll Gardens School for Innovation, is required under state charter law to admit students by lottery, with preference given to students in the district. The school is fairly diverse — roughly half the students are white — and a quarter qualify for free and reduced lunch. Close to a third have disabilities.

Last year, according to data from the New York State Department of Education, two-thirds of BUGS students passed the state math exam, though pass rates were significantly lower for students with disabilities (48%), and economically disadvantaged students (32%). The citywide average for all middle schoolers was 46.3%.

BUGS CEO Susan Tenner stands in the hydroponic garden. Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report

When BUGS opened a little over a decade ago, its focus was squarely on environmental sustainability. But over the years, it has expanded its purview to social and economic sustainability, too, said Tenner, the executive director.

The school’s all-in embrace of the sustainability theme is fairly unusual, said Jennifer Seydel, executive director of the Green Schools National Network. The Network’s members include schools with a couple courses in environmental studies, those with after-school “green teams,” and schools with net-zero emissions, among others.

“Operating in a public school system, you can’t go as deep or be as innovative as BUGS,” she said.

Still, given the school’s name, Tenner sometimes has to correct parents’ misperception that it’s all about planting and harvesting.

“The garden is a great outdoor classroom, but it’s only one of many in the city,” she tells families.

Their confusion may not matter much, anyway. In interviews, parents whose children attend or attended themed middle schools in Brooklyn said they made their choice for a variety of reasons, often unrelated to the theme: a school’s location, academic reputation or small size.

Parents whose kids attended the Math & Science Exploratory School said it was an open secret among affluent families living near the school that the emphasis was on exploration, and not on math and science. They wondered whether families from poorer parts of the district, whose children now make up a large share of the school’s enrollment, would know that.

Sarah Russo, whose son is a seventh grader at BUGS, said it was the school’s co-teaching approach and nurturing environment that sold her. Her son has an Individualized Education Program (a plan for students with disabilities), and she worried he’d get lost in a big, competitive school.

BUGS students with one of the signs they made to advertise their food equity survey. Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report

The BUGS survey-taking sixth graders, meanwhile, had other reasons to like the school. Elias was really excited about the lockers, while Sophia, whose group had interviewed passersby on a different corner, was thrilled that they’d get released for lunch. Sena picked BUGS over New Voices, the school her two best friends planned to attend, after realizing that the arts “aren’t my thing.”

Back in the classroom after completing their survey, the students get a refresher lesson on converting ratios into percentages and tally their responses. They find that roughly half of respondents have more restaurants and fast-food chains than grocery stores in their neighborhood, and 40% don’t know what food equity is. Three-quarters spend more than $50 per person on groceries each week.

Armed with these statistics, the students take action, writing letters to Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to urge him to bring more grocery stores to Brooklyn neighborhoods and install more community fridges in the district.

In his letter, Elias asks Reynoso to tackle inflation and add lessons on food inequity to the city’s curricula.

“Please, Mr. Reynoso, we must do something!” he concludes, and adds his signature: a smiley face giving a thumbs up.

Essays, tests, auditions, frustration, stress: What it’s like to apply to high school in NYC

2023-11-30T21:24:27+00:00

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One mom called it hell. Another felt like she was drowning in information. Some stretched their budgets to pay for test prep and coaches for their children’s art portfolios and auditions.

Welcome to New York City’s high school application process, where parents — often moms — take on what amounts to part-time jobs to help their 13-year-olds find the “right” school.

Families have until Friday to rank their 12 choices from among 700 programs in 400 schools. Despite the vast array of options, families feel like they’re fighting for seats.

In many ways, they are. In talking to more than a dozen families of eighth graders about their admissions journeys, Chalkbeat found a handful of coveted schools repeatedly came up. And admissions data confirms that a small number of high schools are ranked on an outsized number of applications.

The top 15 schools represented about 20% of all the choices that eighth graders picked on their applications in 2021, according to an analysis by Sean Corcoran, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University.

And this data doesn’t include the eight prestigious specialized high schools, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, or LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which requires auditions. Thousands of students apply to those schools through a separate process.

“When people are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, they want to simplify things as much as possible. You start with the schools that everybody knows, with the best reputation,” said Corcoran, whose research focuses on how to provide information to families to help them expand their choices.

The odds can feel overwhelming. At Manhattan’s Eleanor Roosevelt, there were 37 applicants for every general education seat, according to stats from the MySchools directory. There were 27 applicants per seat at Bard Early College High School in Queens. (This school was the 18th on the popular schools list.)

As with so many things in the public school system, those with time and means often have an advantage, contributing to New York having among the most segregated schools in the nation. Families jockey for limited spots on tours. They go down rabbit holes in Facebook groups to figure out their children’s odds. And a whole cottage industry has developed around the process, including consultants advising on a good fit.

Below are stories from six families from across the city reflecting on the lengths they’ve gone to figure out their school rankings.

“It’s just like the college application process,” said southeast Queens mom Trina Mitchell. “But it’s high school! It’s insane.”

The experienced project manager

Carina Li, left, with her mom, Karen Li.

Karen Li is hedging her bets.

The day after Li’s daughter Carina finished seventh grade, Li enrolled her in an SHSAT prep course. Carina studied all summer and took the prep course until Nov. 8, when the Education Department administered the test in public middle schools across the city.

Carina also took the Test for Admissions into Catholic School, or TACHS, and will sit for Catholic school scholarship exams on Saturday.

Then there’s the application for LaGuardia High School. Carina started planning her visual art portfolio in July and was still working on it four months later. She needed to submit eight pieces (including a still life that she redid three times) and make a video explaining her choices.

Even with help from an artistic aunt, the process is a lot. In fact, it’s all a lot.

Studying for the SHSAT was “terrible,” and the practice tests were “horrible,” said Carina, who lives in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. The art portfolio was “very demanding.”

“People always think that you have to spend money to pay for SHSAT prep,” said Li, who works in tax reporting. She now realizes that many kids vying for arts schools have to work just as hard as those studying for the SHSAT, plus they’ve been taking pricey arts classes for years. “They dance when they’re in diapers.”

Li said she has felt like her daughter’s “project manager,” reminding her to study, keeping track of due dates, and obtaining transcripts and recommendation letters for Catholic schools.

She has had practice: She went through the high school application process a few years ago with her older daughter, who went to Brooklyn Tech. So Li knew she had to start researching high schools for her younger daughter in seventh grade.

Carina, a competitive swimmer, would also like to go to Brooklyn Tech, especially for its swim team. But the family isn’t pinning its hopes on one school.

On top of it all, Li sees her daughter feeling overwhelmed and tries not to add stress.

“All this will be over by Dec. 2,” Li said.

The community activist

Jason Sosa spent months on SHSAT prep.

Expensive SHSAT courses were out of reach for the Sosa family of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they still managed to find creative ways to get their son Jason test prep.

Jovita Sosa recently got a grant that helped fund a six-week summer SHSAT test prep course through the literacy-focused nonprofit she started 10 years ago, Grupo Juego y Lectura. Jason was one of roughly six students who met twice a week for the course.

The Sosa family also received study materials from an acquaintance who got into Stuyvesant after completing the city’s DREAM program, offering free test prep. Sosa was amazed at how much more detailed the study materials were than the free materials the Education Department offers.

“I can’t afford the prep that some other people are getting,” said Sosa, a paraprofessional.

Jason, who attends a Catholic school, had been studying independently about 20 minutes a day this fall using the DREAM workbook. He worked with a high school senior on math for an hour every Saturday and Sunday. He also signed up for a free TACHS test prep program through his school. Though Sosa said she can no longer afford to pay for Catholic school, Jason wanted to take the test in case he got a scholarship.

“I found the SHSAT as expected, challenging, but not out of my grasp,” Jason said. “I feel like I could’ve done a better job with taking more time to understand the questions, but being under pressure blurs your thinking.”

The experience brought out the activist in Sosa.

She wrote to her state senator who had boasted in a constituent email of securing millions of dollars for SHSAT prep, asking for help to make free DREAM workbooks widely available to children who can’t afford test prep.

Sosa is trying to remain grounded.

“I lived it with my oldest child. We stressed him out when he was younger,” she said. “You learn it’s not the end all.”

One family. Two kids. Many art programs.

The Doucette family on a recent trip to Walt Disney World. Zach and Lexie's older brother (standing behind the twins) went to LaGuardia High School.

“It’s hell.”

That’s how Upper East Side mom Caren Doucette describes the application process for her twins.

Lexie — who has ADHD and dyslexia — is looking at visual arts. Zach is interested in performing arts. While there’s some overlap between their schools of interest, Doucette estimates that she devotes at least two hours daily to the process (and more on weekends). She’s researching websites, comparing notes with other parents, sending questions to schools, and attending tours.

“If you don’t sign up in the first 24 hours, you miss a spot,” said Doucette, a tutor with a flexible schedule. “My days are spent on the computer scouring all of this, and my husband will take the kids on evening tours.”

Doucette is especially concerned about whether her daughter, who has specific learning needs, will land at a school that can support her.

Lexie bonded with her visual arts coach, who also has dyslexia. Zach, who enjoys musical theater, had a drama coach and a voice coach, who each charge about $150 an hour. He also completed a free bootcamp in August through the Education Department’s Summer Arts Institute, where he studied with an acting coach.

“It’s a financial commitment,” Doucette said. “It straps us, but we can figure it out.”

Lexie is in “priority group 3,” because of a low grade she got last year in math from an unsupportive teacher, according to her mom, who has complained to their middle school, Wagner. Zach is in “priority group 1,” but didn’t have a high lottery number — a reality she wanted to shield him from.

Lexie and Zach went on all of the school tours as well. Even though it can be hard for her 13-year-olds to focus during the tours, they “get a vibe” being in the schools, Doucette said.

But that means they’ve missed about five days of eighth grade so far. One week they had five tours in three days, and now they’re wrapping up auditions and interviews and writing essays.

“It’s really annoying and unnecessary and stressful and time-consuming and set up awfully,” said Zach. “We have multiple things that cut into our school hours.” He wasn’t excited about the 7 p.m. open houses either.

“It’s annoying,” Lexie agreed.

A mother and daughter navigate language barriers

When Nancy Sagbay enrolled her daughter Jaleen in kindergarten nine years ago, her main priority felt clear.

Sagbay, who emigrated from Ecuador before Jaleen was born, didn’t want her daughter to lose her native tongue. So Jaleen attended P.S./I.S. 218, a dual-language K-8 school near their home in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

Nancy Sagbay, left, with her daughter Jaleen Sagbay.

Now Jaleen can read, write, and speak in Spanish and English, and averaged above a 90% in her classes last year, to Sagbay’s great pride.

But as Jaleen turns her sights towards high school, the choices — and the application process — feel a lot more complicated.

“No one is ready for so much information,” said Sagbay, who still struggles with English.

Sagbay works at a barbershop and is constantly asking colleagues and clients for school recommendations and advice, which she relays to her daughter, Jaleen said.

As Jaleen finalized her list, she crossed off some she’d initially been eyeing once she saw their four-year graduation rates on MySchools. The 13-year-old hasn’t been on any school visits, and three of the schools she’s considering — Columbia Secondary, her top choice, Bard High School Early College in Manhattan, and Beacon, which one of her teachers recommended — require essays and other prompts.

With just a week left before the due date, Jaleen still hadn’t started them and was getting “stressed and anxious,” she said. But teachers at her middle school gave her time during the school day this week to work on them.

“I feel like I could do it,” Jaleen said of the selective schools. “I like competition. If there’s competition for it, it must be a good school.”

Sagbay, however, is worried about commuting to Manhattan.

“I didn’t want it because the trains can be dangerous,” she said, “but she wants to explore, to see people outside (her neighborhood).”

For now, they’re compromising: Jaleen is including some schools closer to home on her list.

They’re also compromising on academic focus. Jaleen is interested in art, but her mom has encouraged her to consider schools with a technology focus, since Jaleen is strong in math.

“One way or another,” Jaleen said, “she would … put that pressure on me to do better.”

The fierce parent advocate

Justin Mitchell playing drums for the NY Alliance Drumline.

What if a child’s performance in seventh grade did not reflect their abilities because of a series of extenuating circumstances?

Trina Mitchell demanded answers to that question on behalf of her son Justin.

Despite other public schools reopening after COVID shutdowns, Justin’s charter school in St. Albans, Queens, remained remote during his sixth grade year because of a problem with its roof, Mitchell said. Upon returning in seventh grade, his school lacked sufficient staffing to provide services mandated by his Individualized Education Program.

Mitchell’s letter to the Education Department through MySchools explaining the situation went unanswered until she brought it up again at an October high school admissions forum for families of children with disabilities.

The department agreed to rank Justin based on his GPA from the first semester of eighth grade.

“I didn’t give up,” said Mitchell, who works as a court clerk in Queens.

She was not able to prevail, however, in her quest to get a hard copy of the high school directory. She wanted it to mark up with sticky notes and carry around with her on tours for note-taking, “like a little bible.” She hoped it would help her discover new options.

The Education Department no longer prints hard copies.

Mitchell wished that things were easier, and that her son could just go to a zoned high school, but District 29 no longer has one. Nearby, the campus that housed Andrew Jackson High School — her husband’s alma mater — has been carved up into several small schools.

These schools read like a “country club” to Mitchell, boasting of tennis courts, football and soccer fields, and a track. Digging deeper, Mitchell said she found most students aren’t on grade level.

In general, she was concerned about the overcrowding of many Queens high schools and also was perplexed by all of the specialty programs, like law and STEM. Her son does well in science and is a good writer, but doesn’t have a career path in mind. He’s interested in being on the drumline and football team.

“For your average kid that doesn’t have a clue what they want in life, how do they lock into a program at 12 or 13 years old?” Mitchell asked. “The system is designed to cater to a kid who has it together and knows what they want to do.”

To stay or leave Staten Island?

Miles Curatolo-Boylan, left, and his mother, Lucia Curatolo-Boylan.

In drawing up their list of high schools to rank, Staten Island mom Lucia Curatolo-Boylan and her son Miles have been studying MTA schedules. By ferry or bus, he would commute more than an hour each way if he chooses a high school outside the borough.

Miles, the oldest of four, expressed an early interest in Staten Island Technical High School, a specialized school. But they’re casting a wider net.

They’ve toured schools across the city, including some Miles wasn’t thrilled about. They’ve considered Catholic high schools, too.

His deep love for illustration and drawing cartoons, as well as his interest in engineering, have helped inform the search.

But with some of his choices comes added stress — the anxiety over competition for coveted spots, the pressure of standardized tests and portfolios, as well as the reality of a long commute.

Curatolo-Boylan said she and her husband consider themselves lower-middle class, but still invested in getting Miles a tutor shortly before the SHSAT and TACHS, as well as paying for a few classes to help him strengthen his art portfolio. The standardized tests aren’t something that kids learn to tackle organically in school, she added.

“That’s a really difficult thing to stomach,” said Curatolo-Boylan, a private music teacher and acting and vocal coach who is also president of her local Community Education Council. “Knowing that there are kids that could really use that leg up in our community, especially here in Staten Island, and they’re never going to be able to afford that.”

Curatolo-Boylan said getting into public school here has always been stressful, but the “constant run-around of open house after open house” has been particularly grueling.

“So much of his life would change if he chose the city,” she said, referring to Manhattan.

With such a long commute, she knows he’ll leave early in the morning and return late in the evening. In a sense, this would mean letting go of him earlier than she anticipated, she said.

“It would be so exciting for him, and I would be so excited for him,” she said. “But at the same time, I think my heart might break a little.”

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

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

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@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.

In New Jersey school segregation case, parties enter mediation phase to avoid years of litigation

2023-11-13T22:34:47+00:00

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The coalition of families and advocates battling New Jersey in court to desegregate its public school system will put the legal fight on pause as they enter a mediation phase in an effort to avoid years of litigation.

After more than five years of legal proceedings, the parties last month received an opinion from New Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert T. Lougy that was mixed and still left questions unanswered about the next steps to take in fixing the issue of segregation across schools.

In Lougy’s 99-page opinion, he said the state failed to remedy the racial segregation evident in numerous school districts throughout New Jersey — rejecting the state’s defense that it shouldn’t be held responsible. But he also didn’t agree the plaintiffs proved segregation exists across every school district — only among the 23 districts they provided evidence for, which included Newark.

On Thursday, lawyers representing the plaintiffs filed a motion, which was granted by the state Superior Court’s appellate division the same day, to put the case on a temporary pause as discussions to reach a resolution begin among the parties, court documents show. This came after the plaintiffs got an extension late last month to consider an appeal.

Over the next several weeks, mediation sessions between all the parties involved, including intervening defendants that represent charter schools, will take place. The first one is planned for Nov. 21.

Former New Jersey Supreme Court Associate Justice Barry T. Albin, who retired earlier this year, will act as the mediator during these discussions.

Albin authored landmark and controversial opinions over his 20 years serving in the state’s highest court, including a ruling to allow same-sex marriage in New Jersey and another that freed a former Black Panther, Sundiata Acoli, who was convicted fifty years ago of killing a state trooper.

The mediation will address issues of liability, remedies, and a process to “ensure that all interested persons and organizations,” whether part of the litigation or not, “have the opportunity to meaningfully participate,” wrote Lawrence Lustberg, of Gibbons Law, the co-counsel for the plaintiffs, in his motion.

“If successful, this mediation process holds the promise of saving the people of New Jersey and the courts of this state from years of complex, highly charged litigation,” Lustberg stated.

The coalition of plaintiffs includes the families of nine students that attended schools in Camden, Elizabeth, Highland Park, Hoboken, Newark, Paterson, and Union City, and five advocacy groups, including Latino Action Network, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, Latino Coalition, Urban League of Essex County, and The United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey.

Defendants include the state Department of Education, Board of Education, and Acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan.

The court documents show that the parties have agreed to engage in mediation “in good faith,” file status reports on Dec. 15 and Jan. 10 to the appellate division, and, if they wish to extend the temporary pause, would file a motion before Jan. 16, when the pause is set to lift.

“We are pleased to accept the state’s invitation to undertake a confidential mediation process with Justice Albin and are hopeful that it will result in an effective solution to New Jersey’s long standing problem of school segregation more expeditiously than would be the case if it is necessary to continue the ongoing litigation,” Lustberg said in an emailed statement on Monday.

New Jersey “recognizes the innumerable benefits of a diverse school environment,” said Michael Symons, spokesman for the state Office of Attorney General, in an email on Monday. “The parties have entered into a confidential mediation process in the hope of resolving this complex and difficult matter.”

Charter school representatives said they will be at the table to “provide meaningful solutions to increase the number of diverse public schools” in the state.

“Public charter schools are uniquely positioned to be a part of the solution due to their ability to serve students across municipal boundaries,” said Harry Lee, the president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Public Charter School Association, in an emailed statement. “Justice Barry Albin is universally admired as a legal mind and mediator who can help bridge different perspectives during mediation.”

Jessie Gomez contributed reporting to this article.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Caso de segregación escolar en Nueva Jersey: una mirada a lo que sigue en LAN vs. NJ

2023-11-10T21:44:39+00:00

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Read in English.

Una coalición de defensores y familias tiene menos de dos semanas para apelar el fallo mixto de un juez de la Corte Superior de Nueva Jersey que afirmó que no pudieron demostrar que el sistema de educación pública del estado está segregado socioeconómicamente y que existe segregación racial en todos los distritos.

La tan esperada decisión del juez Robert T. Lougy publicada el 7 de octubre también encontró que las acciones, políticas y programas del estado no han logrado remediar la segregación racial evidente en numerosos distritos escolares de Nueva Jersey, rechazando la defensa del estado de que no debería ser considerado responsable.

Una sentencia judicial previa al juicio de 99 páginas no solo evitó favorecer abrumadoramente a una parte sobre la otra, sino que tampoco respondió preguntas clave, incluido qué se le debería exigir al estado que haga a continuación.

Los representantes legales de ambas partes han dicho que están revisando la decisión de Lougy con sus clientes. Los demandantes tienen que decidir si van a juicio, inician negociaciones o presentan una apelación. Si deciden solicitar un “permiso para apelar” (una moción para apelar un error legal en el caso antes de que vaya a juicio) pueden obtener una extensión de 15 días, según establecen las reglas de las cortes de Nueva Jersey.

Como aún persisten preguntas, aquí hay una guía del caso, que incluye los puntos clave planteados en la demanda y los posibles próximos pasos.

¿Quiénes son las personas y organizaciones en este caso?

El fallo es el último de una batalla legal de cinco años que comenzó cuando varias familias y defensores demandaron a Nueva Jersey, argumentando que el aislamiento racial experimentado por miles de estudiantes negros y latinos viola la constitución estatal, que es única por su prohibición explícita de la segregación escolar.

La coalición de demandantes incluye a las familias de nueve estudiantes que asistieron a escuelas en Camden, Elizabeth, Highland Park, Hoboken, Newark, Paterson y Union City, y cinco grupos de defensa, incluidos Latino Action Network, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, Latino Coalition, Urban League del Condado de Essex y la iglesia United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey.

La raíz de su demanda – argumentando que el estado es responsable por la segregación que es “ilegal, persistente y generalizada” en todo su sistema educativo público – está impulsada en parte por un estatuto de residencia conocido como “autonomía”.

Ese estatuto estipula que cada municipio tiene su propio distrito escolar independiente (un total de más de 600 distritos en Nueva Jersey) y que los niños que viven en esa ciudad son asignados para asistir a esas escuelas. Los demandantes señalaron que la “historia indiscutible” de las políticas gubernamentales discriminatorias en materia de vivienda condujeron a la segregación residencial de Nueva Jersey, que solo se ha replicado en el sistema escolar bajo el gobierno autónomo.

Mientras tanto, los demandados son el Estado de Nueva Jersey, la Junta de Educación del estado, el Departamento de Educación del estado y la Comisionada Interina de Educación Angelica Allen-McMillan, así como los demandados intervinientes, que incluyen representantes y padres de estudiantes de las escuelas charter y renacentistas.

El estado argumentó que no viola su constitución y que la segregación en un puñado de distritos no establece una violación a nivel estatal. También argumentaron que el alivio de la segregación existente “esencialmente destruiría todo el sistema de escuelas públicas del estado”.

¿Nueva Jersey tiene escuelas segregadas?

Nueva Jersey tiene uno de los sistemas escolares de mejor desempeño del país, pero varios estudios han demostrado que también es uno de los más profundamente divididos por raza y clase. Si bien se ha demostrado que la integración beneficia a los estudiantes, los políticos de todo el país la han abandonado en gran medida debido a la oposición política y las restricciones legales.

El estado ocupa el sexto lugar en la nación en términos de mayor segregación de estudiantes negros y el séptimo en segregación de estudiantes latinos, según un estudio del Proyecto de Derechos Civiles de UCLA en 2017.

Como parte de su evidencia, los demandantes utilizaron datos de inscripción estatal de 2016-17 que mostraban que el 30% de los estudiantes latinos y el 25% de los estudiantes negros asisten a escuelas donde la inscripción de estudiantes no blancos está entre el 90% y el 99%, afirma la demanda. También identificaron 23 distritos con altos porcentajes de estudiantes latinos y negros que calificaban para almuerzo gratis o a precio reducido, que incluían Newark, East Orange, Orange e Irvington.

En su opinión, Lougy señaló que si bien no creía que hubieran demostrado que existiera segregación “en todo el estado”, los demandantes pudieron demostrar que existe un “desequilibrio racial marcado y persistente” en varios distritos escolares. Estuvo de acuerdo con los demandantes en que el argumento del estado de cambiar la demografía que muestra una disminución de estudiantes blancos “puede presentar desafíos, pero esos desafíos sólo enfatizan, no disminuyen, ‘la obligación y el poder de los funcionarios de educación de remediar el desequilibrio racial’”.

¿Qué podría pasar con el gobierno autónomo de Nueva Jersey?

Fuera de Nueva Jersey, las conversaciones sobre la segregación escolar se han visto sofocadas en los últimos años por las presiones de la pandemia y la reacción conservadora contra los llamados a enfrentar el racismo sistémico. Pero a medida que este caso continúa abriéndose paso en el sistema legal, podría hacer que la integración regrese a la conversación nacional.

Stefan Lallinger, que dirige una red de distritos escolares y agencias de vivienda comprometidas con la integración escolar, ha dicho que el mensaje de este caso “es que este problema está vivo y coleando”.

Algunas posibles medidas, como la creación de nuevas escuelas magnet que inscriban a estudiantes de distritos múltiples, podrían ser costosas pero populares entre las familias. Pero otros posibles remedios, como permitir que los estudiantes se transfieran de escuela o volver a trazar los límites de los distritos, históricamente han enfrentado la resistencia de los padres blancos ricos y de los contribuyentes que temen que una afluencia de estudiantes pobres de color socave las escuelas y los valores de las viviendas de su comunidad.

En su argumento, el estado defendió su estatuto de residencia, que obliga a los estudiantes a asistir a escuelas en la ciudad donde residen actualmente. La coalición de grupos de defensa cuestionó la afirmación del estado de que existe una “necesidad pública” de un gobierno autónomo y que la participación de los padres se vería afectada negativamente si las escuelas estuvieran más integradas.

“Ni los límites municipales ni los de los distritos escolares son impermeables en la lucha contra la segregación”, dijo Lougy, añadiendo el contexto de fallos anteriores de la Corte Suprema estatal. “Al cumplir con la obligación constitucional, y sin perjuicio del estatuto de residencia, el comisionado tiene la autoridad de cruzar las líneas distritales para evitar ‘la segregación de hecho’”.

La demanda y la discusión sobre la autonomía han llevado a algunos legisladores republicanos a patrocinar proyectos de ley que proponen que la autonomía forme parte de una enmienda constitucional estatal.

El senador estatal Jon Bramnick, republicano que representa a los condados de Morris, Somerset y Union, dijo en una entrevista con Chalkbeat que este tema debería manejarse a través de la legislatura, no mediante demandas. En febrero de 2022, él patrocinó un proyecto de ley que tenía una propuesta similar en la Asamblea, que tenía como objetivo garantizar que los estudiantes asistieran a la escuela pública más cercana a su hogar.

Bramnick dijo que teme que, sin enmiendas a la constitución estatal, la cuestión de la autonomía podría tardar décadas en decidirse en los tribunales. “No creo que nadie cuestione si existe segregación de facto en nuestras escuelas”, dijo Bramnick. “Así que no se escondan detrás del sistema judicial”.

¿Qué sigue y qué otros remedios son posibles?

El 26 de octubre [venció] el plazo para que las partes presenten una apelación, lo que les permitiría solicitar otra prórroga de 15 días.

También pueden iniciar un juicio o negociar. Otra opción es pedir a la Corte que se reconsideren o aclaren aspectos de la opinión, aunque dado que tomó un año y medio para obtener este fallo, eso probablemente solo prolongaría aún más el proceso legal.

En el pasado, esfuerzos estatales como el de Nueva Jersey no han impulsado la desegregación. En cambio, los actores federales han tomado la iniciativa.

En 1954, la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos declaró que las escuelas segregadas racialmente son “intrínsecamente desiguales”. Sin embargo, poco cambió hasta que los tribunales y agencias federales, facultados por la Ley de Derechos Civiles de 1964, intervinieron para hacer cumplir el fallo. Luego, la segregación escolar se desplomó en el sur, donde se emitieron la mayoría de las órdenes judiciales, y los estudiantes negros se beneficiaron dentro y fuera de la escuela.

Pero el gobierno federal se ha alejado constantemente de la abolición de la segregación desde la década de los ‘80, con las agencias flexibilizando la aplicación de la ley y las cortes liberando a los distritos de la supervisión. Muchos funcionarios locales también rehuyeron debido a la resistencia política y a un fallo de la Corte Suprema de 2007 que limitó (pero no prohibió) el uso de la raza en los planes de integración voluntaria. Hoy en día, según un análisis de 2020, se pueden encontrar políticas activas de integración en solo 119 de los más de 13.000 distritos escolares del país y 66 escuelas charter.

Frustrados por la inacción federal y local, los defensores de la integración de Nueva Jersey llevaron su lucha a las cortes estatales. En 2018, un grupo de nueve estudiantes, sus familias y una coalición de grupos religiosos y de derechos civiles demandaron al estado con la esperanza de forzar la integración escolar.

“Parecía nuestra única opción”, dijo Christian Estévez, presidente de Latino Action Network, el principal demandante.

Los defensores buscaron una solución a nivel estatal porque la segregación de Nueva Jersey está impulsada principalmente por las diferencias raciales y económicas entre sus aproximadamente 600 distritos escolares. Un plan de integración eficaz permitiría que más estudiantes se mudaran entre esos distritos divididos, dicen los expertos, tal vez ampliando un programa de transferencia existente.

El vecino del norte de Nueva Jersey puede ofrecer inspiración y una advertencia.

En 1989, estudiantes de Hartford, Connecticut, presentaron una demanda alegando que las escuelas segregadas de la ciudad violaban la constitución estatal. Siete años después, la Corte Suprema del estado emitió un fallo histórico a favor de los estudiantes, incluido el demandante principal Milo Sheff.

El caso Sheff dio lugar a una serie de planes de integración voluntaria. Las escuelas magnet recientemente abiertas atrajeron a estudiantes blancos y asiático-americanos a la ciudad, y un programa de transferencia permitió que estudiantes negros y latinos se matricularan en escuelas suburbanas. Los programas crearon escuelas más diversas y mejoraron el rendimiento de algunos estudiantes.

Sin embargo, muchas familias de Hartford siguen decepcionadas. A pesar de los generosos incentivos financieros, los distritos suburbanos nunca han aceptado suficientes estudiantes transferidos para satisfacer la demanda. Y, para mantener la diversidad, algunas escuelas magnet de la ciudad con plazas abiertas rechazan a los solicitantes negros y latinos. Hoy en día, la gran mayoría de los estudiantes de Hartford todavía asisten a escuelas segregadas.

En enero de 2022, los demandantes y el estado acordaron un acuerdo final, que crearía escuelas magnet adicionales y abriría más plazas para estudiantes transferidos. Milo Sheff, que estaba en cuarto grado cuando comenzó el caso, tiene ahora 43 años.

John Brittain, el abogado principal de los demandantes de Sheff, dijo que los defensores de Nueva Jersey tendrán que luchar – tal vez durante muchos años – para mantener el compromiso del estado con el acuerdo de integración.

“Realmente se necesita gente de base, organización comunitaria, como la que tenemos en el movimiento Sheff”, dijo.

Construir un movimiento popular en torno a la abolición de la segregación parecería especialmente difícil en un momento en el que los estadounidenses no están de acuerdo sobre si las escuelas debieran siquiera enseñar sobre el racismo. Sin embargo, es posible ganar apoyo para la integración, dijo Lallinger, director de una red de distritos escolares y agencias de vivienda comprometidas con la integración escolar. Para lograr la aceptación de los padres y la comunidad se requiere educación, diálogo y perseverancia, añadió.

“No deberíamos fingir que el trabajo es fácil”, dijo Lallinger. “Pero tampoco deberíamos ponernos las anteojeras y decir que el status quo es aceptable”.

Patrick Wall contribuyó con el reportaje de este artículo.

Samantha Lauten contribuyó con el reportaje de este artículo.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por New Jersey Hispano, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat Newark y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

This translation was provided by New Jersey Hispano, in association with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and is financially supported by the NJ Civic Information Consortium. The story was originally written in English by Chalkbeat Newark and is republished under a special content sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Newark students, educators discuss N.J. school segregation as legal battle carries on

2023-10-27T22:18:22+00:00

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Chalkbeat Newark, alongside WNYC and NJ Spotlight News, welcomed community members and students to a panel discussion Thursday on school segregation in New Jersey, an issue spotlighted by a recent state Superior Court opinion in the Latino Action Network’s lawsuit against the state.

New Jersey ranks sixth nationwide in highest levels of school segregation, according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Part of Thursday’s panel explored that data and more recent research that draws from state school performance reports to examine the learning environments of segregated schools in the state.

But the larger focus of the panel centered on how the issue affects education in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, where 90% of students in the public school system are Black or Latino.

Panelist Charles Payne, a Rutgers professor of African American studies and director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research, explained how demographic changes at the local level can accelerate segregation in the schools.

“The data looks like once a school becomes 50% nonwhite, it’s going to become 90%. It’s going to move real fast,” said Payne to the audience of about 65 people who gathered at the Newark Public Library’s main branch.

Payne also highlighted the need for added resources in Newark’s schools, so that its students aren’t consigned to “second class citizenship.”

“Segregation makes it easier to cheat children,” Payne said.

Christian Martinez, a graduate of Barringer High School and now a freshman at Kean University, said he was disappointed by his experience in Newark Public Schools because of a lack of attention to buildings and student resources.

“We’ve been handed used, busted up books and told to make the best of it,” Martinez said. “We are absolutely deserving of more.”

Earlier this month, a judge issued a pre-trial opinion in a five-year-old legal battle that New Jersey has failed to remedy the racial segregation evident in numerous school districts throughout the state.

The case was filed by several families and advocates who argued that the racial isolation experienced by thousands of Black and Latino students violates the state constitution, which explicitly bans school segregation.

Charles Payne, director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research, and Colleen O’Dea, senior writer at NJ Spotlight News, spoke about school segregation data.

David Allen, a senior at University High School and a Chalkbeat Student Voices fellow, spoke at Thursday’s forum about his prior experience at the Newark School of Global Studies.

News of various incidents involving racial, religious, and cultural harassment at Global Studies surfaced throughout the year, beginning when he and other students spoke out at a Newark school board meeting last November.

At Global Studies, Allen started a Black student union in an effort to bring a voice to Black students.

“When we’re looking at racism as a system, there’s always someone who needs to have the power. And it’s never the Black students that have the power,” said Allen.

He added:

“It’s an especially cruel thing to be surrounded by people in power who look like you but have no compassion for things you’re going through and the experiences they claim to have lived.”

Yvette Jordan, history teacher and chairperson of the Newark Education Workers Caucus, and Mark Comesañas, executive director of My Brother’s Keeper Newark, spoke about the challenges they’ve faced as educators in Newark when confronted with issues of racism and racial segregation.

Jordan and Comesañas underscored the importance of creating space for Black students in the classroom, both through support and curriculum.

“Overhauling the curriculum is vital, mandating certain things in African American history for all students,” said Jordan.

Comesañas echoed Jordan’s comments, highlighting how crucial it is for all students to read Black authors.

During the question-and-answer period, audience members raised a variety of concerns, including allocation of funding.

“We need to change the language that we don’t have the resources,” said Denise Cole, a community advocate who attended the forum. “We are not poor. We are disadvantaged, but not poor.”

Watch a recording of last night’s event livestream below.

Samantha Lauten is a fall reporting intern for Chalkbeat Newark covering public education in the city. Get in touch with Samantha at slauten@chalkbeat.org or reach the bureau newsroom at newark.tips@chalkbeat.org.

New federal program puts $12 million toward school integration in a dozen states

2023-10-23T16:13:00+00:00

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School desegregation efforts in a dozen states are getting a $12.5 million infusion from the federal government as part of a new grant program meant to create more diverse schools.

Among the winners are some of the largest districts in the country, including New York City and Chicago, where debates have long raged over how to address the inequities wrought by school segregation. Other winners include a cohort of Maryland districts and the East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana, both of which have been home to intense battles over school segregation in recent years.

The grants come as many school communities continue fraught discussions about racial inequities in schools — conversations that ramped up after the murder of George Floyd, but are facing pushback in many states as conservative lawmakers, activists, and some parents fight to end diversity and equity initiatives and curtail teaching about race and racism.

The funding is a small fraction of what the Biden administration initially sought. And there is only so much schools and federal officials can do in the wake of Supreme Court decisions that severely limited desegregation across district lines, and quashed efforts to explicitly take student race into account as part of integration plans.

Still, the grants are the culmination of a years-long effort led by school integration advocates and officials within the Obama and Biden administrations to steer more federal funding to school desegregation. The money is sorely needed, as America’s schools remain highly segregated by race and income but initiatives to fix that often fizzle out.

The result of that isolation, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement on Thursday, is that students of color and students from low-income families disproportionately experience “inadequate resources, lesser access to advanced courses, fewer extracurricular offerings, and other tangible inequities.”

The grants are relatively small: The $12.5 million is being divided among 14 initiatives, ranging from $250,000 to $2.8 million. But integration advocates say start-up money like this is essential because it gives schools funding and political cover to launch complicated planning efforts and community conversations that are necessary for initiatives to stick.

“It’s not going to fully solve it,” said Mohammed Choudhury, the former Maryland schools superintendent who oversaw the state’s application that netted $500,000 for its first year of work. But if the money helps shift some policies, “then it’s a big damn deal.”

Maryland will use its money to work on initiatives in the districts of Anne Arundel, Charles, Frederick, Howard, and Montgomery counties. Howard County, notably, faced parent backlash a few years ago when leaders there tried to deconcentrate the share of students from low-income families who attended certain schools.

Each of the Maryland districts has committed to try at least one of three strategies to create more integrated schools. Those include revamping admissions processes to make selective schools more diverse; ensuring dual language schools are accessible to low-income families whose children are learning English; or finding ways to integrate young children across public and private preschools. Much of the money will be spent on family engagement, Choudhury said.

Expanding access to particular programs may not be as controversial or have as sweeping of an effect as other school desegregation strategies, such as changing school boundaries. But Choudhury, who is now a senior advisor to Maryland’s board of education, expects it won’t be drama-free.

“From opportunity-hoarding type tensions and challenges, to people feeling like they are losing something, to people feeling like they could potentially be pitted against each other — all of those things have to be navigated,” he said. “You’ve still got to win hearts and minds.”

New York City, meanwhile, won $3 million for initiatives in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn that have previously worked to create more integrated middle schools. In Manhattan, officials will work to create a more diverse group of schools serving some 12,000 students, starting with preschool. In Brooklyn, the money will help put middle school integration plans into place, and fund efforts to recruit elementary school families to attend the area’s middle schools.

Recently, some New York City schools have returned to academically screening incoming middle schoolers — a practice integration advocates say fuels segregation. The current mayor and chancellor have shown less interest in school integration than past administrations.

Chicago Public Schools plans to use its $500,000 to hire staff and host community meetings, a spokesperson said. The work is part of several ongoing planning initiatives related to school quality and student admissions, according to a project description.

Fayette County Public Schools in Kentucky plans to use its funding to improve schools in Lexington’s East End, a historically Black community that’s experiencing some gentrification.

“Our aim is to reconnect our East End students with the cultural identity and heritage of their historical neighborhood,” a project description states. “All the while, changing the reputation and perception of East End schools so that they are a source of pride for residents as well as an attractive school choice for more diverse, affluent parents.”

Other winning districts include:

Anchorage School District in Alaska, which plans to use its funding to create more socioeconomically diverse high school programs by expanding access to career and technical education.
Hamilton County Schools in Tennessee, which plans to use its money for community engagement as it seeks to “reimagine” student transportation and school access.
Oakland Unified in California, which will develop an integration plan focused on improving outcomes for students who attend some of the district’s highest-poverty schools.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina, which will analyze enrollment patterns and student assignment policies and potentially change attendance boundaries. The money will help fund sessions for students, families, and staff to provide feedback.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Author: Black teachers’ resistance to segregation 60 years ago holds lessons for teachers today

2023-10-16T21:41:34+00:00

As a Birmingham, Alabama, native, Tondra Loder-Jackson was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. She was especially inspired by the 1,000-plus Black children who walked out of school in Birmingham on May 2, 1963, to protest Jim Crow segregation in what would be known as the Children’s Crusade.

Still, one question lingered for Loder-Jackson. Where, she wondered, were the Black teachers?

Now a professor of educational foundations at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Loder-Jackson sought the answer to that question — and wound up debunking a narrative that Black teachers either shied away from the movement or were hostile to it.

In her 2016 book, “Schoolhouse Activists: African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement,” and in a 2023 book she co-edited, “Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction Through the Civil Rights Era,” Loder-Jackson details how many Black teachers, at the risk of losing their jobs and, in some cases, their lives, organized quietly and supported the movement through their scholarship and their teaching, and through associations with outside groups.

Loder-Jackson recently talked to Chalkbeat about her work and the lessons teachers in states like Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and others where teaching about race is being restricted, can learn from those 1960s schoolhouse activists on how to resist new state-sanctioned attempts to whitewash Black history.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Why did you want to explore the role of Black educators in the Civil Rights Movement?

This seemed to be a relatively untold story, although some scholars began to unearth some archival data and tell new stories decades ago. But no one that I knew of in Birmingham was focused on educators, and really, on the contrary, I discovered there was a false narrative in Birmingham that Black teachers and principals were categorically tepid about getting involved in the movement. In fact, there’s one narrative about a Black principal who stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent his students from skipping school during the Children’s Crusade in 1963.

Why is it important to correct this narrative — that Black teachers weren’t involved in the movement — at this time?

The false narrative that Black teachers in Birmingham, and in the southern region, were not active in the Civil Rights Movement leaves our teachers today with a lost memory of the kind of activism that teachers were involved in. There was an active network of below-the-radar teachers and administrators who contributed to the Alabama movement in various ways that were typically aligned with their professional practices. They formed Black teachers associations … . There is clear evidence, in national and local archives, that Black Alabama teachers joined ranks with the Alabama State Teachers Association. They were involved with them, they were involved in the NAACP, they were involved in the Alabama Christian Association, they were involved in all the civil rights organizations. It’s important for all educators to know, irrespective of race or ethnicity or nationality, the role that educators played in voting rights and in all aspects of the movement.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised by this underground railroad of Black educators and how they came together as a collective to fight for civil rights. They were instrumental in putting together reports to document racial discrimination, they fought for voting rights, they sponsored Black history programs, and they were involved in strategizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They came together as a collective to fight for civil rights.

It was true that some didn’t feel comfortable protesting, but many blended in with crowds during the mass meetings, which was one of the core activities of the movement. I have interviewed teachers who said they have attended every one of those meetings.

Did you think that in 2023, 60 years after the Children’s Crusade, that states like Tennessee and Florida would adopt laws that make it hard for teachers to teach about that crusade and, by extension, the role that Black teachers played in it?

Everything goes around in circles. We had a backlash against multiculturalism in the 1980s, but then things died down a bit. The backlash today, however, seems especially vitriolic. I have to consider the role that the first Black president elected two times, and a pandemic that opened up classrooms virtually with some students’ parents looking over their shoulders, and the George Floyd protests may have played in this.

What is especially troubling about these laws and their potential consequences?

The attacks on civic education are disconcerting to me. That is the space in public schools where students learn how a democracy should work. One teacher I interviewed told me one important lesson she taught during the movement was to help students understand why they were going out to march in the streets, and she would use her civics lesson to make a connection between their actions and what they were doing. So teachers play an important role in laying the intellectual foundation for any social movement, and teachers, and Black teachers in the South particularly, played that role.

What can educators in states where teaching about race is restricted learn from Black teachers in Birmingham who found ways to resist unjust laws that wouldn’t cause them to lose their jobs or lives?

Today, we definitely don’t want to have situations where we have educational gaps and orders keeping teachers from teaching social studies authentically and with fidelity.

So I would say that the lessons that teachers of today can learn from teachers of the past is to find ways to organize at their schools on a local, state, and even a national and international level. Beyond unions, there are a lot of professional associations and informal coalitions that are emerging.

In Birmingham, I’ve become part of a group called Coalition for True History. It’s an emergent grass roots organization that is made up of educators, civic leaders, and community members. We are advocating rigorous, authentic, and critical approaches to teaching history. We’ve had the NAACP and other groups to help interpret legal leeways (around laws that restrict lessons on race).

So, (teachers) are going to have to work in solidarity. Based on my scholarship and research, that is the model that we have from the past.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

2023-10-13T18:14:26+00:00

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Mónica Meléndez spent the first half of the last school year driving her three kids at least an hour each way to Inter-American Magnet School in Lake View.

She felt she had no choice after the district said it would not provide transportation at the beginning of the year for two of her children.

By the time all her kids got bus service in the second semester, Meléndez was exhausted — especially on days she spent another hour driving to work.

So shortly after Chicago Public Schools announced this summer that it wouldn’t provide busing to about 5,500 eligible general education students, largely those in gifted and magnet programs, Meléndez and her husband pulled their two youngest children out of the school. It was a wrenching decision: The Spanish dual language school felt perfect for the couple, who are originally from Puerto Rico and want their children to be bilingual.

Meléndez recalls telling her husband: “Sweetie, I can’t do this anymore.” Their oldest, a seventh grader, now takes a CTA bus two hours each way.

The family’s decision illustrates one way Chicago’s school bus crisis could impact enrollment and the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the city’s magnet and gifted programs. Many of these schools were created under a federal desegregation consent decree, but have been criticized for lacking diversity and enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students since federal oversight ended in 2009. As working-class families find it difficult or impossible to take their children far distances to school, the absence of a transportation option could segregate the schools even more.

Parents at Inter-American are looking for solutions, as other gifted and magnet programs have also sought their own alternatives to the lack of busing.

Inter-American is already seeing the impact and some families have left.

“I would be really worried about what this change would mean for the demographics for these schools and for the goals of magnet schools in Chicago more generally,” said Halley Potter, an expert on school integration policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Parents share transportation challenges

Citing a severe driver shortage, Chicago Public Schools announced in late July that it would limit bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are homeless, both groups which are legally required to receive transportation. The district is currently under state watch to make sure it’s meeting those legal requirements.

The district said it has pursued several solutions to hire more drivers, including boosting driver pay rates by $2 – to $22 to $27 an hour – and hosting hiring fairs. But as of late last month, the district still had only half the number of drivers on hand and announced that busing would not be extended to more families for the rest of the semester. The district offered CTA cards to the 5,500 children who lost busing, but as of late last month, just about 1,600 took that option.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Samantha Hart said the district is “acutely aware” of the challenges families are facing with longer commutes.

“We are committed to continuing to work with our vendors, City partners and our families to identify solutions and ensure every eligible student has safe, secure, and reliable transportation to and from school,” Hart said.

The transportation crisis has already had a small impact on enrollment at Inter-American, where nearly half of the school’s 641 students come from low-income families. Fifty-three families were eligible for transportation at the school. As of Oct. 2, six children have transferred out of the school due to the lack of transportation, according to the district.

At least two more children transferred out after Oct. 2 because of transportation issues, said Maria Ugarte, chair of Inter-American’s Local School Council. Ugarte has also heard from many parents who are considering leaving, and she wonders how lack of busing will impact next year’s enrollment.

At a meeting last month with the school’s principal, one parent said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the commute to school. A mother shared that her commute involves taking the CTA with her three children, including a 2-year-old, every morning and evening— and doing that daily is becoming stressful.

Alexis Luna, who lives in Belmont Cragin, splits dropoff and pickup responsibilities for her third grade daughter with the girl’s father. But her daughter may have to miss school on days that the girl’s father is out of town for work, since Luna’s work schedule is inflexible and she can’t take days off.

Luna “lost everything” when her business closed during the pandemic, so she cannot afford to miss work or quit. She said she is struggling to pay for the increased gas costs.

For Rocio Meza, the lack of transportation means she can’t search for a job this year as she handles the hourlong pickup and dropoff each way at Inter-American for her 12-year-old daughter. She’s also responsible for driving her older son with disabilities to doctor’s appointments on some mornings, which sometimes makes one of the children late.

She and her husband have discussed transferring their daughter out of Inter-American – two other schools are within a few blocks of their house – but the family loves the school.

”Do I really want to do this and give up the education and experience she’s getting at Inter-American to go to another school?” Meza said.

Some attempts to find solutions at the school level haven’t come to fruition.

The school’s principal, Juan Carlos Zayas, launched a voluntary task force with parents to look for ways to ease the transportation issue. Ideas included a rideshare app and hiring a bus company on their own, according to recordings of the meetings. Both options would likely be too costly for parents, task force members said. For example, one parent found a company that would charge $158 per child this month — if the bus was full with just a couple of stops.

The district granted the school $157,000 in funding to host before- and after-school programs to accommodate more flexible pickup and dropoff times. The principal recently surveyed families for their interest and expects programming to start Oct. 23, a district spokesperson said.

Last month, Luna tried to distribute a survey to arrange carpooling for interested parents. The survey asked for information such as where their child’s old bus stop was and how many children they had. Zayas emailed Luna and several other parents that the “attempt to collect personal information” was a “clear violation” of district policy and that it was circulated to teachers without his knowledge.

District officials pointed to a CPS policy that prevents anyone from circulating ads, subscription lists, meeting invitations, books, maps, articles, or other political or commercial materials among school employees or students without approval from the principal or other district officials.

Still, some parents are trying to figure out carpool arrangements, Luna said.

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

During CPS board meetings, parents at magnet and gifted programs have said they are worried that the lack of transportation will most greatly impact children whose parents don’t have flexible work schedules to take young children on lengthy transit commutes or the money and time to drive them. That could force less-resourced families to transfer out of magnet programs or gifted programs or choose not to apply for them for next school year.

Once seen as a solution to the city’s segregated schools, the city’s magnet, gifted, and selective enrollment programs have been criticized for failing to achieve their diversity goals. A 2019 WBEZ analysis found that just 20% of these schools met the definition of racial diversity embedded in a now-lifted court order for Chicago to integrate its schools.

CPS uses a lottery for enrollment in magnet programs like Inter-American. Seats are offered based on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood a student lives in. Sometimes priority is given to siblings or to students living close to the school.

Inter-American lacks racial diversity — 85% of its students this year are Hispanic, and 10% are white, according to district data. However, the school is more socioeconomically diverse, with 47% of its students coming from low-income families, still far below the district’s average of about 71%.

During one of the task force meetings, one parent expressed concern that working-class families would leave, and more local families from the surrounding affluent Lake View neighborhood would get seats — changing the face of the school.

At the same time, less transportation for magnet and gifted families could mean more students enrolling in their neighborhood schools. Bolstering neighborhood schools is a priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After pulling her daughter and son out of Inter-American, Meléndez enrolled them in her local neighborhood school, Canty Elementary. There, about half of the students are Hispanic, 44% are white, and about 2% are each Black and Asian American. Just over 43% come from low-income households.

Her daughters like the school so far, Meléndez said. Canty, which is not a dual-language school like Inter-American, is just a five-minute drive away from home. But the outcome of their story is likely not the norm: In a city as segregated as Chicago, more integrated neighborhood schools like Canty are a rarity.

Potter, from The Century Foundation, said Chicago Public Schools has done “really important work” in finding ways to spur diversity in selective and magnet schools. The district’s lotteries that try to enroll students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often result in more racial diversity, too, she said.

But, Potter said, “without transportation support, a lot of that can fall apart.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey school segregation case: A look at key points, what’s next in Latino Action Network vs. NJ

2023-10-13T17:08:40+00:00

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A coalition of advocates and families have less than two weeks to appeal a New Jersey Superior Court judge’s mixed ruling that said they failed to prove the state’s public education system is socioeconomically segregated and that racial segregation exists across every district.

The long-awaited decision from Judge Robert T. Lougy released last week also found that the state’s actions, policies, and programs have failed to remedy the racial segregation evident in numerous school districts throughout New Jersey — rejecting the state’s defense that it should not be held responsible.

Not only did the 99-page pre-trial court ruling avoid overwhelmingly favoring one side over the other, it also stopped short of answering key questions, including what the state should be required to do next.

Legal representatives of both sides have said they’re reviewing Lougy’s decision with their clients. Plaintiffs have until Oct. 26 to decide whether to go to trial, start negotiations, or file an appeal. If they decide to pursue a “leave for appeal” — a motion to appeal a legal error in the case before it goes to trial — they can get a 15-day extension, New Jersey courts rules state.

As questions still linger, here’s a guide to the case, including key points raised in the lawsuit and possible next steps.

Who are the players involved in the case?

The ruling is the latest in a five-year legal battle that began when several families and advocates sued New Jersey, arguing that the racial isolation experienced by thousands of Black and Latino students violates the state constitution, which is rare in its explicit ban on school segregation.

The root of their lawsuit — arguing that the state is liable for the segregation that is “unlawful, persistent, and pervasive” across its entire public educational system — is in part driven by a residency statute known as the “home rule.”

That statute stipulates that each municipality has its own separate school district — totaling more than 600 districts in New Jersey — and that children who live in that town are assigned to go to those schools. The plaintiffs pointed out that the “undisputed history” of discriminatory governmental housing policies led to New Jersey’s residential segregation, which has only been replicated in the school system under the home rule.

Meanwhile, the defendants are the State of New Jersey, the state Board of Education, the state Department of Education, and Acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan, as well as intervening defendants, which include representatives and parents of students in charter and renaissance schools.

The state argued that it is not in violation of its constitution and that segregation in a handful of districts doesn’t establish a statewide violation. They also argued that relief of the existing segregation would “essentially obliterate the state’s entire public school system.”

Does New Jersey have segregated schools?

New Jersey has one of the nation’s top-performing school systems, but studies have shown it’s also one of the most deeply divided by race and class. While integration has been shown to benefit students, policymakers across the country have largely abandoned it due to political opposition and legal restrictions.

The state ranks sixth in the nation in terms of the highest segregation of Black students and seventh in segregation of Latino students, a UCLA Civil Rights Project study found in 2017.

As part of their evidence, the plaintiffs used 2016-17 state enrollment data that showed 30% of Latino students and 25% of Black students attend schools where the non-white student enrollment is between 90-99%, the lawsuit states. They also identified 23 districts with high percentages of Latino and Black students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, which included Newark, East Orange, Orange, and Irvington.

In his opinion, Lougy noted that while he did not think they proved there is “statewide” segregation, the plaintiffs were able to show “marked and persistent racial imbalance” exists in a number of school districts. He agreed with the plaintiffs that the state’s argument of changing demographics showing a decrease in white students “may present challenges, but those challenges only emphasize, not diminish, ‘the obligation and power of education officials to remediate racial imbalance.’”

What could happen to New Jersey’s home rule?

Outside New Jersey, talk of school segregation has been stifled in recent years by pandemic pressures and the conservative backlash against calls to confront systemic racism. But as this case continues to make its way through the legal system, it could thrust integration back into the national conversation.

Stefan Lallinger, who heads a network of school districts and housing agencies committed to school integration, has said the message with this case “is that this issue is alive and well.”

Some possible measures, such as creating new magnet schools that enroll students from multiple districts, could be expensive yet popular with families. But other potential remedies, such as allowing students to transfer schools or redrawing district boundaries, have historically faced resistance from wealthy white parents and taxpayers who fear that an influx of poor students of color will undermine their community’s schools and home values.

In its argument, the state defended its residency statute, which has students attend schools in the town where they currently reside. The coalition of advocacy groups disputed the state’s claim that there is a “public need” for the home rule and that parent engagement would be negatively affected if schools were more integrated.

“Neither municipal nor school district boundaries are impermeable in the fight against segregation,” Lougy said, adding context from previous state Supreme Court rulings. “In meeting the constitutional obligation, and notwithstanding the residency statute, the commissioner is vested with the authority to ‘cross district lines to avoid ‘segregation in fact.’”

The lawsuit and the discussion over home rule have prompted some Republican lawmakers to sponsor bills proposing to make the home rule part of a state constitutional amendment.

State Sen. Jon Bramnick, a Republican representing Morris, Somerset, and Union counties, said in an interview with Chalkbeat that this issue should be handled through the legislature, not through lawsuits. In February 2022, he sponsored a bill, which had a similar proposal in the Assembly, that aimed to ensure students attend the public school closest to their home.

Bramnick said he fears that without amendments to the state constitution, the issue of home rule could take decades to decide in the courts. “I don’t think anyone questions if de-facto segregation exists in our schools,” Bramnick said. “So don’t hide behind the court system.”

What’s next and what other remedies are possible?

Oct. 26 is the deadline for the parties to file an appeal, which would allow them to ask for another 15-day extension.

They can also pursue a trial or negotiations. Another option is to ask the court for aspects of the opinion to be reconsidered or clarified, though given how it took a year and a half to get this ruling, that would likely only further protract the legal proceedings.

In the past, state efforts like New Jersey’s haven’t driven desegregation. Instead, federal actors have taken the lead.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racially segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” Yet little changed until federal courts and agencies, empowered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, stepped in to enforce the ruling. Then school segregation plummeted in the South, where most court orders were issued, and Black students benefited in and out of school.

But the federal government has steadily retreated from desegregation since the 1980s, with agencies easing enforcement and courts releasing districts from oversight. Many local officials also shied away due to political resistance and a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that limited (but did not forbid) the use of race in voluntary integration plans. Today, active integration policies can be found in just 119 of the country’s more than 13,000 school districts and 66 charter schools, according to a 2020 analysis.

Frustrated by the federal and local inaction, New Jersey’s integration advocates took their fight to the state court. In 2018, a group of nine students, their families, and a coalition of religious and civil rights groups sued the state in hopes of forcing school integration.

“It seemed like our only option,” said Christian Estevez, president of the Latino Action Network, the lead plaintiff.

Advocates sought a statewide solution because New Jersey’s segregation is driven mainly by the race and wealth gaps between its roughly 600 school districts. An effective integration plan would allow more students to move between those divided districts, experts say, perhaps by expanding an existing transfer program.

New Jersey’s northern neighbor can offer inspiration — and a warning.

In 1989, students in Hartford, Connecticut filed a lawsuit alleging that the city’s segregated schools violated the state constitution. Seven years later, the state Supreme Court issued a historic ruling in favor of the students, including lead plaintiff Milo Sheff.

The Sheff case resulted in a series of voluntary integration plans. Newly opened magnet schools drew white and Asian American students into the city, and a transfer program let Black and Latino students enroll in suburban schools. The programs created more diverse schools and improved achievement for some students.

Yet many Hartford families remain disappointed. Despite generous financial incentives, suburban districts have never accepted enough transfer students to meet demand. And, in order to maintain diversity, some city magnet schools with open seats turn down Black and Latino applicants. Today, the vast majority of Hartford students still attend segregated schools.

In January 2022, the plaintiffs and state agreed to a final settlement, which would create additional magnet schools and open more seats for transfer students. Milo Sheff, who was in fourth grade when the case began, is now 43 years old.

John Brittain, the Sheff plaintiffs’ lead counsel, said New Jersey advocates will have to fight — perhaps over many years — to keep the state committed to the integration agreement.

“You really need grassroots people, community organizing, like we have in the Sheff movement,” he said.

Building a popular movement around desegregation would seem especially difficult at a moment when Americans disagree on whether schools should even teach about racism. Yet it is possible to win support for integration, said Lallinger, the head of a network of school districts and housing agencies committed to school integration. Earning parent and community buy-in requires education, dialogue, and persistence, he added.

“We shouldn’t pretend the work is easy,” Lallinger said. “But we also shouldn’t put blinders on and say that the status quo is acceptable.”

Patrick Wall contributed reporting to this article.

Samantha Lauten contributed reporting to this article.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Event: Learn more about the state of segregation in New Jersey schools

2023-10-12T21:05:01+00:00

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Join us on Thursday, Oct. 26 at the Newark Public Library main branch for “The State of Segregation,” a discussion about the pervasiveness of segregation in New Jersey’s schools and what can be done to tackle the problem.

This event is open to the Newark community and families from across the state and is designed to bring residents, journalists, and experts together to address this issue across New Jersey. Each panelist and speaker in this event brings a unique perspective and expertise to the discussion, making it a must-attend event for those interested in education and social justice in the state.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. for a meet and mingle with journalists from Chalkbeat Newark, NJ Spotlight News, and New York Public Radio (WNYC + Gothamist).

The program officially begins at 6 p.m. with a panel discussion featuring Michael Hill, host of WNYC’s Morning Edition, Colleen O’Dea, data reporter at NJ Spotlight News, and Dr. Charles Payne, director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research and co-author of “Segregated Schooling in New Jersey.” They will discuss why New Jersey schools are among the nation’s most segregated.

A second panel discussion, moderated by Jessie Gomez, a reporter with Chalkbeat Newark, begins at 6:30 p.m. and features Newark students and community members who will share their experiences in the city’s schools. We will also discuss the ways in which city and school leaders can promote opportunities for students of color to share their experiences. This panel concludes at 7:30 p.m. and attendees will have a chance to continue the conversation with journalists and experts until 8 p.m.

Your attendance can serve as a vital contribution to the ongoing statewide conversation on school segregation and help inform our reporting in Newark and beyond. The event is free with an RSVP through our Eventbrite page.

Nearly 70 years since the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, New Jersey continues to grapple with a segregated school system. In Newark and other cities in the state, teaching staff and school leadership do not always reflect diverse student bodies. Newark Public Schools is made up of roughly 90% Black and Latino students, while teachers from those backgrounds make up just over half of the teaching staff.

Most recently, state Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy issued a decision on a segregation lawsuit that acknowledges New Jersey public schools are segregated by race but says plaintiffs failed to prove the “entire” school system is segregated “across all districts.” The state has the

constitutional power to take action but New Jersey should not be held responsible for the “unlawful, persistent, and pervasive” segregation in its educational system, the decision read.

This event is hosted by newsrooms in the “Segregated NJ” reporting collaboration, which includes Chalkbeat Newark, New York Public Radio, and NJ Spotlight News. The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University is providing support for this event.

As NYC middle school applications open, selective programs surge in one Brooklyn district

2023-10-11T22:51:31+00:00

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The number of middle schools across New York City using academic screens to sort fifth grade applicants continues to remain well below pre-pandemic levels — but in one Brooklyn school district, they’re growing dramatically.

This year, 78 middle school programs across 69 schools will screen applicants based on their academic records, according to Education Department data.

That was up from last year, when 59 of the city’s more than 470 middle schools selected at least some of their incoming sixth graders using their fourth grade academic performance. But it was still down when compared to pre-pandemic admissions cycles. For the 2020-21 academic year, 196 middle schools across the city screened at least some of their applicants.

The latest figures come as middle school applications opened on Wednesday.

Families and parent leaders have fiercely debated whether and how academic screens should play a role in middle school admissions. While some have called for more screened options and the inclusion of other measures of student performance, like state test scores, others warn the practice harms integration efforts in a school system that is already among the most segregated in the nation. Integration advocates add it is unfair to sort students as young as nine based on their grades.

The tension follows several years of pandemic-spurred changes to admissions, with academic screens initially paused, then brought back in some districts at the discretion of each of the city’s 32 local school district superintendents.

This year, District 20 in Brooklyn, which covers Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, and part of Sunset Park, will more than quadruple the number of middle schools with academically screened programs. Alone, the district will be home to more than a quarter of the city’s academically screened middle school programs.

It will offer 23 academically screened programs across 14 schools — up from the three middle schools that offered screened programs last year.

Academic screens fuel debates across the city

Deciding to reinstate academic screens, or drop them, can be controversial. Debates across the city have sparked controversy this year, with parents split on many facets of the process.

District 20 is one of several across the city where the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, has established a stronghold on local parent-led Community Education Councils — with endorsed candidates winning all elected seats in the district. The group advocates for test-based and other selective school admissions.

Stephen Stowe, president of the District 20 CEC, praised the local expansion of screened programs.

“There is high demand for these programs,” he said, adding that many parents complained about long waitlists at the three district middle schools that used academic screens last year.

The “Superintendent’s Program,” a screened program adopted by about a dozen schools in the district, will align with the state’s new learning standards and offer accelerated learning in core subjects, Stowe added.

Others expressed concerns about the surge in screened programs. Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, called District 20’s decision “an egregious policy to implement.”

“It’s literally a step back in time,” she said. “Trying to return to a status quo that was exclusionary and discriminatory for some of our most marginalized student groups in the city.”

“I’m enraged for the students and families in District 20 that have had opportunities potentially taken away from them, and access taken away from them, when they had just gained it for a couple of years,” Berg added.

Other districts have made smaller changes.

In District 2 — which covers broad swaths of Manhattan including TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, and the Upper East Side — screened programs will return to four zoned middle schools. It’s a reversal of a move last year to drop academic screens in the district, and the first time middle schools in District 2 will screen applicants based on their fourth grade academic performance since the onset of the pandemic. (Prior to the pandemic, about 18 out of 23 middle schools in the district screened at least some of their applicants.)

Schools using academic screens in admissions rank applicants based on their fourth grade GPAs in core subjects.

Families have until Dec. 8 to submit their middle school applications. Offers are expected to be released in April.

Here’s how many academically screened programs each district’s middle schools will offer. The data, provided by the city’s Education Department, does not include several arts programs across the city that rely on auditions, nor other programs that use “talent tests” to screen applicants, like computer and math, creative writing and journalism, and science programs at Mark Twain.

District 1: 1

District 2: 4

District 3: 1

District 4: 2

District 5: 3

District 6: 1

District 7: 1

District 8: 0

District 9: 1

District 10: 4

District 11: 0

District 12: 0

District 13: 0

District 14: 0

District 15: 0

District 16: 0

District 17: 4

District 18: 1

District 19: 0

District 20: 23

District 21: 0

District 22: 1

District 23: 1

District 24: 3

District 25: 3

District 26: 5

District 27: 2

District 28: 1

District 29: 5

District 30: 5

District 31: 4

District 32: 2

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

Judge finds New Jersey has responsibility to address school segregation

2023-10-08T00:16:27+00:00

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In the five-year legal battle to desegregate New Jersey public schools, on Friday a Superior Court judge denied the state’s defense that it should not be held responsible for the “unlawful, persistent, and pervasive” segregation in its educational system.

While acknowledging that state public schools are segregated by race, and that the state has the constitutional power to take action, Judge Robert Lougy’s decision also found that the activists who made the allegations failed to prove the “entire” school system is segregated “across all districts.”

Students, educators, activists, experts, and community members have been waiting for more than a year and a half in anticipation of Lougy’s ruling, which came after 5 p.m. Friday, ahead of a three-day weekend for many public schools and state offices because of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday.

The 99-page decision was complex and nuanced — a reflection of the historic lawsuit itself.

“While plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the entire system is constitutionally repugnant, that shortcoming may be a question of scale, and defendants fail to prove that they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law,” Lougy wrote. He also said the state’s defense failed “on both legal and factual ground,” calling it “unpersuasive.”

The opinion opens three routes for parties in the lawsuit: a move to trial, negotiations, or an appeal process. There is also an option for either party to ask for the court to clarify or reconsider parts of the opinion.

Counsel for the defendants — which include the State of New Jersey, the state Board of Education, and Acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan — was still reviewing the decision as of Saturday afternoon, said Sharon Lauchaire, the interim communications director for the state’s Office of the Attorney General, in an email.

The case also has intervening defendants which include representatives of charter and renaissance schools.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs — Latino Action Network, NAACP New Jersey State Conference, other advocacy groups, and nine students from schools throughout the state, including Newark — said in a Saturday statement that they are analyzing the opinion and discussing it with their clients and stakeholders.

“The court agreed with us on two essential points,” attorney Lawrence Lustberg, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in his statement. “One, New Jersey’s schools are deeply segregated by race, and two, the state has a constitutional obligation to address this urgent problem.”

The judge, however, did not agree with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the state has violated equal protection laws by failing to prevent segregation based on socioeconomic background.

The lawsuit the plaintiffs filed five years ago, on the 64th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, claimed that many New Jersey students are denied the social and academic benefits of diversity because of a state law requiring students to attend schools in the communities where they live, which often are deeply segregated by race and class.

By that regard, the lawsuit argued, the public school system violates the state constitution, which is unique in its explicit bans on school segregation, and prior court rulings that held the state responsible for addressing segregation regardless of what caused it.

Activists want the state to create a plan to uproot this deep-seated racial segregation and find ways to better integrate its 1.3 million public school students.

In his opinion, Lougy acknowledged the historical significance and magnitude of the lawsuit.

“Novel and broad do not mean meritless. Plaintiffs maintain that ‘New Jersey’s schools are tragically — and embarrassingly — among the most segregated in the nation,’” Lougy said, quoting the activists’ complaint. “That alleged condition, along with our court’s prohibition of de facto segregation, makes New Jersey a logical choice for such historic claims.”

After the lawsuit was filed in May 2018, Gov. Phil Murphy, a liberal Democrat, authorized an aggressive legal defense that outraged his progressive allies. Despite data showing nearly half of New Jersey’s Black and Latino students attend schools where less than 10% of their classmates are white, the state’s lawyers questioned the extent of school segregation and insisted that it doesn’t always impair student learning.

But the judge found that the evidence showed the state has failed to fix its segregated educational system.

“Plaintiffs allege with sufficient specificity that defendants intentionally failed to exercise their constitutional obligations and authorities to remedy segregation,” Lougy said. “Plaintiffs adequately allege that defendants have, as a self-evident proposition, failed to take sufficient steps to remedy that segregation.”

During the final hearing in March 2022, Deputy Attorney General Christopher Weber said the state recognizes the value of “an integrated education.” But he argued that the plaintiffs relied on “raw data” for only a small group of school districts and failed to prove that the problem stems from state actions.

The state also argued that its changing demographics would require “ongoing and continuous statewide reorganizations.” On this, Lougy agreed with the plaintiffs’ counterargument that the state’s defense “rings of an ‘attitude of helplessness in the face of what is perceived to be inevitable,’” he said in his opinion.

The New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, one of the intervening defendants, released a statement on Sunday that said they want to start working on remedies with all parties in the case.

“We should be exploring the creation of new charter schools in key districts that are geographically positioned to draw upon a racially and economically diverse student body from surrounding geographies,” said Harry Lee, the association’s president and chief executive officer, in an emailed statement. “The public charter school community stands ready to work with the state and the plaintiffs to increase the number of intentionally diverse public schools in the Garden State.”

In a statement on Saturday, Robert Kim, executive director of Education Law Center, which supported the plaintiffs in the case, stressed the importance of the lawsuit.

“Nearly 70 years after Brown vs. Board, schools in New Jersey and across the nation remain deeply segregated by race,” Kim said. “This deprives them of the opportunity to learn in a diverse learning environment, which is critical not only for their development and education but for our democracy as a whole.”

Patrick Wall contributed reporting to this article.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Selective middle school admissions return to one Manhattan district after fierce debate

2023-10-05T20:16:00+00:00

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A Manhattan school district is reversing course, allowing some schools to screen middle school applicants for accelerated programs in the upcoming admissions cycle, according to a letter its superintendent sent to families this week.

It’s the first time middle schools in District 2 will screen applicants based on their fourth grade academic performance since the onset of the pandemic, when the city paused academic screens for middle schools.

Selective admissions for New York City’s 10-year-olds were later reinstated for this year’s incoming sixth graders in some districts, but at dramatically reduced rates.

Instead of a blanket approach across the city, schools Chancellor David Banks last year tasked superintendents of the city’s 32 local school districts to work with their communities to decide their middle school admissions guidelines. Manhattan’s District 2, along with about nine other districts that previously used selective admissions at some of its middle schools, opted to ditch screens.

This year, once again, the chancellor tapped superintendents to choose their admissions policies. The Education Department has yet to share the decisions of districts across the five boroughs.

Changes to middle school admissions have sparked debate across the city, particularly in District 2 — one of the city’s most affluent school districts, spanning such neighborhoods as TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, and the Upper East Side. Some families argue the elimination of screens reduces academic rigor in some classrooms, while others say practices like screened admissions harm integration efforts in a school system that remains among the most segregated in the nation.

District 2’s decision to drop screens last year spurred some ire in the area, where the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, has a foothold on the district’s parent-led Community Education Council — with endorsed candidates winning seven of the 10 elected seats. The group advocates for test-based and other selective school admissions.

For this year’s admissions cycle, which starts next week, District 2 will offer programs that select students based on grades at four zoned middle schools, Superintendent Kelly McGuire said in the Oct. 3 letter to families.

The four schools are the Sun Yat Sen Middle School (M.S. 131), Wagner Middle School (M.S. 167), 75 Morton (M.S. 297), and Baruch Middle School (M.S. 104), according to the letter.

“Over the past several months we have spoken with District 2 parents and families about middle school admissions,” McGuire said in the letter. “While there is a wide diversity of perspectives across our district, we have developed a plan that offers pathways for accelerated learning through screened programs, maintained sibling priority, and ensured that all students have access to every District 2 middle school.”

The programs would offer accelerated learning in core subjects, McGuire said. Several non-zoned schools in the district also offer accelerated academics and a pathway to Regents-level coursework, he added.

Students applying to the four schools can include the general program and/or the screened program on their child’s middle school application, according to the letter.

Schools using academic screens in admissions rank 10-year-olds based on their fourth grade GPAs in core subjects.

Parent council pushes for more academic screening

During a September meeting, some members of the district’s Community Education Council urged the district to reinstate academic screens at middle schools that had used them prior to the pandemic. About 18 out of 23 middle schools in the district screened at least some segment of their applicants for the 2020-21 school year, according to city data.

Leonard Silverman, president of the council, called the district’s decision “a good start.”

“If it comes down to four over nothing, we’ll take four,” he said. “This was the culmination of a lot of advocacy, and fighting, and pushing, and prodding, and parents letting their voices be heard.”

Some details about the screened programs remained unclear, he said, like how many seats they’ll have.

“I hope we’ll continue to expand these types of programs to meet the needs of all students — not just the higher performing students, but to slot kids into where they are academically,” Silverman said.

Silverman said he wished there had been more engagement with families in the district, adding he worried some parents had left district schools over a lack of screened middle school options.

A letter the education council sent to the superintendent last month also called for state test scores to be considered in the admissions process, arguing grades are too subjective a measure. But others contest the claim that state test scores are an objective measure.

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said the district’s decision was “disappointing.”

“You’re talking about judging the educational attainment of students that are as young as 9 years old,” she said. “To narrowly put them on a track at that age, I think, is just fundamentally inappropriate for learning, for teaching — and it’s essentially a gatekeeping tool that can create haves and have-nots.”

Though just four schools in the district will see academic screens reinstated in this year’s admissions cycle, Berg remains concerned about its potential impact, particularly as it can take years to understand the effects of a policy change.

“I’m very wary of chipping away at progressive policies,” she said. “Whether we’re going backwards at a lightning speed or at a slower pace, it still means that we’re going backwards.”

The city’s Education Department has said middle school admissions will broadly operate the same as last year, though this week declined to provide specific information for each district.

Applications open on Oct. 11, giving families until Dec. 8 to submit. Offers are expected to be released in April.

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

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Is school integration a path to racial equality? Journalist Laura Meckler on her new book ‘Dream Town.’

2023-08-28T10:00:00+00:00

America’s approach to racial integration of schools can be divided into roughly three periods: hostility, embrace, and finally, indifference.

The period of embrace came in the late 1960s, more than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional. Pressured by civil rights groups and empowered with new laws, the federal government began demanding school desegregation through executive action and court mandates. This worked to integrate schools, especially in the South, and improved the education of Black students.

But this period was fleeting. By 1974, a narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court limited courts’ ability to order integration across school district lines, which assured stratified schools in metropolitan areas, like Detroit, with a predominantly Black city surrounded by whiter suburbs.

And thus began the current period, which has been characterized by declining attention to whether students of different races and family incomes go to school together.

Not surprisingly, then, there remains a substantial degree of segregation across schools.

But what if the country had never given up on the goal of integrated schooling?

“Dream Town,” a new book by Washington Post education reporter Laura Meckler offers something of an answer, almost an alternate history. The book tells the story of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a town of roughly 30,000 outside of Cleveland. The schools there are unusual because officials voluntarily adopted a busing program in the 1970s to ensure racial balance across schools. Ever since, schools there have maintained a mix of Black and white students, as well as those from both low- and high-income families.

Meckler, who herself grew up and attended schools in Shaker Heights, asks what happens to a community that never gave up on integration. Her answer offers a tantalizing window into what might have been if the country as a whole had taken the same approach.

But contrary to the book’s title — which Meckler says is aspirational — the answer speaks to both the power of school integration and its limits.

The schools have had long-standing test score gaps between Black and white students. Throughout the district’s history, this fact has been a source of attention and frustration. It’s also contributed to classroom-level segregation, with fewer Black students in advanced courses.

More recently, Meckler reports, Shaker Heights has undertaken a number of efforts in the name of racial equity. Most significantly, it de-tracked advanced courses through ninth grade — in a bid to racially integrate the schools on the inside and not just the outside. Meckler documents the benefits and challenges from this move.

Chalkbeat spoke to Meckler over Zoom about the lessons from the Shaker Heights’ experience and her own takeaways from the book. “Is this a story about people who tried and failed because there is this yawning achievement gap? Or is this a story of something more optimistic and more hopeful?” she asks rhetorically at one point.

The interview had been edited for length and clarity.

What makes Shaker Heights schools worth writing a book about?

For decades, Shaker schools have been held up as an example of the success of school integration. This is a place that voluntarily bused students starting in the 1970s, absent a court order, absent really any external pressure, and has maintained that commitment ever since. So it’s worth asking how that has gone.

Why did Shaker Heights voluntarily integrate its schools in the seventies? And how did it go about doing so?

One person gets the lion’s share of the credit: the superintendent, Jack Lawson, who arrived in the mid-1960s. At first, the two junior highs were out of balance racially and then more significantly there was one elementary school that was overwhelmingly Black.

This was in the context of a conversation around school integration happening all over the country, the civil rights movement happening around the country. He decided this was the right thing to do. What followed was a community embrace of the plan and that was, in some ways, the even more remarkable thing.

His original idea was to essentially distribute the students who were at this predominantly Black school to the majority of white schools. The Black parents were not particularly happy about that. But what really got the plan changed was white parents who said, “This doesn’t seem right. This should be a two-way busing plan.” They volunteered to bus their own kids into the predominantly Black school. That ultimately changed the plan into a two-way busing plan.

How has Shaker’s approach to integration changed since then?

This program was popular in the beginning and then it started losing some of its luster and the numbers were going down. The district really worked hard to try to get volunteers into this program.

The time when it really changed was in 1987 when there was a conversation about facilities. They didn’t need nine elementary schools anymore. They ended up closing four of them and in the process redrawing the boundaries so that all of the schools were racially balanced and it was no longer dependent on volunteers. You went to the school that you were assigned to and some kids of both races were bused in order to make that happen.

This was again done voluntarily. But there was nervousness on the part of school leaders about whether they might be pressured into doing it. Even though they have this voluntary magnet program, many of the elementary schools were still out of balance. There was pressure from the state of Ohio to try to get schools better integrated. And there was a big court case unfolding right next door in the city of Cleveland, which ended with mandatory busing. There was nervousness that Shaker Heights would be pulled into the Cleveland case. They felt like they needed to do a better job with their own community in part to forestall that.

Is that approach what essentially still exists today?

That is exactly what exists today.

So has the Shaker Heights school experience worked? What have been some of the successes and challenges faced by the schools?

As I was reporting and writing this book it was constantly in my mind: What is my ultimate conclusion here? Is this a story about people who tried and failed because there is this yawning achievement gap? Or is this a story of something more optimistic and more hopeful?

Where I landed was that this is a hopeful story, because while they haven’t actually solved these problems — not by a long shot — this is a community of people who are still committed to trying to do this work. That is not nothing, given the pressures that communities everywhere face.

In most of America, wealthy kids are going to school with other wealthy kids and poor kids are going to school with other poor kids. Is it a shock that you end up with school districts where you are filled with kids from families with high needs who don’t have the same kind of resources, and that they struggle?

Can you describe the challenges of classroom-level segregation in Shaker Heights?

They have had upper-level classes dominated by white students and lower-level classes dominated by Black students, which has been the case for a very, very long time.

Some of the interventions have actually backfired. For instance, one of the things they did to try to get more Black kids into upper-level classes is create an open enrollment policy. You don’t need a recommendation to get into the upper-level classes. But the result was that more white kids got into the advanced level classes. More of the white parents were like, “Okay, I’m gonna take advantage of this.”

All this is a precursor to what happened in 2020, which was a pretty remarkable step: They decided — right in the middle of the pandemic — in the summer 2020, that they were going to de-track fifth through ninth grade.

So how’d it go?

Well, it was pretty rocky, certainly at the start. A lot of teachers felt that they hadn’t been prepared.

Keep in mind this was the fall of 2020: These were rough times for schools. They started remote, and then we ended up with these horrible hybrid situations where some kids were being taught in the room and other kids were being taught online. That takes an already practically impossible teaching situation and makes it even harder.

There were complaints from high-achieving students and their parents saying that they weren’t being challenged in the same way as they were before.

The place that school officials were mostly worried about — and I think for good reason — was middle school math. Essentially, you had everybody in honors eighth-grade Algebra I, regardless of whether you had had pre-algebra, regardless of whether you had done well in your math class the year before. That’s not easy.

On the flip side, I watched several classes and I saw a few moments where you can see what this is supposed to look like and where the potential is.

One example: I was in seventh-grade math class. It was near the end of the unit and the teacher asked all the students to write down on a piece of paper, every topic they could remember covering during that unit. There was this white girl, she’s writing on and on — a whole page. She ran out of space. Next to her was this Black boy who was basically writing nothing and just sort of staring out the window. She looked over at him and said, “Wow, you haven’t written anything.” That prompted him to start writing.

That’s a small thing. But it shows that being in a room with somebody else who is more focused on the assignment, and taking it seriously, that kind of positive peer pressure — maybe that made a small bit of difference for that kid in that moment.

Has Shaker Heights maintained de-tracking?

Yes.

Beyond the anecdotes, is there any data to support one way or another whether de-tracking has been successful in some measurable sense in Shaker Heights?

There is some data that is promising, and that school district officials are feeling optimistic about. Specifically, one of their key measurements is what percentage of students show competency in Algebra I in eighth grade. What they found is that the percent that are showing competency has risen both for all students and also for Black students.

I take it there has not been an external or academic evaluation of Shaker Heights attempt to de-track, right?

No.

Do you think white students in Shaker Heights have benefited from attending racially diverse schools?

Absolutely. I think that attending racially diverse schools, and schools that are diverse in other ways as well, is beneficial for all students. It’s important for all of us to be in schools that reflect the world that we live in. By being around people who are different than we are, it helps give us different perspectives — that includes different perspectives on the academic work we’re doing in a class discussing a novel or discussing something in history. Race is such a defining factor in this country that having people who are different races is enormously beneficial just from a purely academic point of view. But beyond that, from a social point of view, there’s enormous value to being with people who are different, who help us see the world in different ways. It also prepares us to live in the diverse world that we will all be launched into eventually.

It seems like there were instances, throughout Shaker Heights’ history, where integration or de-tracking was prioritized on racial justice terms by progressive officials, without paying particular attention to what Black families said they wanted. Is that fair?

One of the problems that the school district has is they don’t always know what Black families want, because the Black families tend to be the least engaged in terms of community feedback. That’s a challenge for school districts to really engage with your community. You need relationships with your community, on the day-in, day-out basis.

Anecdotally, from some of the interviews I did with Black families, I didn’t necessarily find a great desire for de-tracking, I found much more of a desire for the schools to address issues of implicit bias and low expectations.

And, it’s worth saying, the district has been trying to address issues of implicit bias too. But turning to your own experience growing up in Shaker Heights, how did that shape how you viewed the schools and how you reported this book?

Growing up in Shaker Heights, I was all in and on message about the Shaker successes in terms of race. I felt it was a special place. I knew from a very young age that the community had been committed to integration. I knew the story of the busing plan. I was proud of being a part of a community like that. The way I viewed it was: “The rest of you out there in America, you have problems with racism, but we’ve got this figured out.” This was somewhat of a naive view. I certainly was aware of the disproportionate racial makeup of the advanced classes that I was in. I wondered why that was, but I did not have a sophisticated understanding of it.

Reporting this book allowed me to look back on that from my own personal point of view. It allowed me to realize that, even if I was sitting there in a calculus class, not understanding what the teacher was saying, and feeling like I’m not smart, that’s fundamentally different from a Black student who is feeling the same way in that class, but also has this extra layer of “Oh, and people are going think I don’t belong in this class.” I never thought for a second that I didn’t belong in the classroom. Of course, I was in the advanced class — where else would I be?

Beyond my own personal experience, coming back it was very interesting to me to see how the community shifted over the last maybe 20 years from that glow of “We’ve got this figured out, and we’re an integration pioneer” to “Hey, is this really working, and are we really delivering this racial equity that we advertised?”

What do you think the lessons for the rest of the country are from Shaker Heights?

The first lesson is that if you want to do this kind of work — if you want to try to address these issues of racial and economic diversity — it takes an enormous amount of work and commitment. This is a year-in, year-out, decade-in, decade-out commitment that you’re signing up for because I don’t know if these issues will ever be “solved.” It’s something you have to continually work at.

The second thing I would say: One of my takeaways was that a lot of this comes back to a sense of belonging, and whether we are creating spaces where students and parents really feel like it is their place, their space. I think Shaker has done some of those things and could do more along those lines. That’s not something you can initiate a program — “Let’s have a belonging program.” Maybe you can, but it’s much deeper than that. It has to do with everything you do.

Am I right to read your title, “Dream Town,” as half earnest, half ironic?

I certainly don’t mean the title to imply that this is a place that is perfect. The title for me is meant to be almost like a verb. To dream — a place that is dreaming. So it’s a little less like a slap in the face kind of thing like, “Oh, you think this is a dream town?” Obviously, everyone can interpret it as they see fit, but in my mind it’s more of an aspiration.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Students shouldn’t shy away from talking about race in college essays, Biden officials say

2023-08-14T19:05:21+00:00

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High school students shouldn’t shy away from talking about their race or ethnicity in college application essays, according to new guidance issued Monday by the Biden administration.

Similarly, school counselors, mentors, and employers should feel free to mention a student’s race in a college recommendation letter, the guidance states.

“The Supreme Court’s opinion recognized what we know to be true: That race can be relevant to a person’s life or lived experience and may impact one’s development, motivations, academic interests, or personal or professional aspirations,” Vanita Gupta, a top-ranking Justice Department official, told reporters on Monday. “That impact can still be considered in university admissions.”

The guidance package may offer some clarity as many high schoolers and school staff are trying to make sense of how the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down race-based affirmative action affects what they should tell colleges about themselves and whether it’s advantageous — or risky — to talk about race in their applications.

In June, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that college admissions officers could look at how race had affected an applicant’s life “through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But some high school counselors have expressed concern that the Supreme Court’s decision could be confusing for students of color and lead some to avoid talking about their personal identities.

The new guidance suggests, consistent with the court’s decision, that colleges may consider a student’s individual experience of race or racism, even though they cannot give advantages to students solely because of their race.

The guidance is not legally binding, and what is and isn’t allowed likely will continue to be decided by courts.

Still, the guidance may shape how colleges and students respond to the ruling.

According to the guidance, admissions officers can consider how a student’s experience with racial discrimination or the racial composition of their neighborhood or school affected them and how that may influence what they’d contribute to the college.

For example, one student could write in an essay “about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra.” Another student could detail how she overcame “prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent.” A third applicant might discuss “how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked her passion for food and nurtured her sense of self.”

And a school counselor could write in their recommendation about “how an applicant conquered her feelings of isolation as a Latina student at an overwhelmingly white high school to join the debate team.”

“Students should feel comfortable presenting their whole selves when applying to college, without fear of stereotyping, bias, or discrimination,” two top Biden administration officials wrote in a letter.

Colleges can still tailor recruitment to reach students of color

Though the Supreme Court’s ruling is about college admissions policies, some states and colleges have interpreted the decision to apply to financial aid. Missouri’s attorney general, for example, said that colleges cannot award scholarships that consider a student’s race or ethnicity, leading the state’s flagship university to eliminate a prestigious diversity award.

That left some education equity advocates worried that officials would point to the Supreme Court ruling to limit a slew of other efforts aimed at increasing racial diversity on college campuses.

The Biden administration’s guidance is silent on scholarships — a top education department official said that was because the Supreme Court decision didn’t address scholarships — but it explicitly states that colleges don’t have to “ignore race” when they are identifying prospective students through recruitment efforts.

Colleges can target their outreach to schools and districts that predominantly serve students of color, the guidance states. They can also recruit from high schools that historically haven’t had many students apply to the college — which could be a strategy for recruiting students of color without considering race directly.

Similarly, colleges and universities can also continue to run mentorship or pipeline programs meant to help prepare students from certain schools to attend that college.

That could look like a summer enrichment camp designed for students who attend public high schools near the college. Colleges are also allowed to set aside slots for students who participate in those pipeline programs, as long as it was open to a broad group of kids — such as all juniors at a certain high school.

“Although this decision changes the landscape for admissions in higher education,” Gupta said, “it should not be used as an excuse to turn away from longstanding efforts to make those institutions more inclusive.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Debate over NYC high school admissions heats up at parent meeting

2023-08-10T02:55:39+00:00

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Debate over how selective New York City high schools choose their students erupted Wednesday night, as members of a parent advisory group called on the city to adopt more stringent academic screening.

The Citywide Council on High Schools, a group of parent representatives from across the five boroughs, considered a slate of recommendations on the city’s admissions process, including reinstating the use of seventh grade state test scores at selective schools such as Eleanor Roosevelt or the Clinton School in Manhattan and allowing such schools to once again set their own admissions criteria.

But some members of the public who spoke at the meeting protested the resolution proposing the changes — arguing the old system was confusing and opaque for families, and that the recommendations could stifle integration efforts in a school system that has consistently been among the most segregated in the nation.

The Wednesday night debate followed an especially divisive parent council election cycle. Earlier this year, candidates endorsed by Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, won all of the elected seats on the citywide high school council. The controversial group staunchly advocates for screened school admissions. (One council member was appointed by the public advocate.)

The board, composed primarily of parents whose children attend selective or specialized high schools, passed the resolution 7-1, with the no-vote from the public advocate’s appointee. Though the board lacks the power to enact the changes, its recommendations come as the latest sign of continued debate over high school admissions. (Admissions to specialized schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, are regulated by state law and were not part of Wednesday’s discussion.)

Schools have not used state tests in the admissions process for the past three years — and that change and others spurred by the pandemic moved the needle toward more diverse student bodies at selective schools.

For this fall’s incoming freshman class, students were sorted into different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. In cases where there were more applicants in a priority group than seats, selections were made on a lottery basis. More than 40 selective schools also participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats to students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. There was a separate lottery for these seats.

The recommendations passed by the council call for the city to allow students to qualify for priority groups based on their grades or state test scores.

Parent arguments over admissions get heated

Tensions rose to a fever pitch during the meeting, as some parents who joined virtually argued with one another in the chat, and members of the public voiced contrasting views. In one particularly heated moment, council member Deborah Kross accused a public speaker opposing the resolution of “running a consultancy for districts.”

Kemala Karmen, the speaker, denied the allegation and said she was a parent and member of NYC Opt Out, a grassroots organization boycotting state tests. During her comment, Karmen said council members were elected amid low turnout and were not representative of NYC public school families.

“This message is for the chancellor, deputy chancellor, and whoever else it may concern: Do not mistake this vote and their resolution as representative of the wishes of families of New York school children,” she said.

Katrina Motch, a parent who said her two children had experienced the high school admissions process in 2019 and 2022, also opposed the resolution, noting the prior system had been particularly confusing and burdensome for parents.

“In 2019, every single school had a different criteria, a different interview, a different thing,” she said, adding it created “incredible stress for parents.”

Others spoke in favor of the resolution, complaining that using lottery numbers within priority groups was unfair and that school grades were too subjective a metric.

Chien Kwok, co-president of PLACE, called the use of a lottery “entirely demotivating for children.”

He added: “Grades are subjective and outright fraudulent, used to hide the failures of the DOE to teach our children.”

High school admissions process remains in flux

The high school admissions system in New York City is notoriously complicated. It saw multiple pandemic-related overhauls, as COVID-19 upended many of the metrics used to screen and sort students. Prior to the pandemic, schools could set their own screening processes, meaning students and families had to search for the criteria at each school. Admissions requirements ranged from essays and tests to interviews — and information about how decisions were made was sometimes difficult to locate or unavailable.

About 20 of the most coveted selective schools — like Beacon High School and Bard Early College — continued to use their own assessments like essays or school-based tests during the last admissions cycle.

Council members said the city should reduce the use of lotteries in making admissions decisions by allowing the roughly 100 other selective schools to once again set their own criteria — stating that thousands of applicants were left with “unsatisfactory placements.” The last admissions cycle saw just under half of eighth graders admitted to their top choice school, with roughly 75% admitted to one of their top three schools, and 95% offered a spot at a school they listed in their application.

Integration advocates and families in favor of the recent changes have said the standardizing of admissions criteria and other pandemic changes helped make the process more accessible and removed barriers for students.

Those gains held fairly steady for this year’s incoming ninth graders. Roughly 32% of offers at selective schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Citywide, roughly 41% of students are Latino, 20% are Black, 19% are Asian American, and 16% are white, according to enrollment data from last school year. About 72% are from low-income families.

To Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, the aims of the resolution represent a step backwards.

“We’re talking about access to public schools, and I think people forget that,” she said. “To think that we need to stop having this lottery so we can make the schools more selective — they’re public schools. People should have as much access and opportunity as possible.”

Berg also questioned whether the board’s decision reflected the broader sentiment of New York City families.

“The majority of parents that sit on the [council] are parents of students at specialized high schools,” Berg said. “An overwhelming majority of students are not going to specialized high schools.”

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

‘I felt like I was lost’: NJ students say school segregation impacted their education

2023-08-07T10:00:00+00:00

As a Black high school student in Newark, Michelle Ametekpor remembers feeling as if her culture wasn’t being celebrated.

Jennifer Garcia, a Latina who attended a majority-white school in Middlesex, didn’t see teachers who reflected her cultural background.

And Jeremiah LaPorte, a senior at an Elizabeth high school, says he wishes he would see more diversity among students in school leadership positions.

The three students shared their experiences of going to public schools in the state at a virtual town hall on Friday. They remember “feeling lost” and “having to fight” to make their voices heard.

The New Jersey Coalition of Educational Equity organized the discussion in anticipation of a much-awaited ruling on a school segregation lawsuit that could have historic consequences for the state’s public schools. The lawsuit, filed in 2018, says the state is responsible for addressing the fact that more than half of Black and Hispanic or Latino students attend schools that are predominantly non-white.

“Our goals are to create a more safe and inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive and properly prepare for their future,” Val Posso, a youth organizer for the Latino Action Network Foundation, one of the organizations leading the lawsuit, said during the town hall.

New Jersey, one of the most diverse public school systems in the country, is also the sixth most segregated state for Black students and seventh for Latino students, according to a 2017 UCLA Civil Rights Project study that’s cited in the lawsuit.

Additionally, a recent Chalkbeat Newark analysis of the city’s school demographic data found that Latino students, who are increasing in number annually in Newark Public Schools, are starkly underrepresented in the district’s teaching staff.

“New Jersey can no longer be the state for some, it must be the state that provides education for everyone,” said Tom Puryear, education chairperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New Jersey, one of the organizations also leading the lawsuit.

Students feel frustrated with public school districts

At the town hall on Friday, Ametekpor, a recent graduate of Essex County’s Donald M. Payne School of Technology, said she “felt frustrated” in high school because she had to turn to community-based organizations to help her get to college after seeing her guidance counselors “overworked” during college application season.

Her school, located in Newark’s West Ward, was mainly made up of Hispanic students and she felt as if there were more events targeted at celebrating Hispanic and Latino culture, Ametekpor said.

“I just wished there was more institutional support, especially for the African American students at my school, to help them be celebrated and have their heritage on display,” she added.

Even when she brought issues to administrators or the county school board, she remembers feeling “like I wasn’t heard” and recalls administrators “dragging their feet” to solve the problems. She learned to become an advocate for herself due to her persistence in raising issues affecting Black students, Ametekpor added.

Garcia, a sophomore at Seton Hall University and a Colonia High School graduate, had a similar experience as a first-generation Latina college student. Garcia said she went to a majority-white school in Middlesex and remembers feeling intimidated by her peers.

She felt as if they had an upper hand because of family members or siblings who had already gone to college and knew the system. She also felt as if there weren’t enough Hispanic or Latina teachers who could relate to her experience.

“I felt like I was lost,” Garcia said. “But I know that my other peers had an upper hand against me, and I feel like it just misled me going into college.”

The last time she felt comfortable at school was in elementary school when she was part of a more diverse student body that included Hispanic, Black, and South Asian students that she also learned from, Garcia added.

Laporte, a senior at JVJ STEM Academy in Elizabeth, doesn’t see as many Black and Latino students being involved in after-school clubs. He’s currently the president of the school’s honor society, a club with a majority of white students, said Laporte, who struggles to integrate more diverse cultural representation into his club.

“It’s not just the school itself, it’s the breakdown, it’s the leadership, it’s the way we allocate our resources,” Laporte said.

Local leaders discuss potential solutions

Peter Rosario is the president and CEO of La Casa de Don Pedro in Newark, an organization aimed at empowering people of color in local communities. Rosario says changing school districts into countywide school districts could be one way to integrate students into school and create more funding opportunities for student resources.

“Basing educational funding on your local taxes keeps us segregated as a state and as a people,” Rosario added.

For Leah Owens, former educator and founder of Just Writing, which provides educational and small business consulting, the key to creating more cultural school environments is to “create a system of care” throughout public schools.

She feels schools focus on outcomes and test scores but don’t invest in “the whole person” and issues that affect students’ social and emotional learning. By teaching in a culturally responsive way, students will feel more engaged and connected to their peers, Owens said.

“We have assets in communities of color that do not get reflected in the school buildings themselves,” Owens added. “And if we were to take the cultural practices and utilize them, we would see more positive both academic and social outcomes for our children.”

Puryear of the NAACP-NJ added that “it’s up to the community and the youth” to demand more resources and ultimately, change in their schools. He believes the current segregation lawsuit before the state “is the key factor” in desegregating schools and having a more equitable school system.

The lawsuit, Latino Action Network, et al. v. State of New Jersey, was last argued before Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy in March of 2022. The parents and guardians of nine Latino and Black children and one white child from Highland Park are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The Statewide Coalition of Educational Equity is made up of the NAACP, Latino Action Network, Urban League of Essex County, People’s Organization for Progress, and other voices throughout New Jersey.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Denver superintendent: Evidence of school segregation is clear, now action is needed

2023-08-01T23:55:16+00:00

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero said he hopes to have a plan to reduce school segregation as soon as next summer, and the school choice process could be a tool — with the right policies in place — to get that result.

Marrero made his comments in an interview Tuesday in response to a new study from the Latino Education Coalition highlighting “pervasive” school segregation in Denver.

Latino students and English learners are especially likely to attend high-poverty schools where the large majority of students are students of color, the study found. Most white students and affluent students also attend schools where a significant majority of students are from similar backgrounds as themselves. Students from all groups who attend schools with more affluent students have better academic outcomes on average, the study found.

“I don’t know that we need more evidence,” Marrero said. “It’s clear. What we need is action.”

Dismantling systems of oppression is the framework Marrero has used for his goals as superintendent. He said it’s “more than likely” he will identify school segregation as a system of oppression that needs to be dismantled.

The Latino Education Coalition study was not designed to identify causes of segregated schools or recommend policy changes. Marrero said the next step is a second study in collaboration with the coalition and other community partners to examine those issues.

Marrero said he hopes that second study could be complete by the end of the school year and guide recommendations to the school board that could be implemented for the following school year.

The problem won’t fix itself, he said.

“Absent effective board policy, we’ll have exactly what we have right now,” he said.

Back in 1973, Denver was the subject of Keyes vs. School District No. 1, the first major school desegregation case outside the South. It led to decades of busing that achieved integrated schools but also contributed to white flight to surrounding suburbs. When the court order was lifted in 1995, Denver schools resegregated almost overnight.

Several past studies have identified similar issues as the new Latino Education Coalition report, and at various points the district has tried certain tweaks, such as creating enrollment zones and reserving spots for low-income students in some of the city’s most sought-after schools, but the district’s schools remain largely segregated.

Craig Peña, one of the authors of the new report, was a child plaintiff in the Keyes case. “It’s hurtful,” he said, to see that segregation has been so persistent. He sees the report as a call to unify the community to find solutions.

Marrero said he initially questioned the motivation behind the study “because of other requests that study DPS to point the finger or to validate their preconceived notions,” but he said he appreciated how the Latino Education Coalition shared its data and wanted to cooperate on next steps.

“It validated what I observe day in and day out as I visit schools,” he said.

While the problem is clear, Marrero said there needs to be more studies to understand the causes and craft targeted policies.

“I anticipate something by the end of the school year so that we can have the summer to implement,” he said. Missing that window would be a loss, he said.

Many families want to send their children to neighborhood schools — and Denver has highly segregated neighborhoods. Meanwhile, school choice, which is enshrined in state law, allows families to enroll their children outside their neighborhoods. But desirable schools have long waitlists, and transportation is a barrier for many families. Meanwhile, in gentrifying neighborhoods, there are indications white, middle-class families use choice to avoid neighborhood schools that serve mostly children of color.

Asked if Denver could have neighborhood schools, school choice, and desegregated schools, Marrero paused and said that was “a great question.”

Marrero said there may be ways to shape the school choice process to produce more integrated schools.

Milo Marquez, chair of the Latino Education Coalition, said it also may be necessary to look at how neighborhood school boundaries are drawn. In the years before the Keyes case, Denver manipulated those boundaries to maintain segregated schools as Black families moved into Park Hill. There could be situations today where boundaries also contribute to keeping students of different ethnicities and incomes apart, he said.

The report found that Black students today, on average, are more represented in higher-income and predominantly white schools than are Latino students, and that in low-income schools, Black students are represented similar to their share of the student population as a whole.

The report did not look at internal segregation within schools, such as whether white students are more often steered into honors programs while Black students are routed into traditional classes. Black boys, in particular, are overrepresented in affective needs centers, separate programs for students with serious disabilities. A state investigation last year found DPS systematically violated the rights of Black boys by sending them to these programs without sufficient evaluation and by keeping them there without addressing their educational needs or monitoring progress.

Marrero has made changing how students are identified for placement in affective needs centers as another system of oppression he intends to dismantle.

Marrero said the district can make progress on both fronts, as well as reduce disparities in discipline and reduce test score gaps that are the widest in the state.

“I do believe that we will see that gap close during this administration,” he said.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

‘Pervasive’ Denver school segregation harms Latinos, English learners, study finds

2023-07-31T16:16:00+00:00

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Denver schools remain intensely segregated by race and family income — conditions that have persisted for decades and play a major role in shaping educational opportunities, a new study finds.

Latino students and English learners are especially likely to attend schools where students of color living in poverty make up the large majority. Meanwhile, three-quarters of Denver’s white students attend schools where white and higher-income students make up a significant majority, despite making up just a quarter of Denver students overall, the study finds.

These more privileged schools boast graduation rates 10 to 40 percentage points higher than schools with high concentrations of poverty — and the benefits extend to students from all groups who attend these schools.

Kim Carrazco Strong of The Bueno Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado Boulder and Craig Peña of the Latino Education Coalition, the study authors, write that “pervasive” school segregation affects everything from access to specialized services to gifted identification to graduation rates.

“These findings indicate that school segregation is a pervasive problem in Denver Public Schools, impacts a majority of certain student populations such as Latino and English Learner students, represents disparate and at times inferior resources and designations, and reflects reduced student outcomes,” write Carrazco Strong and Peña write.

As a child, Peña was one of the original plaintiffs in the Keyes case, which led to the first major desegregation order in a city outside the South and the first desegregation order to consider Latino students alongside Black and white ones.

The Keyes decision led to several decades of busing to ensure integrated schools. With the end of court-mandated busing in 1995 and the return to neighborhood schools, Denver schools resegregated almost overnight.

In a press release announcing the report, Peña said he was “extremely disheartened” by the findings.

“The segregation of Latino students is profound and pervasive,” he said. “It is my sincere hope that DPS and the Denver community will come together to address this and not allow yet another 50 years to pass of separate and unequal education.”

The report, titled Resegregation in Denver Public Schools: Overlapping Systems of Student Segregation, Disparate Contexts, and Reduced Outcomes, finds significant segregation persists in the district and that attending segregated schools shapes students’ educational opportunities.

For example, more than half the gifted and talented students in Denver attend schools with large concentrations of white and higher-income students.

“We hold that it is not that Gifted and Talented students are more likely to be White and wealthy but rather White and wealthy students are more likely to be seen as Gifted and Talented by Denver Public Schools,” the authors write. They said the failure to see the talents of other students “represents an institutional shortcoming” and goes against the district’s obligations to provide a good education to all students.

Because they post lower test scores and are perceived as struggling, schools with high concentrations of low-income students of color are more likely to receive what are known as intensive interventions. These can include help from content experts, leadership development, teachers coaching, and access to customized support networks.

The study authors say this additional support may be helpful, but “those schools also experience interruptions, stigma, curriculum redesigns, and teacher de-professionalization that can be perceived as negative or punitive by the educators and students within them.”

Denver’s student population is roughly one-quarter white and three-quarters students of color. Slightly more than half of Denver students are Hispanic or Latino. Roughly 63% qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty. A third of Denver students are learning English at school.

The study authors defined a school as segregated if its student population differed from the district average by 20% or more. More than half of Denver’s Latino students and more than half of the district’s English learners attend schools that are segregated based on race and income, the study found. White students and higher-income students are also much more likely to attend school with other students like themselves.

In schools where low-income students are concentrated, Black students on average are about as represented as they are in the district as a whole. And on average Black students are more represented in majority-white schools than Latino students are.

This is not the first report to identify widespread school segregation in Denver, and the problem has persisted through several superintendents and school boards. A 2006 study from Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project identified similar trends as the new report from the Latino Education Coalition and noted that Latino English language learners were especially isolated.

In 2017, the district convened the Strengthening Neighborhoods Initiative to recommend policy changes to reduce school segregation.

The new study does not address the causes of school segregation or recommend solutions. The authors call for further study to identify targeted solutions. Attending integrated schools is associated with better outcomes for all students and smaller gaps in test scores, graduation rates, and other measures of student achievement.

Many Denver neighborhoods are highly segregated. School choice allows students to enroll outside their neighborhood boundary, but transportation and other barriers limit who can use it.

A 2018 study by the advocacy and research group A Plus Colorado found that students of color were often overrepresented in local schools, compared with the neighborhood population, while white students were underrepresented. The finding suggests some white, middle-class families use school choice to avoid their neighborhood schools.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero said in a statement that he plans to partner with the Latino Education Coalition on identifying root causes and solutions.

“It is vitally important that we leave no stone unturned in finding the root causes, even if the findings make us uncomfortable,” he said. “While many factors led to this outcome we are not without blame. It is time for DPS to take a look in the mirror and see if any of our own actions may have contributed to the re-segregation of our schools. As Superintendent it is my duty to advocate for all our students by breaking down the systems of oppression when we find them.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Newark’s teaching force doesn’t always match its diverse student body — especially among Latinos

2023-07-27T20:15:00+00:00

Read in Spanish.

When Melissa De Almeida’s parents immigrated to Newark in the 1990s from Brazil, navigating the public school system for their two daughters was among their steepest battles.

De Almeida’s older sister struggled to learn English in a system where few teachers spoke her native Portuguese. By the time Melissa enrolled a few years later, she encountered teachers who were able to communicate with her family, but it was uneven.

There was, though, one shining light: De Almeida’s second grade teacher at Oliver Street School. De Almeida fondly remembers her teacher making s’mores and fresh lemonade for her class, but the big difference was that she could speak with De Almeida’s parents in Portuguese.

Now, the 19-year-old sophomore at Montclair State University wants to be a bilingual teacher and help families like hers in Newark, her hometown, where roughly 9% of students speak her native language.

“I need to be the change that my sister needed,” said De Almeida, who graduated from East Side High School last year.

In Newark and other cities in New Jersey, teaching staff and school leadership do not always reflect diverse student bodies. Demographic data shows Black and Latino students make up about 90% of Newark’s total student population, while teachers from those backgrounds make up just over half of the teaching staff.

Roughly 20% of Newark schools have a majority of white teachers. Other cities in New Jersey have even lower proportions of teachers from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

A close look reveals that Latino students, who are increasing in number annually in the district, are starkly underrepresented in the district’s teaching staff, a Chalkbeat analysis of 2021-22 state-provided school demographic data found.

White teachers make up a majority of the teaching staff at one in five district schools, and Black teachers are the majority teaching staff at a little more than one in four schools. But no school in the district has a majority Hispanic or Latino teaching staff — even though roughly half of all the district schools have a majority Latino student body.

One of the district’s high schools has a Latino student population of more than 61%, but no Hispanic or Latino teachers. Three other schools also don’t have any teachers who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Similarly, the state’s population of Latino children has expanded — by roughly 25% — since 2010, but an analysis from NJ Advance Media found that roughly 30% of all schools don’t have any Hispanic teachers at all. In addition, districts have seen a growing student population identified as English language learners while also facing a shortage of bilingual teachers.

Many experts say that desegregation court rulings, which have failed time and again to wholly integrate student bodies and personnel, have contributed to the disproportionate numbers of white teachers.

Yet, numerous studies show that a diverse teaching staff, especially one representative of a school community, can foster stronger teacher-student bonds, stronger relationships between teachers and families, and lessons that are more culturally responsive — the benefits De Almeida experienced first-hand with her second grade teacher.

Newark Public Schools’ demographic data also displays a glimmer of hope when it comes to moving closer to a teaching workforce that reflects its student body: A handful of elementary schools with majority Latino students have a notable number of Latino teachers, ranging between 33% and 44%. And Black students are more likely to have proportionate representation in administration and teaching staff, data show.

Having teachers who students from underrepresented backgrounds can identify with racially and culturally is just one component of teacher and school quality, but it can help lead to improved attendance, test scores, and the likelihood of taking an advanced course, research has found.

“If we don’t more aggressively address the demonstrated mismatch between students and the school personnel who serve them, we may not see an acceleration of academic achievement by all of our students,” said Leslie Fenwick, dean emerita at Howard University whose expertise is on teacher diversity and education equity. “We must do a better job of recruiting, retaining, and promoting teachers and principals of color.”

‘We are living with the fallout of the history’

As De Almeida’s story with her sister illustrates, many students don’t have teachers who share their background – and the gap between Hispanic or Latino students and teachers is only expected to widen, statewide and nationally, studies suggest.

Nationally, white teachers make up 80% of the teaching force, and in New Jersey, it’s 83%. Meanwhile, the state’s teaching force — also mirroring national trends — is 8% Hispanic and 6.5% Black, while those student populations are 32% and 15%, respectively.

A lawsuit before New Jersey’s Superior Court in Trenton is arguing that the state — one of the most diverse yet segregated public school systems in the country — is responsible for addressing the fact that more than half of Black and Hispanic or Latino students attend schools that are predominantly non-white. The lawsuit, led by The Latino Action Network and NAACP-NJ, argues that the state is violating its own constitution and the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka from nearly 70 years ago.

That historic Supreme Court ruling — and several desegregation rulings that followed — declared segregated schooling to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. But it also led to an uneven proportion of white teachers to teachers of color as people, including those in power who upheld segregationist beliefs, resisted desegregation efforts, analyses of historic documents show.

“We are living with the fallout of the history that occurred — not as a result of the Brown [v. Board of Education] decision, but of the massive white resistance to it,” said Fenwick, who authored the book “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership.”

Racism and segregationist beliefs led to widespread illegal firings, dismissals, and demotions of Black teachers — upwards of 100,000 — between the 1950s and 70s, Fenwick said in a recent phone interview with Chalkbeat and described in her book.

Desegregation efforts must also invest in teacher diversity, Fenwick says. Without that, students of color will continue to lose out on the massive opportunities a teaching staff that reflects them can offer, including on a social emotional level, as well as academically and behaviorally, which decades worth of research has documented.

“Unless we address this diversity issue in the school leadership and teaching forces, I fear we won’t make the kind of progress that we need to make in the country,” Fenwick said.

Newark works to create diverse teacher pipeline

Though Black teachers make up a majority of the teaching staff in some Newark district schools, the proportion of Black teachers has dropped about 10 percentage points since the late 1990s, when the district was under state control, a 2021 analysis from New Jersey Policy Perspective found.

The district has recruitment efforts in place to attract teachers from diverse backgrounds, including one that creates a pipeline of “home grown teachers” by incentivizing current students to major in education and get a guaranteed teaching position in the district after they graduate college.

During a June press conference, Superintendent Roger León agreed that diversifying his staff “is good in that it brings about different viewpoints” and noted the district’s recruitment strategies, which include a teacher-to-principal pipeline initiative that targets Black and Latino male teachers.

The district partnered with Montclair State University’s College for Education and Engaged Learning to create the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy, a dual enrollment program at East Side and University high schools where students earn college credits at no cost as they prepare for a career in teaching. The program recruits students into the profession at an early age, provides mentorship, and guarantees an offer of admission to the university’s teacher education program after high school graduation.

An essential part of the program is that it encourages students to return to teach in their hometown district after college graduation.

León has promised participants that a teacher contract with the district will be waiting for them after they complete the university’s program.

Melissa De Almeida, a sophomore at Montclair State University and East Side High School graduate, says the “home grown” teacher program in Newark helped her pursue her dream of becoming a bilingual teacher.

De Almeida, a graduate of the program at East Side, says being part of it helped her envision a future helping students who speak different home languages. But what helped her see that she could be successful, she said, was the example set from program co-directors Mayida Zaal and Danielle Epps, women of color who are graduates of urban school districts.

“I think it’s kind of refreshing to have someone talk to you that understands and kind of has been through what you’ve been through and kind of walked that path with you,” De Almeida said.

‘Retaining teachers is the problem’

In a recent phone interview, Newark Teachers Union President John Abeigon said he supports the district’s recruiting efforts, but “retaining teachers is the problem” that León needs to address, particularly when it comes to teachers of color.

“We have white, Black, Hispanic, brown, the rainbow,” Abeigon said about the diversity of teachers in his union. “Everybody that comes to this district, a majority of them leave within a couple of weeks or months of working in this district. That’s endemic to the district and the way it treats its staff.”

Research has found that teachers of color are more likely to teach in “high needs, hard-to-staff schools with challenging work environments and higher attrition rates for all teachers,” a FutureEd report on teacher diversity stated.

As teachers from diverse backgrounds navigate districts with low resources and unfavorable working conditions, though, they often feel undervalued and overlooked, according to feedback from focus groups in a 2019 report that examined retention of teachers of color.

Nubia Lumumba, a Black and Muslim educator and former English teacher at a Newark high school, resigned from her position after just six months of working in the district. Lumumba said she experienced and witnessed racial harassment while teaching, but lack of sensitivity from school administrators in handling concerns of racial harassment led to tensions that ultimately led to her resignation.

There was a lack of “genuine empathy for what I had gone through,” Lumumba said, adding that students were witnesses to what she experienced. “If, as a mature adult, it cut me deeply to have experienced racial and religious harassment and not get any meaningful support from district and school leaders, then, I imagine, it must be even more damaging to the Black students.”

Lumumba, who taught for eight years prior to her last role, said schools need to have strategies and programs in place that will bring “a true understanding and celebration of diversity” and support students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. This could lead to improved retention, she said.

The teachers of color in the 2019 case study would agree. Among solutions outlined in the report: District leaders need to ensure that “schools are places that culturally affirm teachers of color,” empower teachers with pathways to leadership, and offer compensation for extra work.

A New Jersey task force on school staff shortages, put together by executive order from Gov. Phil Murphy last year, released a report earlier this year that shows signs the state is paying some attention to the retention of teachers.

Providing support to schools in “implementing policies and practices that create a work environment that is free of bias, including microaggressions,” as well as increasing teacher pay and expanding “mentorship and professional development for early career educators” were among the recommendations listed in the report.

Students need support through higher education

For Red Hawks Rising co-directors Zaal and Epps, their efforts with the district to diversify the teaching force start by supporting Newark students and becoming their “community of commitment” as they navigate high school, college, and long-term careers, Epps said.

Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy co-directors Mayida Zaal and Danielle Epps say the dual enrollment program aims to support Newark students from high school to their career in teaching.

“We can’t just focus on the recruitment of young people who represent Black and brown communities, and then not be intentional about how we’re going to support them to get to the finish line,” Zaal said. “There has to be support along the way so that we don’t have a sort of leaky pipeline into schools.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the overall college enrollment rate among 18- to 24-year-olds decreased from 41% in 2010 to 38% in 2021. The overall college enrollment rate that year was even lower among Black students at 37% and Hispanic students at 33%.

While in the dual enrollment program, students confront different misconceptions about higher education, such as the idea that to pursue a career they have to leave their hometown or that college is financially out of reach, or the belief that “college is not something that’s for me,” Epps said.

Many students in the program are bilingual or bicultural and have experience dealing with educational challenges that, in turn, could help their future students.

“They’ve been raised in resilient families where they have been able to figure out their way into college as first-generation students,” Zaal said. “So, they have a significant amount of social capital to offer.”

De Almeida, who’s set to graduate in 2026, gives back to her community by working with parents at her local church and helping them understand their children’s homework or providing translation support for them. She relates to those families, she says, and talks to them about helping her own family financially while juggling school work and pursuing her dream of teaching.

The aspiring bilingual teacher is eager to get into the classroom and hopes to leave a lasting mark on students with similar backgrounds as her.

“I’m usually the one that everybody runs to with this kind of stuff. I love being able to be that help,” said De Almeida about working with parents of different backgrounds. “And I think that once I’m a teacher and come back to work in Newark, doing this work officially, I’ll be 10 times better.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark, covering the city’s K-12 schools with a focus on English language learners. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Biden says Supreme Court ruling should not deter colleges from efforts to diversify their campuses

2023-06-29T22:45:09+00:00

President Joe Biden, responding to the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that severely restricts how colleges can consider a student’s race in the admissions process, called on colleges and universities to find alternative ways to create racially diverse student bodies.

“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” Biden said in a Thursday news conference. “We cannot let this decision be the last word.”

In lieu of considering race, Biden urged colleges to give strong consideration to the adversities students have faced, such as whether they overcame hardship or racial discrimination and whether they come from a low-income family. Colleges could also consider where a student grew up and where they attended high school, Biden said.

Already, some college recruitment programs zero in on communities where many low-income Black and Latino students live as part of their efforts to boost student diversity on campuses. Biden’s comments appeared to be aimed at preserving those efforts.

Colleges “should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies are of diverse backgrounds and experiences that reflect all of America,” Biden said.

While colleges can no longer explicitly consider a student’s race as part of a holistic admissions review, the court’s opinion does allow colleges to look at how race affected a student’s life, so long as it’s tied to a unique skill or character they’d bring to the school. Discussions like that typically come up in an applicant’s personal essay.

In a fact sheet, White House officials said the Education and Justice departments would issue guidance within the next 45 days to help colleges and universities navigate which admissions practices and student support programs “remain lawful.” That will likely involve poring over the Supreme Court’s most recent and past decisions on affirmative action, and looking for any wiggle room.

In his 6-3 opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s race-conscious admissions policies were unconstitutional because they did not have “sufficiently focused and measurable objectives” that warranted the use of race; they used race in a “negative manner” that involved racial stereotyping; and their policies did not have “meaningful end points.”

“That is a list of faults with the UNC and Harvard programs, but it could be read as a blueprint for what would pass muster in some subsequent lawsuit,” said Anthony S. Chen, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, who is publishing a book on the history of affirmative action next year.

But the ruling “doesn’t tell us specifically, well, what does a ‘sufficiently focused and measurable objective’ look like?” Chen added.

Federal guidance — and potentially future litigation — could help fill in that gap.

Some university officials say they will be looking for workarounds.

At the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, which regularly gets 10,000 applications for 184 spots, that could include putting more weight on essays and responses to questions about past experiences, advocacy work, and personal attributes, said Shanta Zimmer, the senior associate dean for education.

Those questions can help illuminate whether an applicant speaks another language, whether they’ve had to seek primary care in an emergency room, whether they are the first in their family to go to college, or whether they have worked with community groups to improve health outcomes for marginalized communities, Zimmer said.

Given the correlation between patient health outcomes and the race and ethnicity of health care providers, admitting diverse medical students is “not just about what the class looks like,” Zimmer said. “It’s about how patients get healthy and how they survive, literally.”

Notably, the Supreme Court carved out an exemption that allows military academies, such as West Point, to continue to consider race in admissions, citing their “potentially distinct interests.” In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the exemption was too narrow, given that civilian universities could also have national security interests in maintaining racial diversity.

In his speech, Biden directed the Education Department to analyze which admissions practices are likely to produce a more inclusive and diverse student body, and which practices “expand privilege instead of opportunity,” such as “legacy” admissions policies that favor the children of alumni.

The Education Department will release a report in September, White House officials said, that will lay out strategies for how to boost diversity and use student adversity as a factor in admissions. The report will also detail practices that hurt the admissions chances of students from “underserved communities,” and explain how to run outreach and recruitment programs so they still create diverse applicant pools.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, several school leaders and education equity advocates called on colleges to get rid of legacy admissions that tend to favor wealthier, white students as a first step.

Opponents of legacy admissions include Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights lawyer who heads the KIPP charter school network, which enrolls some 120,000 students nationwide, most of whom are Black and Hispanic students from low-income families.

“Legacy admissions transfer privilege across generations, disfavoring first-generation KIPP students,” Jeffries said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision should be a wake-up call for colleges to reimagine their admissions practices.”

Erica Meltzer contributed reporting to this article.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court rules against affirmative action; racial diversity in colleges likely to suffer

2023-06-29T14:44:04+00:00

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The nation’s top colleges are likely to enroll fewer Black, Latino, and Native American students after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that colleges and universities essentially cannot consider race as a factor in the admissions process.

The ruling severely restricts colleges’ ability to use affirmative action to create more racially diverse campuses, and will likely curtail broader efforts to fight for racial equity in higher education.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s race-conscious admissions programs had violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars discrimination, because they “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote.

That bar will make it exceedingly difficult for colleges and universities to consider race as part of their admissions process going forward.

Roberts’ majority opinion did leave open a small window for how colleges could consider race in admissions. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” the chief justice wrote.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described this as a meaningless concession — “nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.”

“The Court’s opinion circumscribes universities’ ability to consider race in any form by meticulously gutting respondents’ asserted diversity interests,” wrote Sotomayor. “Yet, because the Court cannot escape the inevitable truth that race matters in students’ lives, it announces a false promise to save face and appear attuned to reality. No one is fooled.”

Nine states — including California, Florida, Michigan, and Washington — already ban affirmative action at public colleges and universities.

This decision stems from two cases that were brought before the court by Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, who has spent years fighting affirmative action.

Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina over their race-conscious admissions policies, arguing that they were unfair and discriminatory. The group alleged that Harvard’s policies, in particular, discriminated against Asian American applicants. The universities countered that they needed to take race into account to build a diverse student body, which brings educational benefits to the schools.

The decision has big implications for students looking to attend the nation’s most competitive colleges, which are more likely to consider race as a factor in admissions.

“We know that Hispanic and Black students are less college-going than their white counterparts. We know that they’re coming from less-resourced secondary schools,” said Kate Peltz, a college counselor who’s written about how ending affirmative action could affect students of color. “The process is already harder for kids from underrepresented backgrounds, and it’s about to become more so.”

But the ruling likely will have little effect on the vast majority of college students who attend less selective schools, such as community colleges, which accept most students who apply.

Here are three major ways the ruling is likely to affect students who are applying to college:

Black, Latino, and Native students will be less likely to get into top colleges

Officials at several selective colleges have said they expect the numbers of Black and Latino students, in particular, to decline if colleges are essentially no longer permitted to consider student race as part of a holistic admissions review.

An expert working on behalf of Harvard, for example, estimated that getting rid of race-conscious admissions would cause Black enrollment in Harvard’s freshman class to fall from 14% to 6%, and Hispanic enrollment to drop from 14% to 9%. White and Asian American enrollment, meanwhile, would grow.

Data from states that previously banned affirmative action also provide a look at what may happen nationwide. After California and Michigan got rid of affirmative action, the share of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students at several of the most selective colleges fell sharply. Those figures tended to tick back up with time, but never fully rebounded — and they still fail to represent the racial diversity of high school graduates in those states, the Boston Globe reported.

When colleges become less racially diverse, students of color often feel the schools are less welcoming — which could further depress the number of Black and Latino students on campus. That matters because Black and Latino students are more likely to benefit from the social capital that comes from attending a top college.

Colleges in states that axed affirmative action have tried alternatives to create racially diverse classes. That includes accepting a certain percentage of top high school graduates, recruiting from high schools that enroll large shares of underrepresented students, and giving preference to students from low-income families. But researchers and many college officials say those methods don’t work as well as explicitly taking race into account.

“There is no race-neutral alternative to being able to consider race,” Femi Ogundele, an official at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Los Angeles Times recently.

On top of that, colleges may not want to take new steps to ensure racial diversity for fear of violating the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.

“I think people imagine that we’ll find creative ways of working around the court’s decision, like using an applicant’s ZIP code as a stand-in for their race. But we won’t,” said Lee Bollinger, the outgoing president of Columbia University who was a defendant in a previous landmark Supreme Court case that upheld affirmative action. “We can’t knowingly violate the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. We’ll have to abide by it, no matter how painful.”

Students, and their school counselors, will have to navigate a new college admissions terrain

The Supreme Court’s ruling will have the biggest effects on high-achieving high schoolers who are applying to highly selective colleges, as those institutions are more likely to use race as a factor in admissions.

A quarter of colleges considered race in admissions to some degree, according to a 2019 survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling that was cited in the court case. But 60% of the most selective colleges — those that accept 4 in 10 applicants or less — considered an applicant’s race, according to a 2015 survey from the American Council on Education.

Those colleges serve a small slice of the nation’s undergraduates. This fall, colleges that admitted half of their students or less enrolled just 10% of U.S. undergraduates, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

For those students, this ruling may change which colleges they apply to and what information they share on their applications.

That’s left many school counselors and college coaches worried about whether they’ll have time to research and advise students on changing admissions policies. Many low-income students of color — whose school counselors tend to have higher student caseloads — won’t have someone to provide that kind of hands-on help.

“It’s already a complicated job that’s underresourced,” said Austin Buchan, a senior vice president at College Possible, a nonprofit organization that helps students from low-income families apply to college. “And this is just not going to do us any favors.”

Personal essays, which often ask students about their identity, values, and how they’d contribute to campus life, are likely to be especially fraught.

During both sets of oral arguments, several justices asked whether students would still be permitted to talk about certain personal experiences, such as overcoming racial discrimination or taking pride in their family’s cultural traditions, if race could not be considered.

A lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions said “culture, tradition, heritage are all not off limits for students to talk about and for universities to consider” so long as the college awarded credit for “something unique and individual in what they actually wrote, not race itself.” Some justices noted that distinction could be hard for colleges to make.

For that reason, some college access coaches and school counselors worry that students will avoid talking about anything that could hint at their race, even if it could enhance their application.

“Students might self-censor,” said Marie Bigham, the executive director of ACCEPT, a nonprofit that advocates for racial equity in college admissions. “Racial identities and experiences are just so interwoven with our lives in the United States. How do you pull that apart effectively in a way that’s not going to be constantly scrutinized?”

Some students of color may lower their college ambitions

School counselors and college coaches say Black and Latino students already hold off on applying to the nation’s top colleges, or worry they don’t deserve their spots when they get accepted. The latest Supreme Court ruling, they said, could cause more students to question their abilities and whether they want to pursue higher education — at a time when there’s already been a spike in students skipping college.

“It’s compounding a narrative that many students feel reinforced at each step of the process,” said Buchan, of College Possible. He worries the ruling will cause more students to think: “See, I told you higher ed isn’t for me.”

Some research also supports the idea that student motivation suffers when affirmative action is off the table. Natalie Bau, an economics professor at UCLA, looked at what happened when Texas lifted its ban on considering race in college admissions.

She and her colleagues found that Black and Latino high schoolers had better school attendance, higher SAT scores, higher grades, and applied to more colleges — and the effects were greatest for students with the highest test scores.

The thinking is “before it seemed too hard” to get into a more selective college, and “now it becomes attainable, so it makes sense to put in that extra effort,” Bau said. With a nationwide ban on affirmative action, Bau said, student motivation may slip.

“Underrepresented minority students might reduce their effort in high school and that might result in lower test scores, lower grades, lower attendance, and fewer applications to selective institutions,” Bau said. “That might make this under-application problem worse.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

PLACE-endorsed candidates win nearly 40% of seats on NYC’s parent councils

2023-06-17T00:26:37+00:00

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Candidates endorsed by a polarizing group that advocates for screened school admissions won the majority of seats on about half a dozen parent councils this year, according to election results released Friday by the New York City education department.

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, endorsed 147 candidates across the city for local district council seats, with 115 of them winning their races. The group’s preferred candidates will make up nearly 40% of the Community Education Council members across the five boroughs, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Established in 2019, PLACE supports the status quo when it comes to academic screening policies that have resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems. That includes keeping the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and expanding gifted and talented programs. The group generally opposes lottery-based admissions and paring back screened admissions to the city’s middle and high schools.

The Community Education Councils, or CECs, have the power to approve or reject school rezoning plans, pass resolutions about various school-related issues, and work with district superintendents. The 32 councils, which each have 10 elected members and two appointed by the local borough president, hold monthly public meetings.

There are also citywide councils for high school students, English learners, students with disabilities, and those enrolled in the city’s District 75 programs, which serve children with the most challenging disabilities.

This was the second CEC election where voting was open to parents citywide. To many watching races across the city, this year’s elections seemed more divisive than ever, with some candidates localizing culture wars playing out across the nation. CEC 2 winner Maud Maron, who co-founded PLACE and was previously on the District 2 parent council, told THE CITY, “Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” referring to lessons about Indigenous people who inhabited land before European colonialism.

With her victory Friday, Maron will again sit on a CEC that represents one of the most affluent swaths of Manhattan.

Some of PLACE’s ideas have found favor with schools Chancellor David Banks, such as expanding gifted and talented seats. The organization had Banks’ ear at the very start of his tenure, appearing on his schedule last March.

Some education advocates have grown concerned about PLACE’s influence, pointing to the views of some of their members, including comparing critical race theory, an academic framework about systemic racism, to Nazi ideology, as reported by THE CITY. Several candidates endorsed by the group backed away from that support during the election season.

PLACE wasn’t alone in endorsing candidates. A group called Parents for Middle School Equity, based in Brooklyn’s District 15 (which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and part of Sunset Park), appears to be ideologically opposed to PLACE. The group’s interest is in preserving the district’s middle school integration plan. But its influence fell far below PLACE’s: Less than a quarter of its endorsed candidates won seats across the city, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

A few districts appeared to be PLACE strongholds: Every person elected to the CEC in Brooklyn’s District 20, which spans Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Borough Park, and part of Sunset Park, was endorsed by PLACE. All of the group’s preferred candidates also won seats on the CECs representing two large Queens districts — nine people in District 26 (which covers northeast Queens, including Bayside) and seven in District 28, where a controversial push to integrate its middle schools from Forest Hills to Jamaica was derailed by the pandemic.

Still, the Equity group’s preferred candidates outnumbered PLACE’s endorsed candidates in a handful of districts, including East Harlem’s District 4, Harlem’s District 5, Williamsburg’s District 14, and District 15.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that District 26 includes northeast Queens, including Bayside.

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

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Black and Latino enrollment in NYC specialized high school integration program still lags

2023-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

A program aimed at bolstering the numbers of Black and Latino students in New York City’s prestigious specialized high schools continues to enroll a majority of Asian American students, according to recently released data.

The Discovery program is for eighth graders from low-income families who score just below the cutoff for the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. If they successfully complete coursework during the three- to five-week summer program, it could be their ticket into Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or one of the other six specialized high schools that require the test as the sole admissions criteria.

For September’s rising ninth graders, after 4,050 test takers received an offer based on their test scores, the city extended offers to 855 students to participate this summer in the Discovery program. (Not everyone who gets invited into the program will accept the offer or end up enrolling at a specialized high school.) Nearly 60%, or 509, of the participants in this year’s Discovery program were Asian American, according to city data. That’s even higher than the share of Asian Americans who got offers to specialized high schools based on the SHSAT, which was about 53%.

Overall, Asian American students make up about 17% of students citywide.

Meanwhile, nearly 12% of the Discovery program seats — or 99 — went to Black students, and 20%, or 172, went to Latino students. That’s higher than the overall percentage of Black and Latino students who got specialized high school offers based on the test, 3% and 6%, respectively.

It’s still not representative of the school system as a whole: Roughly 24% of the city’s students are Black across the city, and 41% are Latino.

The numbers of Black and Latino students admitted to specialized high schools based on the entrance exam remains stubbornly low. This year, Stuyvesant, for instance, accepted just seven Black students based on SHSAT scores. That was a higher number than three other specialized high schools, including Staten Island Tech, which accepted zero Black students based on the test.

Tweaking Discovery program to boost numbers of Black and Latino students

A few years back, as city officials saw that the program helped more white and Asian American students gain admission to eight city high schools, they tweaked the program. In 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio expanded the program to 20% of seats at specialized high schools, up from 13% the year before. De Blasio also changed eligibility requirements so that students must come from schools where most of their peers are economically disadvantaged.

The share of Black and Latino students in the program, however, is slightly lower than the first year after the program’s expansion. In 2020, nearly 35% of the offers in the Discovery program went to Black and Latino students, which was about 3 percentage points higher than this year’s offers.

That year saw 50% of the offers go to Asian American students, nearly 10 percentage points lower than this year’s offers.

The percent of white students, however, has dropped nearly in half from 14% in 2020 to about 7% this year.

The composition of students in the Discovery program will reflect that of the total SHSAT test-taking pool, education department officials said, since taking the SHSAT is still required for entry into the program.

But there’s still a mismatch between the number of Black and Latino students who took the test and qualified for spots in the Discovery program, according to city data. Of the roughly 27,700 eighth graders who took the SHSAT this school year, nearly 21% were Black and 26% were Latino.

The SHSAT, enshrined by state law in 1971, has long been controversial, with integration advocates blaming it for the low number of Black and Latino students at specialized high schools. That same state law also created the Discovery program for high-performing students from “disadvantaged” families to gain entry to the coveted high schools. But over the years, the program fell by the wayside at some schools, and was not operated consistently. In 2016, for instance, just 120 students received offers to five specialized high schools through the Discovery program. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science had long before stopped participating at that point.

Specialized high schools continue to be a battleground

Many Asian American families have pushed back against efforts to change the admissions process for specialized high schools, and a group of Asian American parents, along with Asian civil rights groups and a parent-teacher association, filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the Discovery program. They claimed that Asian American students would be squeezed out of the specialized high schools and said the program violated their civil rights. A federal judge in September dismissed the case, citing that more Asian American students had been offered seats under the program.

Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, was unsurprised that Discovery hadn’t done much to shift the demographics of specialized high school students given that it simply expanded the same system of basing admissions on a single test.

“The Discovery program does what it can, but at the end of the day, it’s a bandaid on a much much larger systemic wound,” she said in an email.

She also said that challenges remain in making Black and Latino students feel welcome at specialized high schools.

For some, it has not been easy to feel a part of the school culture, and that could affect who applies. Students may find themselves “battling systemic racism and microaggressions” at specialized high schools, Berg said.

“It’s not just the admissions process but also what happens once accepted and you are in the school,” Berg said.

There’s not only more work to desegregate the schools, she said, but also to integrate them.

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

NYC school admission offers are out. Here’s what the numbers show.

2023-06-02T00:41:43+00:00

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Despite the stress of applying to New York City public schools, more children received offers to their top-choice schools across all grade levels, education department officials said Thursday.

New York City schools have long relied on the practice of sorting and screening many kids, leading to a Hunger Games-like mindset for many families. It has also resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

This year’s offer data shows little change in terms of racial and economic diversity compared to last year.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, who previously expressed concerns that changes to this year’s admissions cycle could lead to less diverse schools. “We have made a lot of progress over the past two years.”

As the pandemic forced many schools to drop or shift their admissions criteria, some schools have become more diverse. Though integration advocates had long been pushing for such changes, it only happened by necessity because attendance could no longer be held against students, and standardized tests were not administered as they typically were. Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor Chancellor David Banks has made integration a top priority.

“If we really want to create and foster diverse schools there’s a lot more to be done than tinkering here and there,” Berg said.

Still, she believed this year’s changes centralizing admissions for high school, in particular, made the process more transparent, and she’s hopeful the city will continue to ditch standardized test scores and attendance in screening applicants.

Here’s a snapshot of what offers looked like for different grades.

Status quo for specialized high schools

Once again, few Black and Latino students were admitted to New York City’s eight prestigious specialized high schools, which accept students based solely on a single admissions test.

Black and Latino students made up nearly 10% of offers for next year’s class, according to education department data released Thursday.

That’s about the same as the previous year and the year before that. Just seven Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant based on the admissions exam — and that number was higher than three other specialized high schools.

Black and Latino students make up about 66% of students citywide.

The small number of Black and Latino students at the city’s specialized high schools has long been the subject of fierce debate, with many blaming the disparity on the reliance of a single test for admissions. (The admissions method is governed by state law.) The Adams administration has made little indication that it plans to change the way students are admitted to these schools, largely considered the Ivy League of New York City high schools.

About 26,000 eighth graders took the Specialized High School Admissions test this year, down about 2,000 from last year, according to city data.

Little change at selective high schools

For admissions to other selective New York City high schools, little changed. The education department created a tiered system for the city’s selective schools — like Beacon, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Townsend Harris — based on seventh grade scores in core subjects. The changes were aimed to simplify the process but also raised the bar for scores needed to qualify for the top group, narrowing the group of kids with priority access to these coveted schools.

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

There were some concerns that the changes would reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains seen when competitive schools could no longer rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures, like state tests scores and attendance. But more than 40 of these schools have programs that set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. That meant if there were not enough students with top grades for “group 1” who met the eligibility requirements for a school’s diversity targets, such as a certain percentage of students from low-income families, then those seats went to applicants in the next tier.

Despite these shifts in selection criteria, the offers reveal that little changed in racial and economic demographics compared to last year when an 85 grade point average was the cutoff for the top tier instead of this year’s 90 GPA. Roughly 32% of offers at these schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Overall, of the roughly 73,000 eighth graders across the city receiving offers this year, about 48% percent got into their top choice. That isn’t far from last year, when about 50% got their first choice or the previous year when 46% got their No. 1 pick.

About 75% applicants got into one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from last year.

The city extended offers three months earlier than last year. The goal, city officials said, was to let families know before private school deposit deadlines.

Number of screened programs drops dramatically at middle school

Following two years without selective admissions for New York City middle schools — as the pandemic upended state test scores and other screening criteria — Banks let each district’s superintendent decide whether to reinstate competitive middle school admissions.

Some families lobbied to bring back screens, while others pushed to ditch them, saying it was unfair to sort the city’s 10-year olds based on their academic performance from fourth grade.

After superintendents spent about a month deliberating with their communities, nearly all opted for fewer or the same number of screened middle schools as before the pandemic. Nearly 60 of 478 middle schools ended up reinstating screens for at least some segment of their incoming sixth graders based on their fourth grade marks; 24 of these programs used selective criteria for all incoming sixth graders.

That dramatically reduced the number of kids in screened middle school programs from about 16,510 getting such offers in 2020 to about 5,100 with offers for the coming school year, according to the data.

The breakdown of students by income in screened programs remained fairly steady, with about 60% coming from low-income families. The share of Asian American students jumped to 35%, up from 21% in 2020, likely based on the demographics of which districts opted for screened programs.

Overall, 74% of the city’s fifth graders received an offer for their top choice, and 92% got one of their top three choices.

Kindergarten offers slightly up

City data also reflected a slight increase in kindergarten applicants, with about 1,200 more children applying. Those figures included applications for spots in the city’s coveted “gifted and talented” program, which used teacher evaluations instead of the prepandemic exams to select preschoolers.

About 95% of families saw their children admitted to one of their top three choices this year — up 4% from last year — as more seats were available and as the city said it extended more offers to families interested in schools outside of their zone or district.

This year, applications to the gifted and talented program were included with general kindergarten admission. Officials did not release admissions data for the gifted and talented program Thursday.

In the past, the program has faced criticism for admitting small numbers of Black and Hispanic students.

The application process underwent multiple changes during the pandemic, with Adams and Banks reversing a plan to phase out the program and choosing instead to expand the track by 100 seats in kindergarten last year.

Applications up slightly for 3-K and pre-K

For the city’s youngest students, admissions data showed a slight uptick as the city saw more applicants and more children set to receive 3-K and pre-K offers.

Admissions to 3-K programs rose by 8% this year, as the number of applicants rose to roughly 41,600. That was up from just under 40,000 in 2022.

For families applying, 68% were admitted to their first-choice program, up 5% from 2022.

Nearly 61,000 children received offers to pre-K programs this year — a jump of 3% from the year prior. That came as applications were up more than 3,000 from 2022, though still well below pre-pandemic figures.

Among applicants, 84% were admitted to their first-choice program.

The numbers come as a consulting firm’s report found the city’s early childhood system — including 3K, pre-K, as well as infants and toddlers — currently had roughly 30,000 empty seats — many of which were not in areas where demand is high, according to officials. That meant some parts of the city would see waitlists for spots, while others had thousands of empty seats, officials said.

The city did not release the complete findings of the report Thursday, which it paid the firm Accenture more than $760,000 to conduct. But its prognosis echoes a common criticism from the Adams administration — that the supply and demand of seats have been misaligned in areas across the city.

Officials said that the findings pointed toward a need to look at enrollment projections and available seats within zip codes, redistributing seats to areas with higher demand.

Of the approximately 140,000 seats across the city’s early childhood system, between roughly 119,000 and 127,000 were projected to be filled in 2024-25, according to the report.

“The city is focused on matching seats to parent demand—and that’s not a bad thing—but they should also be working to increase parent demand, particularly among underserved communities where children currently have the least access to quality early education programs,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “The Adams administration has not provided the needed investments in outreach, and that, combined with the lagging effects of the pandemic disruption to early childhood settings, is a recipe for inequity.”

The city’s free prekindergarten program has struggled this year, as delayed payments have caused some providers to shutter. Some officials and advocates, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, have criticized the administration for its handling of the early education system.

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.

Feds launch $10 million school desegregation program after stops and starts

2023-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

In a surprising move, federal education officials announced last week that they had created a new $10 million grant program to fund school integration efforts.

The funding is a small fraction of the $100 million that President Biden has tried to get Congress to put toward this program since he was elected. But it represents a noteworthy, if small, win for integration advocates who’ve spent years lobbying the federal government to take a bigger role in supporting school desegregation.

“This is a relatively small grant program, but it’s part of a larger, multi-year movement,” said Philip Tegeler, the head of a civil rights organization, the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, who spoke at an event about the program this week. “The response to this program from local educational agencies and states is going to determine what happens in the future.”

Advocates hope that if the program attracts interest from many school districts, it could help build the case to boost spending down the line.

But it’s unclear how many school districts will want to take on the politically fraught and logistically complicated work of desegregating schools at a time when many communities are fighting over how to teach about race and racism in school, and some states and districts are retreating from the racial equity work they started in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Eighteen states now have laws or other restrictions limiting how schools can teach about racism and sexism, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week, and several school districts have brought back school police after removing them over concerns that they disproportionately arrested Black students. Many educators also are bracing for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that’s expected to prevent colleges from considering a student’s race in the admissions process.

Still, dozens of school districts, including some of the nation’s largest, have expressed interest in integrating schools in recent years and could be prime candidates for this new funding.

Notably, the new grant program prioritizes initiatives that would integrate students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, though prior versions of this program floated by Biden and others have included preferences for integration by both family income and student race. Federal officials say districts could still use this money to create more racially diverse schools, though that’s not the main focus.

Supreme Court rulings have made it very difficult for school districts to consider student race in desegregation plans and to create integration plans that cross school district boundaries, where most school segregation exists.

The roots of this program go back to 2016, when former Education Secretary John King tried to launch a similar initiative in the final days of the Obama presidency. The education department created a $12 million grant program and received applications from dozens of school districts that wanted to participate. But the Trump administration killed the program before it started.

“This very similar program was started in 2016, but folks never got awards,” said Kayla Patrick, a special assistant in the education department’s planning and policy development office. “We are really excited to have this opportunity to actually see the entire program through. Our hope is that this is just step one and we can get to the place where we’re scaling up.”

This time around, the education department is using existing funding through a federal program that’s meant to create safe and healthy schools and provide students with access to a well-rounded education.

“Research suggests that income segregation is increasing and that students in socioeconomically isolated schools (i.e., schools overwhelmingly composed of children from low-income backgrounds) have less access to the critical resources and funding that are necessary for high-quality educational experiences,” a notice for the grant states. “This disparity can ultimately have detrimental effects on the individual lives of students and the foundation of democracy.”

Federal officials expect to award four to eight grants to school districts that are in the planning stages of integrating their schools and one to three larger grants to districts that are putting their integration plans into action. The timeline is relatively short: Applications are due in July and work could begin as soon as the fall.

Some integration advocates say that even in the face of legal limitations, the federal government can do more than start a competitive grant program. That approach only appeals to districts that already want to do this work, but doesn’t touch the many places where there is little appetite for change.

“I think students deserve access to diverse learning environments in whatever communities they are,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank that supports school integration, “even if those are communities that have a long way to go in terms of recognizing the need for integration.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

City education council elections bring polarizing national issues to local school districts

2023-04-28T15:31:42+00:00

This story was originally published on April 28 by THE CITY.

Starting last Friday and running through May 9, the city’s Community Education Council elections now underway give public school parents a chance to vote on district panels that will represent their interests to their local superintendent.

Parents, local residents, and business owners, and even high school seniors are eligible to run for positions on the 11-member CECs, which can weigh in on topics ranging from academics and budgets to accessibility and diversity.

This is only the second time that public school parents will be able to choose who will represent district interests to the superintendent — prior to 2021, only Parent Teacher Associations nominated CEC members. But only 2% of eligible voters participated in the last election for the volunteer positions two years ago, according to the Department of Education — and in the absence of individual involvement, well-organized networks of parents have increasingly exerted influence.

One such group, Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE), has become particularly powerful — and polarizing.

The group formed in 2019 in opposition to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to widen access to honors programs and selective middle and high schools. Now some rival parent groups say PLACE is skewing rightward, with members using their platform to compare critical race theory to Nazi ideology and accusing the administration of being “woke” oppressors.

On April 21, the first day of voting, PLACE recommended 175 candidates across the city in an emailed newsletter the organization says reaches nearly 10,000 parents.

But reached by THE CITY, several of those candidates distanced themselves from PLACE’s agenda as it ventures into issues beyond testing. Some endorsed candidates said they had never even heard of the organization.

CECs are composed of 11 members: nine are parents elected by other parents, and two are appointed by the borough president. Decisions are entirely advisory, with the exception of binding decisions issued about school zoning.

“For most parents, this is an obscure election. They look at those names and they don’t really recognize them,” said Reyhan Mehran, a parent and member of a group in Brooklyn’s District 15 that opposes PLACE. “It makes those of us who are paying attention nervous that this very vocal, right-wing small group of people have had an undue influence on public school policy.”

PLACE is trying to replicate its success from the last elections — where 60% of the 86 candidates that they recommended are still district CEC members. In Manhattan’s largest public school districts, 2 and 3, PLACE candidates represent a majority or all of the members sitting on the councils, according to THE CITY’s review of district rosters.

The group regularly reaches approximately 15,000 parents citywide through a combination of Facebook, Twitter, a newsletter and group chats on the messaging app WeChat, according to both its leadership and public follower tallies.

“It’s very difficult to motivate your average parent to take part in [CEC elections],” said Yiatin Chu, a public school parent in District 1 and co-vice-president and co-founder of PLACE. “The most active parents are the ones who have been burned by the [school] lottery system. The ones that aren’t really engaging with us may know someone who is — it’s like what marketing people call influencers.”

As parents cast their ballots over the next two weeks, members of rival coalitions are expressing concerns about PLACE’s influence.

Mehran is a member of District 15 Parents for Middle School Equity, which was formed in 2014 to advocate for and implement the district’s diversity plans — including removing admissions screens and prioritizing low-income students and English-learners for admissions in middle schools. For the first time ever on Tuesday, the group released a list of endorsed candidates citywide — an explicit effort to counter PLACE’s sway, Mehran said.

“By just recommending these candidates, PLACE has had a lot of influence,” said Mehran. “And we just felt like maybe we should put something out there that gives people other names to consider.”

Organized outreach

In only four years, PLACE has emerged as the foremost group pushing local district superintendents to preserve and expand gifted and talented programs and to reinstate admissions testing in certain high schools and middle schools.

They’re fighting officials and other parents who have blamed those programs for contributing to racial and economic inequality across the city — which has some of the most segregated public schools across the country, according to a study conducted by UCLA.

But PLACE insists that dismantling testing and accelerated programs would worsen academic standards and unfairly punish Asian students, who tend to be “overrepresented” in selective schools, compared to the city’s general demographic mix. Instead, the group suggests that the DOE correct the factors that might be causing Black and Hispanic students to fall behind in the first place.

PLACE’s most notable success in the last election was in Manhattan’s four largest districts, where every candidate it recommended in Districts 1, 2 and 3 won a seat. In District 2, representing 60,000 students and 121 schools, all but one of the seats was held by a PLACE candidate. Similarly, PLACE won a majority on the Citywide Council on High Schools — a board that represents 300,000 students citywide.

And PLACE’s 15,000-member following dwarfs that of other groups that offered endorsements — who aren’t as active outside of CEC elections, and told THE CITY that their listservs and online followings reach around 1,000 people a piece.

Unlike former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which said it wanted to scrap the specialized high school tests open to students citywide, Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Education Chancellor David Banks have stressed that most admissions policies should be decided on by local superintendents — giving CECs a path to potentially influence these decisions.

CECs, for instance, made themselves heard on middle school admissions last year, after a two-year pause in academic-based screening for middle schools, related to both the pandemic and the de Blasio administration’s push to move away from grade- and test-based admissions.

In at least two districts, CECs recommended a return to screened middle school admissions. The results were mixed: over 100 schools have decided not to, according to an announcement made by Banks last October. But 60 middle schools have reinstated screened admissions based on course averages from the fourth grade.

Not ‘woke’ but awakened?

In addition to a robust parent network citywide, PLACE Co-president and co-founder Maud Maron attributed the organization’s success to a widespread “parent awakening” in the first year of the pandemic, at a time when the city’s school enrollment was rapidly declining, protests over racial injustice were spreading across the country, and parents debated about virtual schooling and mask mandates.

She suggested a correlation between declining reading and math scores and an increased focus on “social emotional learning” and an “ideological agenda” in schools — but acknowledged that the relationship wasn’t necessarily causal.

“Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” Maron, a Manhattan mother of four, told THE CITY — referencing the practice of paying respect to the indigenous people who inhabited the land before European colonialism. “It’s just that this endless fixation on left-wing ideological indoctrination doesn’t do much to improve our nation’s report card.”

PLACE’s prominence in education politics has drawn local and national recognition, especially as a number of its members have aspired to higher office. That includes Maron, a former CEC member herself who ran in the crowded Democratic primary for a rare open seat in U.S. Congress District 10. That’s the area that covers much of school District 15 in Brooklyn, which led the way in removing middle school screenings in the de Blasio years. Maron won just under 1,000 votes, less than 1%.

Members of the Adams administration, including Banks himself, have consulted with PLACE directly, according to Chalkbeat and testimony from the Department of Education’s chief enrollment officer at a City Council hearing in January. Separately, a spokesperson for the DOE told THE CITY that the administration engages PLACE in the same way that it does with other groups representing parents, and continues to prioritize diversity in schools.

In District 2, the largest in Manhattan, PLACE candidates fill all but one elected CEC seat. Conversations about culturally sensitive curriculum and school diversity have caught the attention of national media outlets, while one CEC member there launched her own bid for state Senate.

And PLACE’s work has earned commendation from groups like Parents Defending Education, and leadership positions at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), national organizations that largely advocate against what they describe as threats to free speech from the left. Chu and Maron made national news for founding FAIR’s New York City chapter.

PLACE leadership has leaned into national discourse online, comparing “critical race theory” (CRT) and “anti-Asian discrimination” in admissions to Nazi ideology, and warning parents of “poisonous” curriculum. In a tweet from March, Maron called city schools an “oppressor woke environment where DOE employees make them pledge allegiance to their LGBTQI+ religion.”

PLACE leadership echoes this in private discussion forums, according to screenshots from private discussion forums obtained by THE CITY, members have promoted local chapters of Mom’s for Liberty, a national group that decries “woke” education as an assault on parental control.

Guadalupe Hernandez, a mother of two who was appointed to District 2’s CEC by the Manhattan borough president and is running for re-election, was one of the candidates endorsed by D15 Parents for Middle School Equity. She said messaging from PLACE officials reminds her of red states.

“It’s so mind boggling,” Hernandez told THE CITY. “Sometimes even when I speak to residents that live in my building or just any New York City parents, and tell them what I’m going through, they’re just like, ‘We’re where? We’re not Alabama, we’re not Florida.’ They don’t believe me.”

Endorsement shuffle

PLACE’s leadership insists their official platform is solely about preserving selective admissions and gifted-and-talented programs.

“I tend to like to be vocal personally on all sorts of things,” Chu said. “But that’s not who I am when I’m advocating for PLACE.”

By and large, national hot-button topics didn’t feature in the 36 candidate forums hosted by the DOE. The vast majority of candidates spoke about supporting the district’s families, fighting school bullying, and promoting learning recovery after the pandemic.

But that hasn’t stopped endorsed candidates from putting distance between themselves and PLACE’s conservative affiliations.

Sarah Sharma, a CEC hopeful in Brooklyn’s District 14, is one of the 175 candidates that PLACE endorsed this year. Yet she says she had never heard of the group. After doing some research, Sharma asked to be removed from their list.

“When I found out about their endorsement, I poked around their website and realized I didn’t really want to be associated with them,” said Sharma, a former teacher and administrator in the district, which spans Williamsburg and Greenpoint. “Because I don’t feel like their views on education represent mine and who they’ve endorsed in the past for general elections.”

Sharma went on to specify that she was uncomfortable with PLACE’s endorsement of conservative candidates like Reps. George Santos (R-Queens/L.I.) and Nicole Maliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who were among a bi-partisan slate of 18 statewide candidates PLACE endorsed last year.

Noah Harlan, a current CEC representative for District 1, was also endorsed by PLACE but emphasized that his agreement with organization’s leadership begins and ends with supporting selective admissions, rigorous testing, and gifted and talented programs.

“I think that I have more of a willingness than others to think about the systemic and structural issues that work against student achievement in various neighborhoods in New York, other PLACE candidates might be more dispassionate.” said Harlan, who added that he considers changes to admissions policies to be discriminatory against the Asian community.

Several other parents and CEC candidates who spoke with THE CITY and who favor preserving selective admissions said that they were not interested in national debates about race and gender — even those who have been endorsed by PLACE.

No magic bullet for parent engagement

Even with two years to drum up awareness, a high level of participation is far from guaranteed in this, the second round of parent-involved CEC elections.

Immediately after the 2021 elections, only five seats were unfilled across all CECs, after a 70% increase in the number of candidates from 2019. Today, however, 25% of seats are unfilled, as parents leave their elected positions.

Some districts in Brooklyn have gone months without the minimum six members required to reach quorum, and others have gone years without a designated English Language Learner representative, Bklyner reported.

In the past few months, the DOE has upped its outreach: sending postcards in the mail, making phone calls, emailing parents, hosting information sessions and virtual candidate forums for every district across the city.

But the engaged parents on the ground are still concerned.

“There isn’t a magic bullet,” said Stephen Stowe, president of the District 20 CEC and PLACE endorsed-candidate. “At the end of the day, you’re not gonna see the same kind of interest you do for City Council elections or state Assembly or state Senate because it doesn’t have a lot of power.”

Former CEC 20 president and PLACE co-founder Vito LaBella believes the issues that parents are concerned about don’t have anything to do with larger political discourse.

“Unfortunately is everybody inserting a political perspective in what should be a very simple market perspective: What is the demand for accelerated programs and what is the capacity?” said LaBella, who ran for State Senate in 2021 on a platform that prioritized protecting selective admissions and combatting critical race theory.

“And if we want to stop the bleeding of families leaving New York City, we need to increase capacity to meet demand, not get rid of it altogether.”

‘This would be a closure’: Two Upper West Side middle schools fight merger as city panel vote looms

2023-04-17T22:40:16+00:00

Two disparate small Upper West Side middle schools have found their fates intertwined as city officials seek to merge them, despite loud community protests.

One is a progressive institution serving overwhelmingly Black and Latino students, where more than 80% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The other is known for its French dual language program and has a significantly higher share of white students. Just under 60% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Officials say the merger could help protect both schools, but to parents and staff at West Side Collaborative, the plan could mean a fatal loss of identity — as community members fear its leadership, approach to teaching, culture, and name could be washed away as it is absorbed into the larger school.

The progressive middle school has fostered a passionate community network, even as its size has dwindled to fewer than 100 students in recent years. The merger would see its students and faculty join Lafayette Academy, roughly half a mile away, in a move the city believes would shield students from funding concerns that stem from their smaller enrollment losses.

The merger comes as the latest sign that some of the city’s smallest schools are increasingly under threat even as families sing their praises, as the city faces steep enrollment declines and a looming fiscal cliff of federal relief funds. The Upper West Side fight follows a battle over a Washington Heights middle school earlier this year, and despite fierce pushback, the merged school may soon become a reality with the Panel for Educational Policy set to vote Wednesday.

Enrollment declines leave few options

Enrollment figures paint a stark picture. Over the past five years, West Side Collaborative has seen a 58% decline in enrollment, with further projected losses expected to shrink its current student body of about 75 students next year, according to city figures. Lafayette Academy, meanwhile, serves about 158 students. Because the city calculates school funding in part based on how many students enroll, a declining student population can mean a loss of funds, too.

“The merger is a reaction to a real trend — nobody will deny that enrollment across New York City is down,” said Paul Kehoe, a teacher at West Side Collaborative. “But in effect, this would be a closure.”

The school developed a set of progressive practices over decades, Kehoe said, like data-driven academic intervention services that catch students falling behind and a coaching period with student-led conferences to promote executive functioning and goal setting.

“The idea that you can pick up those practices and transplant them into another school and have them carried off with the same efficacy and deft touch that comes with experience is just not viable,” he said. “That’s just not a thing that happens.”

And at Lafayette Academy, community members said they were concerned by the lack of concrete details on how staffing and other decisions would shake out.

Stefania Puxeddu Clegg, a parent at the school, raised concerns about potential overcrowding with the influx of students a merger might bring, as well as the potential for Lafayette Academy to lose its small-school feel. And despite an email from the superintendent noting that Lafayette Academy’s principal would head the new merged school, Puxeddu Clegg and other parents remain concerned that such assurances were not included explicitly in the language of the proposal. (DOE projections also say the merger would not bring student levels over capacity in the school’s building.)

In a statement, a spokesperson for the city’s department of education said “meeting student needs” is at the “forefront” of any decisions.

“The district superintendent and his team have worked to engage the community in regards to this merger for months, and while it’s still in the proposal phase, if approved by the PEP, it is designed to give students the best access to new programs and additional supports,” the spokesperson said.

Tensions at both schools remain high

The clash between the school communities and the city surfaced at a public hearing this month, as parents from both schools repeatedly spoke against the merger.

“It was a disaster,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy. “I was so optimistic, and then everybody at the joint public hearing was like, ‘Yep, we’re in opposition.’”

Though Salas-Ramirez understood community concerns, she added she expected the proposed merger to pass. “In terms of the numbers, it’s just really difficult,” she said.

A merged school could see a jump in funding, as more students are housed under one roof, and as the demographic shift could bring federal funding for low-income students to Lafayette Academy. Still, staff members may be excessed in the move, and it remains unclear how many families from West Side Collaborative would choose to enroll at the merged school.

“None of our parents want to go,” said Morana Mesic, a parent at West Side Collaborative and president of the school’s PTA. “If the merger goes through, our parents want a transfer.”

The relationship between the two school communities has been fraught with tension among parents, she added. In a meeting, Mesic said she took issue with Lafayette parents stating that the higher needs and lower test scores of students at West Side Collaborative might affect current students at Lafayette.

As an alternative to a merger, West Side Collaborative parents and staff have pointed to recent enrollment gains due to new students entering the city as asylum seekers have flocked to New York as one possible avenue to bolster the student body. But officials noted during the public hearing that those gains may not persist as families find more permanent housing.

Jeanie Ahn, a member of the local Community Education Council and a liaison for West Side Collaborative, said parents she’s spoken to have been overwhelmingly against the merger. The difficulty of the situation has been intensified by the expedited timeline of the process, she added. The first community engagement meetings about the merger took place in January.

“We are listening to the families and their concerns, but also understand the realities of the situation at both schools,” Ahn said, adding it would be ideal to have more time to develop a proposal that at least some affected families approve of. “If every single voice you hear from in both schools says this merger is not the solution, it’s going to be a really tough vote for the PEP.

“When it comes to these small, close-knit communities that are so tight, it really does feel like you’re breaking up families,” she said.

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

Student protests, teacher concerns follow proposed restructure at Brooklyn charter school network

2023-03-31T20:22:46+00:00

A Brooklyn charter school network’s plans to eliminate its team handling student behavioral and mental health challenges has riled its community, prompting a walkout by high schoolers earlier this week and a flurry of emails from the administration trying to dampen concerns.

By midweek, network administrators at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School began visiting its schools and reassuring employees that a majority of the impacted staff would be offered a transfer into new roles within the network.

For some students and teachers, the uncertainty introduced by the restructure comes at a difficult time, as students grapple with heightened behavioral challenges and mental health crises tied to the effects of the pandemic. But at the core of their concern also lies a fear that the network might drift away from its founding tenets: racial, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity and equity. Teachers and students noted that most of the positions slated for elimination are held by people of color.

The network, meanwhile, contends that the changes come for just the opposite reason — to make their staffing model more equitable.

The administration charged that “an artificial divide between culture and instruction” had resulted in “predominantly Black and Brown staff members in roles without a clear pathway of growth and career progression,” according to an email to staff obtained by Chalkbeat. These staffers have borne the brunt of disciplining students rather than teachers, who are overwhelmingly white, the network said.

Tresha Ward, CEO of the charter network, said that the structural shift will improve hiring practices, creating a stronger pipeline and retention of teachers of color.

“Historically, these responsibilities have been divided in our organization, with student management falling disproportionately on Black and Brown culture staff and instruction falling to a majority white teaching staff,” Ward said in a statement. “In practice, this change opens new opportunities that were not previously available to many of our colleagues and creates transfer opportunities for the majority of staff who are impacted by these changes.”

While a “small number” of staffers will be let go due to funding issues related to enrollment drops, others are expected to transition into new roles, Brooklyn Prospect officials said. A spokesperson for the network said it expected to have roughly 27 fewer positions in the coming school year, but a majority would be phased out through natural attrition.

It’s not an issue that’s unique to Brooklyn Prospect — schools across the city and the country have experienced enrollment declines in recent years, and the impending expiration of some COVID relief funds poses the threat of a widespread fiscal cliff. Public schools throughout the city will continue to face difficult decisions about staffing and spending, with at least one charter school forced to shutter its doors. Still, Brooklyn Prospect’s equity mission and initial communication stumbles have spurred a particularly passionate response.

News that some staff positions will be eliminated fueled critiques over the network’s spending, with teachers and students questioning the opening of a new middle school in Sunset Park as well as building construction and renovation elsewhere.

The friction isn’t necessarily bad, but the next steps are critical, said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation who has studied educational policy and school equity, particularly examining the role charter schools can play in school integration.

“The hallmark of a good diverse-by-design school, or any school that is serving a diverse community well, isn’t avoiding conflict, but how that conflict is navigated and what the conflict produces,” she said. “The real test will be if the commitment to some of the shared values can create a really positive dialogue and some opportunities for reflection.”

Student protests, concerns among staff

Teachers said discussions last week began with a rocky start. Several expressed frustration with central leadership — referred to within the network as “treehouse” — alleging officials had weaponized inclusive language to justify the elimination of positions held predominantly by staff members of color in their initial email.

When teachers responded to news of the restructuring with questions, they say the email listserv was shut down, restricting their ability to communicate with staff across the network. Carolyn Mshooshian, a ninth-grade English teacher at Brooklyn Prospect High School, said the response was “disappointing.”

The network declined to comment when asked about the listserv.

As frustrations mounted, students at the high school hastily organized a walkout on Tuesday, with plans to continue their protest throughout the week.

“We’re just trying to make a difference — this is our future,” said Zaviahn Scott, a ninth grader and one of several students who organized the walkout. “We’re a family, we’re a community, and we have to stick together.”

Campbell Dietz, a junior, called the Youth Development and School Culture, or YDSC, team “the disciplinary parent” of the family, adding “they’re never harsh with us.” Teachers and students say the staff members help navigate disciplinary issues and establish a positive school environment. If a student went to the bathroom during class and didn’t return for 15 minutes, one of the staff members might help find them, one teacher said.

One network teacher said they felt more at ease after Ward spoke to staff about the changes, noting the administration had apologized for unclear initial communications and assured them that most staff members in eliminated positions would remain employed within the network if they expressed interest in the new roles.

But some others still remain skeptical.

“There’s definitely been a loss of trust for all of us,” the teacher acknowledged. “With some people, that is going to take them longer to regain.”

Response demonstrates ‘democracy in action’

Potter noted there’s a longstanding equity debate over whether certain education issues should be handled by designated teams or positions. She drew a parallel to discussions over whether a chief integration officer should be instituted at the city’s department of education.

“One of the first things that comes up is that we don’t want this work to be siloed, we need this to be everyone’s work,” she said. “Now the frustration ends up being … well, sometimes we end up with neither. There’s not a team that is owning this and there’s not a culture that’s making this everyone’s work.”

Potter noted there’s merit to both arguments, adding it hinged on open communication and execution.

Still, students and teachers feared the pending shakeup could mean functionally losing people they’ve come to rely on. And for students who have developed close relationships to YDSC staff, even if they transition into new roles, it’s unclear whether they’ll remain at their school.

A spokesperson for the network said schools will look to limit how many staff are transferred to other schools within the network, but added the specifics depended on how the transfer process played out.

The spokesperson also noted the network’s new middle school in Sunset Park would help funnel more enrollment into the high school, where numbers had lagged recently. It would also create new positions to allow affected staff to transition into, the spokesperson said.

In some ways, Potter said, the passionate response from students might represent the success of the network’s model.

“Although a difference of vision with leadership is certainly there,” she said, “that might be proof of Prospect Schools having created the type of school environment where students are empowered and critical thinkers, and pushing on these very questions of diversity and equity.”

At some other schools, if a similar change were proposed, the conversation might play out differently, she added.

“It sounds to me like diversity and democracy in action, in what could be a really good way.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

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

A hidden divide: How NYC’s high school system separates students by gender

2023-03-22T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

The two schools sharing the Paul Robeson High School campus in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, have much in common. Both serve predominantly Black, Latino, and low-income students. Both focus on equipping students with vocational skills through career and technical education.

But on one measure, the two schools are nearly opposites.

Pathways in Early Technology, or P-Tech, is 72% male, while the Academy for Health Careers is 74% female.

“It’s like we basically can’t have a prom without the other school,” joked Lisa Grevenberg, the principal of the Academy for Health Careers.

The divide in the Paul Robeson campus reflects a striking pattern that has persisted across New York City’s high schools for decades, and sets New York apart from other large districts: High school students in the five boroughs are unusually likely to attend gender-skewed schools.

A whopping 17% of New York City public high schoolers go to a school that’s at least 65% male or 65% female — or, in other words, where boys outnumber girls by at least 2 to 1, or vice versa, a Chalkbeat analysis found. Students here attend gender-skewed high schools at a minimum of three times the rate as any of the next four largest school districts in the country.

In Los Angeles, the country’s second largest district, just 4% of students attend a gender-skewed high school. In Chicago, the figure is 3%.

While the causes of the city’s gender imbalances are complex, Chalkbeat’s analysis shows a large portion of students in gender-skewed high schools attend CTE schools like those in the Paul Robeson campus. About three-fourths of dedicated CTE high schools across the city are highly gender-imbalanced, with the majority of those enrolling more boys, Chalkbeat’s analysis found.

Schools Chancellor David Banks is now poised to expand CTE even further through the rollout of two programs that help schools set up students with paid job experiences before they graduate. The education department hopes the new programs will help ease longstanding gender divides in CTE.

“It is true, our society has pushed boys and girls towards different types of jobs for decades, most notably in the traditional trade programs,” said education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer, noting that the city’s CTE landscape most likely drove the trend uncovered by the data.

The education department is hopeful that the new CTE programs Banks is rolling out along with an existing Computer Science for All initiative can help tackle gender disparities, Styer said.

Overall, 51% of New York City high school students are male, and 49% are female, according to federal data from the 2021-2022 school year. Across New York state, 142 high school students were listed as “not specified” for gender, which could mean they are nonbinary, or data is missing. New York City didn’t record any “not specified” high school students.

The gender imbalances have profound effects on how high schools operate, presenting opportunities and challenges for educators and students.

In some cases, particularly in the roughly dozen schools across the city that are explicitly designed to be single-gender, proponents say the model can create safe spaces to address gender-specific challenges.

It’s “no secret” that Banks, who founded the all-boys Eagle Academy schools, believes “in the experience that single-gender high schools can provide students,” Styer said.

At the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, which was created to help propel more girls into math and science, alumni have consistently praised the “community and sisterhood” that developed in a single-gender environment, said Principal Kiri Soares.

In programs that are all or predominantly male, educators like P-Tech Principal Rashid Davis say the gender imbalance allows them to zero in on the specific barriers facing Black and Latino boys, who continue to log the city’s lowest graduation rates.

“My starting point is further away from the spear of success,” Davis said of the population he serves. “It’s a completely different ballgame.”

Some proponents of CTE education argue it’s okay – and even helpful – if vocational training disproportionately helps boys, since boys face yawning gaps in educational achievement compared to girls.

The graduation rate for boys in New York City was 9 percentage points lower than that of girls in the most recent cohort.

Nationally, girls get better high school grades than boys, and now make up roughly 60% of students enrolled in college.

Richard Reeves, a Brookings Institute fellow and author of the book “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It,” calls for federal subsidies to create 1,000 new vocational high schools as part of a plan to boost boys’ outcomes.

But gender imbalances also can present thorny problems for schools, particularly when it comes to supporting students in the minority group.

“It is tricky in a school that’s predominantly one gender or another,” said Grevenberg, the principal of the Academy for Health Careers. “How do you make sure the other gender feels like they have advocates… How do we make sure they feel they’re not boys at a girls school?”

Critics of gender segregation have for decades voiced concerns that the city’s vocational schools unintentionally reinforce gender divides in the labor market and disproportionately exclude girls from schools that could help lead to higher-paying jobs in fields like technology and computer science.

In a 2008 report titled “Blue School, Pink School: Gender Imbalance in New York City CTE High Schools,” former public advocate Betsy Gotbaum argued “young women are not equally represented in CTE programs, especially those that prepare students for higher-paying occupations.”

Evidence from other countries suggests that gender imbalance in schools is not just a reflection of gender segregation in the labor market, but actually helps create it.

There are also social ramifications of the extreme gender skews.

At one District 75 school for students with significant disabilities that, like much of the rest of the district, enrolls almost exclusively boys, a staffer expressed concerns about the impacts of the gender balance on both boys and girls.

“For our young men, socially it makes it difficult because they’re not interacting with females on a regular basis,” said the staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “And when they do interact with them it’s super aggressive… It’s unfortunate because we’ve had a lot of young ladies transfer out of our schools.”

The pattern has persisted for decades

Gender segregation in New York City’s high schools is not a new phenomenon.

The National Women’s Law Center traced the origins back to the early 1900s, when the city’s Board of Education explicitly prohibited boys and girls from enrolling in the same vocational schools, according to Gotbaum’s 2008 report.

Over the past two decades, New York City’s high school system transformed profoundly through the shuttering of dozens of troubled larger high schools, the opening of scores of smaller high schools, and the introduction of a choice system that allows rising ninth graders to select up to 12 choices from a list of more than 400 options.

Those changes have done little to dent the city’s unusual levels of gender segregation – and have perhaps fueled it.

“The more options you have, the more opportunities there are for sorting on many different dimensions, and gender is just one of those areas that hasn’t gotten as much attention,” said Sean Corcoran an associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, who’s extensively studied New York City’s high school system.

It’s not just CTE schools contributing to the city’s high school gender imbalances.

Arts and music-focused schools that require auditions also lean heavily toward girls, with 11 of 14 audition-only schools across the city qualifying as gender-imbalanced – all in favor of girls, Chalkbeat’s analysis found.

Academically selective schools mostly don’t rise to the extreme levels of gender skew Chalkbeat targeted in its analysis, but they’re not balanced either.

Highly competitive screened schools like Beacon, Townsend Harris, and Eleanor Roosevelt that have traditionally used multiple academic measures to admit students are disproportionately female, with 16 of 27 enrolling at least 55% girls. Specialized academic schools like Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and Bronx Science that use a single admissions exam, by contrast, lean male, with six of eight enrolling at least 55% boys.

The names of schools alone could play an important role in driving the gender disparities, observers said.

Eighth graders may not have the time or wherewithal to deeply research each school choice, and may end up choosing schools with names that relate to their interests.

“If you look at any of the small schools that have computer and engineering in their name,” they tend to skew heavily male, noted Davis, who led the Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy before taking the helm at P-Tech.

A Chalkbeat review found 24 highly male-heavy schools with names related to computers, technology, or engineering. Another six male-heavy schools had names related to construction or sports. Among highly female-skewed schools, 15 had names relating to the arts or music, while seven had to do with health care.

Gender imbalances create challenges and opportunities

For students and educators in gender-skewed schools, the imbalances can shape everything from academic and extracurricular offerings to the school’s culture and social life.

Jaymee Warren, 18, is the only girl in the welding program at Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, which prepares students for maritime careers, and she has faced her share of challenges.

“If we’re having an open group discussion and I’m about to say an idea, someone will cut me off, and it becomes more about what the guys were saying and their group banter,” she said.

But Warren noted that the school’s staff has worked hard to make girls feel included. Supportive female staffers, in particular, make the student gender balance feel “almost equal because of the way women are empowered.”

On the other end of the gender imbalance spectrum, administrators at the Academy for Health Careers have spent significant effort and resources supporting the school’s male population.

“When I came, the success of the male students didn’t match the success of the girls,” said Grevenberg. “We had a 92% graduation rate for females and 68% for boys.”

Grevenberg brought in community-based organizations experienced in working with boys, offered extra training for her male staffers to act as mentors, and set up after-school workshops specifically for boys. Partly as a result, the graduation rate for boys at the school is now 81%, she said.

Chalkbeat’s analysis only examines gender balance at the school level, which may obscure further gender sorting that happens within schools. But gender imbalances at the school level can be particularly tricky for administrators to manage.

At one District 75 program, for example, there were so few girls that the school couldn’t justify the resources to fund a girls basketball team, said a staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Research on the academic effects of gender segregation isn’t extensive, but a 2017 California State University dissertation found most of the existing evidence points to “a higher proportion of females improv[ing] the classroom and learning environment” for both boys and girls.

Principals have also gone out of their way to attract more applicants from underrepresented gender groups. Gravenberg makes sure to tap male-student tour guides when eighth grade families visit, while Harbor School Principal Jeff Chetirko makes sure to showcase female students at open houses.

But there’s only so much principals can do. While the city education department allows schools to prioritize for admissions purposes applicants from some underrepresented groups, including students from low-income families, homeless students, and English language learners, schools can’t prioritize applicants by gender unless they’re single-gender schools.

An education department spokesperson said the agency is focused on giving students “early and frequent access to careers and workspaces that were not previously on their radar.”

Officials said they’re making progress through the Computer Science for All program, noting 42% of city students who took at least one Computer Science AP exam in 2021 were girls, higher than the national average of 30%.

Warren, the welding student, has no regrets about her high school path and says she’s learned some valuable skills from being the only girl, including “realiz[ing] it’s okay to stand up for myself.”

But Warren’s college plans have taken an ironic twist: One of the schools she’s most interested in, Fashion Institute of Technology, is 82% female.

“Thinking about going to a school with mostly girls really scared me,” Warren said. “But I’ve been able to figure out who I am more, what I want to stand for, and I feel like that really helps me make connections with people now.”

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

Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

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.

The racist idea that changed American education

2023-02-27T20:00:00+00:00

This story was originally published on Feb. 22 by Vox.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

Almost exactly 50 years ago, Alex Rodriguez got his 15 minutes of fame when he was in sixth grade.

Now 61, Rodriguez recalls when news media swarmed his family’s small home in west San Antonio in 1973. “There was everybody and their grandma as far as reporters all over the place,” he said. “At the school, at the house, at the neighborhood. They were just going crazy.” The TV crews had cameras, he recalls, that “were bigger than a bazooka.”

In a way, the reporters were there because of him. In 1968, his father, Demetrio, had sued the state of Texas for underfunding his son’s school district, which was predominantly made up of low-income and Mexican American families. Alex recalls the third floor of his elementary school being condemned; when it rained, water would pour down the stairs. Three or four students shared one textbook.

The lawsuit, filed by Rodriguez and a number of other parents, remarkably, had reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Civil rights groups were hoping — and some reporters expecting — it to be the “Brown vs. Board of Education of the 1970s,” as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal put it.

But as the case wound its way through federal court, a nascent counter-idea was blossoming: Maybe, an influential cadre of social scientists claimed, it didn’t matter how much money schools spent. In fact, maybe schools weren’t actually a key factor in what students learned.

Maybe — most insidiously — poor children of color weren’t likely to succeed in school no matter how well-funded their schools. This idea was spreading, appearing in academic journals and publications like the Atlantic and the Washington Post. A New York Times news article from 1970 included this startling line: “In the case of a slum child,” it read, citing supposedly cutting-edge research, “his chances of learning to read were quite limited, even though large amounts of money might be devoted to his education.”

Fifty years ago this year, the Supreme Court cited some of that same research to rule against the Rodriguez family. The racist notion that children in poverty could not benefit from additional or even equal resources may well have influenced the court’s decision.

“The poor people have lost again, not only in Texas but in the United States, because we definitely need changes in the educational system,” Demetrio Rodriguez told one of the reporters that Alex recalls descending on their home. The media soon left, and Alex went back to the same underfunded school. “It was famous for a day or two — then that was it,” he says now.

Admittedly, the legal and practical merits of the Court’s 1973 decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez are complex and up for legitimate debate. In the long run, the ruling was not the devastating blow to funding equality efforts that many advocates feared. Funding gaps due to property taxes have narrowed or fully closed, in part because state courts stepped in after the Supreme Court stepped aside.

Still today, thanks to the Rodriguez case, the Constitution does not protect the right to an education.

But that often took decades, and the decision had a lasting impact. It left multiple generations of low-income children, like Alex Rodriguez, in schools with lesser funding. This is particularly troubling because more recent evidence has found a meaningful link between spending and student success.

Still today, thanks to the Rodriguez case, the Constitution does not protect the right to an education. A recent effort by students in Detroit to garner some federal right to quality, adequately funded schools failed. For half a century, the decision has effectively closed federal courts to students and families seeking a better education.

On a Thursday morning in May 1968, hundreds of students walked out of Edgewood High School on the west side of San Antonio. They held signs: “‘Every student in America deserves a great education. Where is ours?” “We want a gym not a barn.” “Better library, better teachers, better schools.” They marched to the superintendent’s office with a list of demands. It was a sign of the civil rights-infused times — “the era of rising expectations among minority groups like the Mexican American youngsters” of the city, as the local San Antonio Express put it.

A number of parents had joined in the protest, and soon organized the Edgewood Concerned Parents Association. “When I heard kids saying they didn’t think they could make it in college because of their high school education, then that’s when I decided it was time to do something,” one parent said.

Demetrio Rodriguez — a sheet metal worker, military veteran, and then a father of three young boys — was among those frustrated parents. The group initially targeted their ire at district officials, concerned that they were self-dealing or hoarding money. But then they met with a local lawyer, Arthur Gochman, who pointed out that the district got dramatically less funding than others in the area. Maybe the schools’ problems stemmed not from mismanagement of money, but a lack of it.

Since the advent of public education in America, property taxes had been schools’ biggest source of funding. And because property values varied dramatically from place to place, school funding did too. (Today, state funding has eclipsed local dollars for schools, reducing or even eliminating gaps in dollars due to property taxes. But disparities still exist in some places and funding often isn’t targeted to the highest-needs students. )

Nationally, the correlation between property wealth and poverty was not perfect — in some places, especially big cities, expensive property sat next to deep poverty. But the link was strong enough to create large funding gaps between school districts. In 1972, the country’s most affluent districts were spending 40% more per student than the highest-poverty districts.

The San Antonio area was a perfect example. Alamo Heights — an affluent northern part of the city, which had kept Black and Hispanic residents out through racially restrictive covenants — had nearly 10 times the taxable property value as the Edgewood school district, which served mostly low-income, Mexican American children.

The consequences, then, were preordained, and state and federal funds couldn’t make up the gap either. When all the funding was added up, in 1968 Edgewood schools received $356 per student compared to $594 in Alamo Heights, just a few miles across town.

That translated into big differences in what the schools could offer. Teachers in Edgewood were paid much less than those in Alamo Heights. Probably because of that, half of them had only substandard credentials, compared to 11% in Alamo Heights, which also had more staff per student. Class sizes in Edgewood were an average of 28 kids. Alamo Heights had a counselor for every 650 students; Edgewood had one for every 3,100. Despite being in southern Texas, just one in three Edgewood classrooms had air conditioning.

On July 10, 1968, with the support of Gochman, who took the case pro bono, Demetrio Rodriguez and several other San Antonio families filed suit against Texas’s school funding system, which they claimed violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution by discriminating against low-income, Mexican American families across the state. “I thought, I ain’t got nothing to lose,” Rodriguez said later. “Maybe we could do some good.”

But far from San Antonio, a small group of social scientists had begun to question the importance of money in public education. Instead, some researchers implied — or even stated outright — that blame for low student performance lay mostly with low-income families of color themselves.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act had included a provision requiring the federal Office of Education to produce a study on inequality in education. Many assumed it would show the need for more investment in segregated Black schools. Two years later, the federal government released the results — which stunned many educators and policymakers. The massive analysis of close to 600,000 students showed large gaps in test scores between Black and white students, but didn’t find much evidence that better schools or more funding led to higher test scores. Lagging student achievement, lead researcher James Coleman concluded, was mostly due to “the home” and “the cultural influences immediately surrounding the home,” rather than schools or money.

The study “produced the astounding proposition that the quality of the schools has only a trifling relation to achievement,” wrote politician and Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who evangelized the Coleman report, as it came to be known, in speeches and articles.

Coleman’s data set was unprecedented, but his methods for teasing out the impacts of funding on student outcomes were crude. He couldn’t follow individual students’ progress over time or isolate the effect of an infusion of funding. “Coleman’s analysis was not only wrong but generated misunderstandings that remain sadly pervasive today,” wrote Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby in a 2016 retrospective.

Nevertheless, the report soon picked up widespread attention: discussed at congressional hearings, written about in newspapers and magazines, and pored over by academics. It also drew notice because it came soon after the 1965 passage of Title I, the first major federal education funding stream and a key piece of Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty.”

Coleman’s conclusion that families mattered more than schools seemed to bolster another high-profile report of the era: “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” written by Moynihan and published in 1965. This controversial analysis claimed that a rise in single parenthood was at the heart of a “tangle of pathology” among Black families. Moynihan said the point of the report was to spur government action to support low-income Black households. But some civil rights leaders condemned the report as shifting the blame for racial inequality onto Black people.

In 1969, this implication became explicit in an academic article published by University of California Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen. He claimed that IQ is nearly fixed at birth and that, therefore, extra funding for poor and Black children was doomed to fail because of what he viewed as their genetically low intelligence. This flagrantly racist argument was a sensation, garnering widespread press coverage. “Can Negroes learn the way Whites do?” was the headline in US News. “Born Dumb?” followed Newsweek. “Intelligence: Is there a racial difference?” asked Time magazine. The New York Times Magazine sympathetically profiled Jensen, describing his “severely trying moments” of being accused of racism.

This was a sign of the times, too: The heady optimism that the federal government could quickly end poverty and educational inequality had waned. The liberal coalition that had supported civil rights and Johnson’s war on poverty had splintered, amid white backlash and the Vietnam War. Riots rippled across American cities. White intelligentsia cast about for explanations for the persistent challenges of poverty, urban unrest, and racial inequality. Some landed on a convenient, age-old answer: the deficiencies of poor people of color.

That’s how in 1970, the Times could declare a “slum child” uneducable. Similarly, a 1970 Wall Street Journal news piece said that Title I funding to help students in poverty had produced “negligible” results. Lower test scores among children of color could be explained by either “genetic or cultural” factors, the article claimed.

In the introduction to a 1971 cover story on IQ, the editors of the Atlantic claimed that Moynihan, Coleman, and Jensen’s reports — “three landmark social documents” — had collectively called into question policy efforts to address racial inequity in education and elsewhere. Getting rid of racist laws had not eliminated economic and educational inequalities — “presumably,” they wrote, “because of internal barriers.”

A 1973 front-page Washington Post story opened with this analogy: “The doctors, you might say, keep telling the parents that their child’s case is hopeless, that no amount of money or variety of remedies will add up to a cure.” The piece was accompanied by a picture of a Black student in a remedial reading class.

There were other, legitimate reasons to question the efficacy of school spending, including a 1969 report from the NAACP concluding that Title I dollars were often being misused. The Coleman report, although methodologically flawed, was among the few empirical examinations of whether more money led to better schools. The problem was that some pundits and researchers had leaped from these early results to write off the impact of schools and funding altogether.

A number of Black academics and writers tried to combat this fatalist brand of social science. “Such studies are a throwback to the nineteenth century theorists who adopted Social Darwinism — the survival of the fittest — as a means of bolstering the privileged classes of society,” wrote Vernon Jordan in the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper. “Now this old and ugly tradition is being revived.”

But this critique got much less attention from journalists and policymakers than the new educational fatalism, which had already migrated up to the White House.

Later serving as an adviser for President Richard Nixon, Moynihan sent the president an excerpt of Jensen’s paper on race and IQ, as well as two later memos that referenced Jensen’s claims. In a 1971 memo prompted by the Atlantic article on IQ, Moynihan claimed that psychologists believed that there was a “ranking of the major races” by intelligence: Asians, Caucasians, and then “Africans.” Moynihan expressed some anguish over this and described the conclusion as “not settled.” He also recommended Nixon not give up on social programs altogether.

Others were more fatalistic. White House adviser Patrick Buchanan, who later mounted bids for president, wrote a memo about the same article, saying it cast doubt on extra education spending. “Every study we have shows blacks 15 IQ points below whites on the average,” he wrote.

During a phone call with Moynihan, Nixon endorsed the idea of a racial hierarchy of intelligence. “What was said earlier by Jensen is probably very close to the truth,” said Nixon — who appointed four of the justices who, in just a few years, would decide Demetrio Rodriguez’s case.

But in 1971, three years after filing the lawsuit, Rodriguez still had good reason to be optimistic. In December, he and the other San Antonio parents won a major victory in federal court. ”The current system of financing public education in Texas discriminates on the basis of wealth,” a three-judge panel concluded unanimously. The question of whether more money could improve schools did not even come up in the decision.

Texas decided to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. The stakes were high not just in Texas, but beyond: Numerous other lawsuits had been filed against property tax–driven funding schemes across the country. But they were on a collision course with the new social science about the limits of school funding.

It was easy to miss, but phrases like “inequalities among people,” and “inadequate home life” were suggesting that children of color or children in poverty could not be expected to achieve high levels of academic performance, and so it would be fruitless to make funding more equal.

In a column for the New York Times, Moynihan wrote that while he sympathized with the Rodriguez plaintiffs, equal funding would not help schools. “The least promising thing we could do in education would be to spend more money on it,” he declared. The article was cited in the Texas brief before the Supreme Court.

It was possible to argue against the lawsuits based on legitimate questions about funding and outcomes, local control, or the constitutional issues at play. But at least in some cases, arguments lapsed into fatalism.

“In the view of many,” a 1971 Times story about the case claimed, “the true sources of educational deficiencies are rooted in the more basic inequalities among people and no amount of reshuffling of tax dollars, however just, is going to change that.”

“Do we as legislators have the responsibility to compensate for inadequate home life?” wondered an Oklahoma state legislator, as quoted by the Times.

It was easy to miss, but phrases like “inequalities among people,” and “inadequate home life” were suggesting that children of color or children in poverty could not be expected to achieve high levels of academic performance, and so it would be fruitless to make funding more equal.

One civil rights group was so concerned about the schools-don’t-matter narrative that it held a press conference in 1972 to beseech courts not to rely on this research. Such studies amounted to a “sophisticated type of backlash” to efforts to address inequality, said Kenneth Clark, a prominent Black psychologist whose research was cited in Brown v. Board of Education.

No matter. Attorneys defending Texas’s school funding scheme had seized on this research. “Beyond some minimum there is reason to believe that there is no relation between expenditures and quality of education,” lawyers for the state wrote in their brief before the court.

Justice Lewis Powell, whom Nixon had appointed to the Supreme Court in 1971 and who had previously served on the Richmond and Virginia school boards, wrote the majority opinion in San Antonio v. Rodriguez. It was a 5-4 ruling, with the four recent Nixon appointees forming the crucial majority bloc. If it had reached the court a bit earlier, it could have easily gone the other way.

Powell concluded it simply wasn’t the court’s role to meddle with complex funding formulas. Legally, Powell said that poor children and families do not warrant heightened constitutional protection from discrimination and that education is not a fundamental right.

Powell also raised questions about whether money matters — citing Coleman and Moynihan. “One of the major sources of controversy concerns the extent to which there is a demonstrable correlation between educational expenditures and the quality of education,” wrote Powell. The Los Angeles Times later reported that the issue of whether money mattered weighed significantly in the justices’ thinking. Powell did not himself claim that poor children of color could not learn or that schools did not matter, but the growing skepticism about education funding was deeply linked to that very idea.

The shadow of Brown v. Board of Education seemed to loom large in the case, but not in the way many expected. Enforcing desegregation had prompted a furious backlash and a host of practical difficulties that engulfed the court in litigation for decades to come. Deciding for the plaintiffs in the Rodriguez case, Powell wrote, would have led to an “unprecedented upheaval in public education.” Of course, Brown had led to such an upheaval. But Powell seemed to conclude that it simply wasn’t worth it this time.

“Powell felt that it would lead the Supreme Court into morass, like Brown v. the Board,” recalls Mark Yudof, a lawyer who worked on the case for the San Antonio parents. “It was a fear of being dragged into this unknown terrain that probably was the strongest factor.”

To Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had spearheaded the Brown litigation as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the majority opinion was a betrayal of Brown. “The majority’s holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity,” he wrote in dissent.

But the case was over. There would be no federal right to an education then or now. Dozens of lawsuits in lower courts were suddenly dead.

“I cannot avoid at this moment feeling deep and bitter resentment against the supreme jurists and the persons who nominated them to that high position,” Demetrio Rodriguez told the New York Times after the decision.

The legal fights over school funding were just beginning.

After the loss in 1973, lawyers and advocates shifted their focus to state courts. They sued under state constitutions — which, unlike the federal constitution, typically guarantee some form of education explicitly — and won a string of victories in a number of states. That included Texas, where Demetrio Rodriguez and other parents won a decision in 1989, which eventually resulted in some property taxes from wealthy areas being redistributed to poorer communities, a scheme dubbed by Texas politicians as “Robin Hood.”

“I cried this morning because this is something that has been in my heart,” said Rodriguez at the time. “My children will not benefit from it ... but there is nothing I can do about it now.”

Meanwhile, the debate about money and schools had also shifted. In the decades that followed Rodriguez, many politicians and researchers continued to question whether more dollars bought more learning. But this contention became much less linked to racist and classist assumptions about which children could learn. Instead it focused on whether public schools were functional enough to use money effectively.

More recently, the debate has shifted once again. In a seminal 2016 paper, three economists found that children benefited when their schools got extra money due to a state court order. Other research, examining different funding changes, has generally reached a similar conclusion: Students, particularly low-income students, typically do better when schools get more funding. “The results are very, very consistent,” said Kirabo Jackson, a Northwestern University economist and leading researcher on school funding. “The vast majority of these studies find positive effects on student outcomes.”

Research in the wake of the Coleman report has also shown that while out-of-school factors, like poverty, do affect student learning, schools and teachers matter too. Of course.

The above history might give us pause before too quickly accepting the confident claims of social science. But at the least, the new research has erased any scientific veneer behind the claim that money or schools don’t matter. Still, the court has not seriously reconsidered the Rodriguez decision; instead, in 2009, it reiterated in even stronger terms that money is unlikely to improve schools.

Admittedly, what the school funding system would have looked like today had the Supreme Court ruled differently in Rodriguez is unknowable.

Jeffrey Sutton, a federal judge and former clerk to Lewis Powell, has argued that state courts proved better equipped to deal with local funding complexities and ended up successfully addressing the funding disparities in Texas and elsewhere. These court decisions really did help chip away at school funding disparities — although it took time. By 1992, the funding gap between poor and non-poor districts was down to 20%, as states began making up for property tax differences. Presently the gap, contrary to conventional wisdom, is basically zero on a national level. Edgewood, for instance, receives similar funding as Alamo Heights all these years later.

But other legal scholars take the view that federal courts abdicated their responsibility and could be doing more. They point out that funding gaps still do exist in certain places and that there is a consensus that children in poverty need not simply equal funding for their education, but more.

In 2016, a handful of students in Detroit filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a “right to read.” After a fleeting victory before an appeals court, the full circuit court vacated the decision. In the end, the plaintiffs managed a meager settlement with the state of Michigan in 2020. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer promised to seek $94 million in extra funding for the city’s schools, but to date, it has not been funded.

It was nearly 50 years after Rodriguez, but the decision loomed large. It also has loomed in the background of Alex Rodriguez’s life.

After the decision, his schools, not surprisingly, didn’t change much. In the years that followed, the funding gap between Edgewood and Alamo Heights actually grew larger. Rodriguez graduated from high school in 1979 with little idea of what to do next. No one at the school had suggested he go to college. He doesn’t even recall thinking that was an option. Rodriguez worked for a while at an auto parts store, and then got a job driving a city bus. He did that for 36 years, logging over 2 million miles. He retired just over a year ago.

He lives a busy, fulfilling life now — running errands for his family, working on his truck, spending time with grandkids. He lives in the same house his parents did, the one on which cameras and reporters and lawyers descended 50 years ago. He has what he needs and doesn’t want more than that. He doesn’t live with any regrets. But Alex Rodriguez also understands that he was shortchanged. “I was one of the ones that suffered through the lack of education,” he says.

Matt Barnum is a Spencer fellow in education journalism at Columbia University and a reporter at Chalkbeat, where he’s written about education policy and politics since 2017.

This story appears courtesy of Vox.com and Vox Media, LLC. Chalkbeat’s typical republishing guidelines do not apply.

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.

Brooklyn principal leaves middle school after teacher complaints mount

2023-01-26T21:36:40+00:00

An embattled Brooklyn middle school principal is leaving his post following months of tensions with teachers.

M.S. 51’s Neal Singh will be replaced on Feb. 1 by Pui-Lam (Jack) Chan, who will serve as acting interim principal as the school embarks on the formal hiring process, according to a letter District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez sent on Thursday to parents. Singh will be joining the superintendent’s team.

Singh took over Park Slope’s M.S. 51 in August 2020, after the previous principal of 14 years abruptly retired before an especially challenging new school year. His first task: To figure out all of the complicated COVID-related city guidance around reopening the campus, while also managing remote students and staff. At the same time, the school was learning to adapt to teaching a student body with a wider range of academic needs following a major admissions change across District 15 in 2019.

M.S. 51, like other schools across the city, also has been grappling with higher needs in general, both academically and socially, because of the pandemic-related isolation and school disruptions.

Singh’s leadership style clashed with many of the teachers, as Chalkbeat previously reported.

By March 2021, a group of frustrated educators had compiled their complaints in a three-page document, charging Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing extensive concerns about safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary decision-making,” and interference with union activities, according to a copy of the document obtained by Chalkbeat. Two-thirds cast their ballots in favor of the no-confidence vote in the principal.

A few months later, the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance on behalf of 41 staffers alleging a pattern of harassment and intimidation of union members. It was the largest so-called union animus grievance in UFT history, union officials said. Many teachers have since left their positions at the school, several educators told Chalkbeat.

Singh did not respond to requests for comment.

“We thank Mr. Singh for his unwavering dedication and service to the school and community, and we wish him the best in his new position supporting schools across the entire district,” Alvarez wrote in his letter to parents.

According to City Council member Shahana Shanif, Singh (who is Indo-Caribbean) stepped down after a “coordinated campaign of racist harassment,” a statement she posted on Twitter said.

“As one of the few principals of color in District 15, Principal Singh broke so many barriers in our community and was a proud leader in the fight to desegregate our racially divided school system,” she wrote.

Principal Singh served our school community with distinction and dedication. I am deeply saddened to see him leave MS 51 and even more disturbed by the racist smear campaign run against him. Our community deserves better. My full statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/kHf1YEU924
— Council Member Shahana Hanif (@CMShahanaHanif) January 25, 2023

Singh had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, and before that an environmental science teacher at LaGuardia High School, where in 2012 he won a prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in teaching.

District 15’s middle school diversity plan, heralded as a model by many integration advocates, has changed the demographics at many schools, including M.S. 51, a sought-after choice known as one of the district’s “big three” middle schools with a competitive application process before the district moved to an all-lottery system. Last year, more than half of M.S. 51’s students came from low-income families, up from nearly a third the year before the admissions change, according to public data.

Chan has more than 20 years of experience at New Utrecht High School, in Brooklyn’s District 21, where he has been an assistant principal since 2009, according to the letter from Alvarez. While there, Chan oversaw social-emotional learning and adult education programs, and as president of the Social Studies Supervisors Association has extensive connections with New York City’s community organizations.

“Mr. Chan is also a trained coach,” Alvarez wrote, “and he has leveraged his skills as an empathic listener to intentionally build trusting and supportive relationships in the school environment.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Neal Singh was once an environmental science teacher.

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

Tensions high at a Brooklyn middle school as teachers spar with their principal

2023-01-24T00:37:00+00:00

Teachers and staff at M.S. 51, a large middle school in Park Slope, filed into the gym during their lunch hour last March to drop their paper ballots into a box to declare “yes” or “no” in a vote of no confidence in their principal.

A group of frustrated educators had compiled their complaints in a three-page, single-spaced document, charging Neal Singh with “gross mismanagement of our school” and describing extensive concerns about safety, lack of communication, “capricious and arbitrary decision-making,” and interference with union activities, according to a copy of the document obtained by Chalkbeat.

When the votes were counted, two-thirds had voted in favor. The months that followed were acrimonious, culminating in June when the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance that alleges a pattern of harassment and intimidation of union members. Forty-one staff members signed on, making it the largest so-called union animus grievance in UFT history, union officials confirmed.

The discord at M.S. 51 is a departure for a school that was known as one of the district’s “big three” middle schools, a sought-after choice with a competitive application process and reputation for challenging academics and an extensive arts program. It was also widely considered by teachers to be a plum assignment.

Singh took over the 1,100-seat school in August of 2020 at a difficult juncture: The administration was tasked with reopening the campus during the pandemic while also adapting to educating a student body with a wider range of academic needs following a major admissions change across the district in 2019. Tensions between administration and teachers have remained high ever since.

According to several signatories, the grievance is expected to go to arbitration. Some teachers decided not to wait for resolution. About a dozen have left since June, several teachers told Chalkbeat, including two assistant principals and half the arts specialists, a turnover rate that’s highly unusual for the school.

When reached by phone on Sunday, Singh declined to be interviewed and referred questions to the department of education. Department spokesperson Chyann Tull wrote in an email, “At New York City Public Schools, our first priority is to make sure that all students receive the high-quality care and education that they deserve. The district superintendent is actively supporting the school community at M.S. 51 to ensure that the environment remains successful for all.”

Some parents staunchly defended Singh, characterizing the complaints against him as a vendetta, inspired in part by racism on the part of disgruntled staff (Singh was born in Trinidad), and describing him as a beloved figure who has weathered a challenging stretch at the school.

‘An impossible time’ for a new principal to start

Singh was appointed acting principal at M.S. 51 after the long-serving head of the school, Lenore DiLeo-Berner, abruptly retired after 14 years, a month before the new school year began. (Singh was given the permanent post in February 2021). He had been an assistant principal at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, and before that an environmental science teacher at LaGuardia High School, where he won the prestigious Sloan Award for excellence in teaching in science and mathematics in 2012.

“It was an impossible time to start,” a veteran teacher acknowledged. (All seven M.S. 51 teachers we spoke with — former and present — asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals or to avoid jeopardizing grievances against the principal.)

Students and teachers were adjusting to hybrid learning — back part of the time in the classrooms and art studios but not really back to normal. And the school was also still adjusting to a demographic shift in students. Last year, more than half of the school’s students came from low-income families, up from nearly a third the year before the admissions change, according to public data.

Teachers told Chalkbeat that they were eager to establish a good rapport with the new principal. A former English teacher said she hoped that Singh, a person of color, would be the right leader to “help support a new learning community that included people of different backgrounds.” The veteran teacher said, “A lot of staff did try to give him the benefit of doubt as long as they possibly could, because people understood it was an unprecedented time.”

But the goodwill did not last.

Early on Singh made a series of decisions that seemed ill-considered to some parents and staff, often undertaken without consulting either, parents and teachers told Chalkbeat. He removed the lockers so students had to carry their belongings around all day. He canceled first period homeroom, which many parents and teachers felt had helped create a sense of community in a large school.

In the union document prepared for the no-confidence vote, teachers charged that Singh did not establish clear boundaries for the school’s out-to-lunch policy, a cherished ritual in which students are allowed to spend their lunch period in the surrounding neighborhood. Too few staff members monitored students leaving the building, they said, and students were able to range farther from the school building. Some students either returned late or not at all, leading to confusion and anxious efforts to locate them.

These changes occurred amid heightening behavioral issues for students. Some had suffered “social and emotional damage” from the stress of the pandemic, one teacher noted, and there was bound to be some fallout, even if most were excited to be back at school. “Kids had all kinds of scars from what had happened, but we were not given support to deal with that,” she said.

Teachers and parents reported that fights were erupting outside the building and in the hallways. Children were also cutting class, vaping and smoking pot in the bathrooms, pulling fire alarms, and bullying other students, the teachers and parents said. The school issued 33 suspensions last year, according to public data. That was up from 19 in 2018-2019, the last full school year before the pandemic.

Incidents were a “daily occurrence,” according to Mia Overall, whose son was persistently bullied, along with two of his female friends, by the same group of kids in his sixth grade year.

Singh met with the parents of the children who were bullied, but Overall felt that the principal was “dismissive” of their concerns. She said the parents of the bullies did not attend the meeting, and there were no consequences for the kids who were tormenting her son. This past fall the bullying continued, and her son transferred to a different middle school.

Student surveys showed mixed feelings about school safety. Roughly 72% of students last year said they felt safe in the hallways and cafeteria. That was down 19 percentage points from the 2019 survey. But 90% reported feeling safe in their classrooms, a decline of 5 points from 2019.

Staffers railed against the principal for a host of other issues as well. According to the no-confidence documents, Singh established new grading policies without consulting faculty; made significant changes in the arts curriculum just days before the new school year; and frequently did not respond to teachers’ emails.

“The reputation of the school has been damaged,” a veteran teacher said. “And it’s not because of the students, it’s not because of the teachers. It’s because of the leadership.”

Singh’s removal of the school’s long-serving photography teacher in June 2021 was also a significant point of contention. While the teacher was eventually reassigned to a different arts department job, the award-winning photography program has been scaled back.

Sonia Alio, a parent of an M.S. 51 graduate, said after the staffing change, students no longer learned to use film cameras — instead they snap photos with their phones — and so they don’t use the darkroom either.

Some parents called him the ‘biggest supporter and advocate of the students’

Singh has some vocal supporters among parents at the school. In December, Tomasita Sherer, the mother of twin eighth-grade boys, wrote to the district’s superintendent, Rafael Alvarez, to convey her “unequivocal support and admiration” for Singh. “Most of the children, teachers and parents love Mr. Singh and would give him an A+ for his kind and stalwart leadership through the COVID crisis and beyond.” She said she believes that complaints about Singh are “meritless.”

Another group of parents wrote to Alvarez last month as well, saying that the principal had done a “remarkable” job as he took over during a very challenging year. Singh “has been the biggest supporter and advocate of the students,” these parents wrote, “insisting on respect and dignity for those children who face challenges largely unseen at the ‘pre-diversity-plan’ MS 51.”

The letter, whose writers declined to be interviewed by Chalkbeat, lauded Singh for promoting “excellence and equity” following the admissions changes. “After at least 15 years of MS 51 being a ‘gifted and talented’ school that cherry-picked only the most well-behaved and academically successful students for admission, our school now held a diverse representation of all of our children,” the parents wrote.

Additionally, last year’s parent surveys showed improvements in their relationship with the principal, with 88% saying they felt the principal worked hard to build trust with parents. That was up 6 percentage points from 2019, under the previous leadership.

The union animus grievance may not be resolved for months; several other grievances are also pending. Some teachers aren’t waiting for the situation to improve.

One teacher said that she had grown up at M.S. 51: her mother taught there for 35 years, and her mother’s colleagues had become her “extended family” when she was a child, and is also a graduate. When she became a teacher herself, she was thrilled to land a position at her alma mater. “To say it is an institution embedded in my soul is putting it lightly,” she wrote.

This year, after 17 years of teaching at M.S. 51, she took a job at another school.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Neal Singh was once an environmental science teacher.

Tracy Tullis is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn.

A once-segregated Denver school fights to stay integrated 50 years after historic court order

2023-01-16T19:00:00+00:00

Stedman Elementary is one of Denver’s most integrated schools. About a third of its students are Black, a third are Hispanic, and a third are white.

“That happened by accident,” Principal Michael Atkins said, “but we are keeping it by design.”

In the 1960s, Stedman wasn’t integrated at all — and it was no accident. In 1968, 92% of Stedman students were Black and the school was overcrowded. Rather than reassign some Stedman students to mostly white schools nearby, the district brought in trailers.

The segregation at Stedman and at other Denver schools spurred a group of families, led by Wilfred Keyes, a Black father and chiropractor, to sue Denver Public Schools in 1969.

The Keyes case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first desegregation case in a major city outside of the South to do so. This year marks 50 years since the high court ordered Denver to desegregate its public schools “root and branch.”

The 1973 ruling made history, even outside Denver. Keyes was what the Supreme Court called a “tri-ethnic case” and was the first to give Hispanic students the same rights to desegregated schools that the Brown v. Board of Education case extended to Black students 19 years earlier.

Keyes also set precedent with regard to intent. The Supreme Court found that the Denver school board’s actions to segregate the schools in the Park Hill neighborhood, including Stedman, showed that the entire Denver district was de facto segregated.

The case also led to a federal consent decree requiring Denver to improve education for Spanish-speaking students, which led to the development of bilingual programming.

The aftermath of the case shaped generations of Denver schoolchildren who were bused in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. They included Atkins, who grew up in Park Hill and played basketball on the Stedman playground on Wednesday nights. But for school, the district bused him to schools located in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods.

Atkins said his educational experience was one of assimilation, tension, and hidden segregation. Even though his middle school was integrated in numbers, the white students were in honors classes and the Black and brown students weren’t.

“The way I lead today has a lot to do with my experiences from the outcomes of the Keyes case,” Atkins said. “I personally learn best in situations where not everyone speaks the same language as me, not everyone looks just like me — different backgrounds. That’s something I want to give my students and families in safe, facilitated ways.”

A student looks out the window as a bus leaves Merrill Jr High for Smiley Jr High, Dec. 15, 1969. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered all Denver schools desegregated.

Keyes case originated in Park Hill

Park Hill was the epicenter of Denver’s school desegregation battle. Beginning in the 1950s and ’60s, Black families were moving east from Five Points to Park Hill, crossing Colorado Boulevard in search of bigger homes on tree-lined streets.

Housing integration could have led to school integration, but the Denver school board took steps to prevent that. It manipulated school boundaries and added temporary classroom trailers to predominantly Black schools. It studied educational equality, passed policies calling for its adoption, and then did nothing to put those policies in place.

In 1960, the district built Barrett Elementary School, just west of Colorado Boulevard from Park Hill Elementary. Denver funneled Black students into the new school, thus ensuring that Park Hill, which had been racially integrated, went back to serving mostly white students.

Rachel Noel’s daughter was reassigned from Park Hill Elementary to Barrett, which opened with an almost all-Black student body. Noel later testified in court that Barrett’s resources and academics were inferior. Her daughter, she said, was learning the same thing at Barrett in fifth grade that she’d learned at Park Hill in fourth grade.

In 1965, Noel became the first Black member elected to the Denver school board. Frustrated by the board’s inaction on integration and reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Noel introduced a resolution in 1968 — now known as the Noel Resolution — that called for “a comprehensive plan for the integration of the Denver Public Schools.”

In a speech she gave more than 20 years later, Noel remembered how the Black community in Denver “exploded” after King’s assassination. Listening to speakers at a meeting call for decision makers to take action, she said she felt they were talking directly to her.

“I knew I was in a position of decision-making,” she said, according to a typed copy of the speech, ”and also I knew that a resolution to integrate the schools was in the making.”

In response to community activism and a new sense of urgency around racial equality, the school board adopted the Noel Resolution 5-2 in May 1968. The board passed three more resolutions in the winter and spring of 1969 that, according to court documents, would have redrawn boundaries to relieve segregation at Barrett, Stedman, and other schools in Park Hill, and established voluntary busing to integrate some schools.

The resolutions sparked a fierce and swift backlash that led to the election of new school board members opposed to integration in May 1969. They promptly voted to repeal the resolutions.

In June, eight families — five Black, one Hispanic, and two white — sued Denver Public Schools. The case became known as Keyes v. School District No. 1.

After years of busing, segregated schools return

Racist retaliation soon followed. Opponents bombed the houses of lead plaintiff Wilfred Keyes, whose family was home but not injured, and of federal Judge William Doyle. About a third of the buses at the district bus depot were destroyed by dynamite.

After the Supreme Court ruled for the families in 1973, Denver created a complex, cross-city system of busing aimed at ensuring each school’s population looked racially similar to the district as a whole. Many white families reacted by leaving for the suburbs and private schools. According to a 1976 report, the number of white students dropped 22% in two years.

But busing did increase integration. Despite the turmoil, some children now say they benefited.

“It enriched my life because I became friends with many people from different cultures and socioeconomic statuses,” Jayne’ Lewis, who is Black and was bused from northeast Denver to Ellis Elementary and other schools in the southeast part of the city, told Chalkbeat in 2019.

“I am still friends with many of these people today.”

The Denver school district repeatedly asked the court to end the desegregation order, and in 1995, a federal judge agreed. Busing stopped in 1996, and not long after, many Denver schools resegregated. Students returned to schools in their neighborhoods, which had remained divided by race and income. Many Denver schools are still segregated today.

School choice, which Denver began promoting in 2012 as part of a strategy to improve the city’s schools and draw families back, allows students to apply to attend any school in the district. Choice could theoretically be used to integrate schools, but it can also be used to prevent it. As the city gentrifies, white families sometimes opt out of nearby schools where most students are Black and Latino in order to attend whiter schools across town.

That’s what was happening at Stedman Elementary when it came time for Andrew Lefkowits to enroll his oldest daughter in kindergarten. Lefkowits grew up in Park Hill and had gone to Stedman in the 1980s, one of only a handful of white children to do so.

Now the father of two kids, Lefkowits and his wife lived in the boundary for the predominantly white Park Hill Elementary, a school bursting at the seams with nearly 700 students and where the PTA raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

In 2016, nearby Stedman had fewer than 250 students. But Lefkowits treasured his experience there and wanted his daughter to have the same. So the family sent her into Stedman, where she was the only white kid in her kindergarten class.

Seven years later, the school has grown to about 425 students and the demographics have changed. Stedman is whiter and its families are wealthier. Though it can’t match Park Hill, Stedman’s PTA is fundraising for a rock climbing wall. And yet Lefkowits said he’s conflicted about how Stedman got there — and how the white population is burgeoning.

“We hit that tipping point,” Lefkowits said, referring to the proportion of white students. “And now as a school, we’ve been trying desperately to slow down the wave as best we can.”

Deborah Sims-Fard’s second grade class at Stedman Elementary School.

Why Stedman is integrated today

Stedman began integrating after adding a Spanish language immersion program that attracted white families who want their children to become bilingual.

Janeel Williams remembers the shift. Ten years ago, she chose to enroll her son Jakhi in kindergarten at Stedman because she wanted him to have Black teachers. More than half of Stedman students were Black and the staff was diverse. Jakhi, now a freshman in high school, had a Black teacher his first year at Stedman.

Part way through Jakhi’s time at Stedman, several teachers of color left, Williams and others said — and some families of color followed suit. Williams stuck it out, but she had mixed feelings when a former principal introduced the Spanish immersion program.

“A lot of Black families were like, ‘Who is she trying to appeal to? Who is she trying to attract?’” Williams said. “Our families don’t speak two languages.”

White families, on the other hand, “came in droves,” Williams said. While she and other Black parents worried they wouldn’t be able to help their children with their schoolwork if it was in Spanish, Williams said white parents pledged to pay for their own private lessons.

“A lot of the Black families kind of felt abandoned at that point,” she said. “It just seemed like you were bringing in this wonderful program for families who could take advantage of it.”

Lefkowits’ younger daughter started in the Spanish immersion program in preschool, and several years later, he said she can easily converse with native speakers. But he has complicated feelings about the program. Without it boosting Stedman’s enrollment, he worries the school could have been closed, a blow to Black families who’ve attended for generations.

But he also worries that white, privileged families have benefitted from the program the most.

“I think there’s ways in which it becomes an opportunity to hoard [resources] for people with privilege, and it’s another thing to get for our kids to boost their resume,” Lefkowits said.

“There’s promise and peril in dual language.”

Stedman is working to maintain its diversity through its language immersion program, prioritizing students that qualify for subsidized meals, and through equity training for its teachers.

How a principal is pushing the Keyes case forward

When Atkins arrived as principal four years ago, he said he saw at Stedman what he’d seen at his own middle school during busing: The school was diverse, but the students were separated. Most white students attended the Spanish immersion program, while most Black and Latino students stuck with the traditional classes.

Atkins set out to change that by going to Black churches on Sundays, visiting Mexican cultural arts centers, and talking to Stedman families “about the power of language and how this opportunity is built for them as well.” That push, he said, helped desegregate Stedman’s programming so that more Black and brown families are now choosing Spanish immersion.

Stedman also is trying other ways to keep its diversity.

Colorado’s Constitution prohibits assigning students to schools “for the purpose of achieving racial balance.” (Denver’s busing was an exception due to the federal court order.) So schools use other measures. Stedman prioritizes students who qualify for subsidized school meals, an indicator of poverty, or who live in a neighborhood where 75% to 100% of children do.

Atkins also tries to make the school a welcoming and affirming place. All Stedman teachers are pushed to examine their biases, and they do training in equity every Friday.

“I personally believe the work that I do is to push the Keyes case forward in a way that is building the capacity of our educators and creating safe spaces for students,” Atkins said.

Parents like Williams help too. Even though her son is now in high school, she continues to recruit for Stedman, where she said Jakhi got an excellent education, despite some of the bumps along the way. She meets with Atkins every year to hash out a game plan for talking to parents at recreation centers, libraries, and the Boys & Girls Club.

Most parents of color are concerned about gentrification, she said, and rising rents have forced many out of Park Hill. But they continue to bring their kids to the neighborhood rec centers, and Williams encourages them to do the same with Stedman. She has confidence it will pay off.

“I see Stedman going up,” she said. “All the way up.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat partnered with Historic Denver to examine the legacy of Keyes v. School District No. 1 50 years after this landmark case through the lens of one school.

Historic Denver Inc. is a nonprofit organization that works to promote and protect Denver’s historic places. This article appeared in print in Historic Denver’s quarterly newspaper.

LISTEN: NYC Chancellor David Banks talks about diversity and integration on ‘School Colors’ podcast

2023-01-13T21:02:59+00:00

To make the second season of School Colors — the critically acclaimed podcast examining race, class, and power in New York City schools — creators Max Freedman and Mark Winston Griffith spoke with more than 120 parents, educators and policy experts about a contentious effort to diversify schools in one corner of Queens.

One person they didn’t get to talk to was schools Chancellor David Banks.

That changed on a rainy Thursday night in December, when Freedman and Winston Griffith sat down with Banks as part of a special event at the Queens Public Library in Jamaica, co-sponsored by Chalkbeat and THE CITY. They asked him about his vision for supporting school diversity in one of the nation’s most segregated public school systems.

A wide-ranging conversation followed, touching on the definition of diversity in a multiracial and multiethnic school system, the balance between improving local schools versus moving students to schools farther away, and how to incorporate the views of parents when their opinions and platforms vary so widely.

The city’s hopes to create a diversity plan for District 28 middle schools fizzled during the pandemic, when the public health crisis took center stage. But the process faced an uphill battle regardless, as the podcast showed, with some of the deeply embedded hurdles in a district separated by a “Mason-Dixon Line,” with Forest Hills on one end and Jamaica at the other.

Banks said he supported districts that wanted to create integration plans, but citywide he preferred to develop “excellent schools” in neighborhoods where kids already live.

And for now, after one year in office, he has other priorities.

“The entire system that we’re seeking to integrate is fundamentally flawed,” Banks said. “Whether you get a chance to sit next to Latino kids, White kids, Black kids, Asian kids - that’s actually less of a priority to me than what is a quality school experience in the first place?”

Banks also shared some of his own experiences as a student growing up in Southeast Queens and getting bused out of his neighborhood to a higher-performing school.

That discussion is now a bonus episode of School Colors that you can find here.

After the interview with Banks wrapped up, Chalkbeat reporter Reema Amin spoke with Freedman and Winston Griffith about their reflections on the chancellor’s remarks, and how they put together the second season of School Colors.

Winston Griffith pointed out that how one frames the purpose of integration often shapes the outcome of the conversation. “If you talk about what it means to be a global citizen and what it’s going to take for everyone to have access to the same kind of quality education, there are not many roads that don’t lead through integration in some form or fashion,” he said.

Reflecting on Banks’s views, Winston Griffith added, “I think what you heard is a fatigue that is generations-long of having this conversation, and integration being lifted as the answer and the solution, and having to, what it feels like, is sort of beg white people to sit next to them.”

That conversation is also a bonus episode that you can find here.

The panelists agreed that the astute and diverse questions and comments from audience members — including suggestions about including more student voices —were a highlight of the evening.

“Us talking to ourselves doesn’t do anything,” said Winston Griffith. “The fact you’re listening and you took the time out on a rainy day to be here and participate in this, it means so much to us.”

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

‘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.

A Brooklyn middle school integration plan shows some patterns are hard to break

2022-11-14T21:42:07+00:00

Charlie Tolan’s offer letter for sixth grade, a seat at Charles O. Dewey Middle School, initially left him deeply disappointed.

It was 2019, the first year his Brooklyn district removed selective admissions in favor of a lottery. None of his friends from P.S. 10 in south Park Slope had been matched to the school in Sunset Park, and he understood it had a “bad reputation” in his community. State test scores were lower than at the schools he preferred, and there were rumors of discipline problems.

But Charlie’s attitude, and his family’s, changed when September rolled around. He quickly made friends, he liked his teachers, and he found the classes engaging and just the right level of challenge, said his mom, Lisa Raymond-Tolan.

Charlie, now in ninth grade, was in the inaugural class of the New York City education department’s effort to better integrate District 15’s middle schools through overhauling admissions. The process came after years of parent advocacy but was also met with trepidation from some families. Still, Charlie didn’t see himself as a participant in some kind of virtuous social equity experiment.

“Charlie just got absorbed into Dewey,” his mother said. “It’s not like there were all these diversity and inclusion things happening overtly at the school. It was just middle school—and that’s what it should be.”

The district’s middle schools now enroll a more demographically mixed group of children than they had before. The share of low-income students at most of the schools has shifted closer to the average figure across the district (though shifts in some schools have been larger than in others). But some diversity advocates suggest that’s just the first step.

“It’s not just about moving bodies,” said Lena Dalke, a school integration advocate at New York Appleseed who works with middle school student activists. It’s about “how to create welcoming spaces in all schools for all students.”

Now, proponents of the District 15 plan—including educators, advocates, parents and students—are considering what happens after a school becomes more racially, ethnically, and economically mixed, and how to foster schools that are supportive of students and families from different backgrounds.

What has worked and what hasn’t in District 15’s plan, which took effect for rising sixth graders in the 2019-20 school year, might be worth a closer look as many other districts across the city recently announced they are dropping selective admissions for next year’s incoming students after a two-year pandemic-related pause on screens for all middle schools. Ten of the city’s 32 districts with schools that previously selected students based on grades or other measures opted to ditch screens, though unlike District 15, few of them had explicit diversity goals with seats set aside for certain children.

One outcome is evident as the students in District 15’s first class of the diversity initiative have gone on to high school this year: Attitudes about schools have begun to change in some corners of Brooklyn, but other patterns around the desirability of certain schools remain hard to break.

For Raymond-Tolan, Dewey offered “a tremendous amount of support” when her son needed help with social concerns; she found the principal, Amanda Bueno, to be “truly amazing.”

Over the past two years, she and Charlie represented Dewey at Park Slope forums for fifth graders and their parents considering their middle school options. Their attendance was itself evidence of a change: “I don’t think Dewey would have been even invited in years past,” Raymond-Tolan said. “I do think there was a shift in the narrative, that Dewey is a good place to go.”

A quick turnaround in a highly segregated district

District 15, which runs from Boerum Hill to Sunset Park, is one of the most racially and economically diverse in the city, but its schools have also been segregated. At M.S. 447 in Boerum Hill, about 27% of students were from low-income families in the 2018-19 school year; at Sunset Park’s Dewey, the share was 93%.

Geography accounts for some of that, as families from more affluent and whiter neighborhoods like Park Slope and Windsor Terrace favored nearby schools, and lower-income and immigrant families living in the south part of the district clustered in Dewey and Sunset Park Prep.

But advocates for equity in education say that academic screens were a significant factor: All but one of the 11 schools in the district used screens in their admissions decisions, and students from families with fewer resources were far more likely to be excluded from well-resourced, sought-after schools due to missing the necessary grade and test score cutoffs.

Under the new system, middle schools would no longer use screens such as grades, state test scores, auditions, or attendance records to select sixth graders. Instead, admissions would be by lottery, and priority would be given to students who were English language learners, low-income, or lived in temporary housing, with a goal of filling 52% of spots in each school with priority applicants (matching the ratio of families in the district who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch). In lively public meetings, some parents argued that retaining screens ensured a merit-based process; others suggested that affluent families needed to stop hoarding privilege.

Resistance to the diversity initiative trickled down to some students as well. Melanie Rosas-Reyes, now an 11th grade activist with IntegrateNYC from Sunset Park, Brooklyn, first heard about the plan from classmates at their well-resourced middle school in Boerum Hill who opposed the idea. Implementing a lottery instead of screening applicants, these students reasoned, would reduce the chances their high-performing younger siblings would get their top choice.

“The idea of meritocracy, that some students deserve certain things because they worked hard—it was really harmful for me to internalize that,” Melanie said. “I would have appreciated having a wider frame, because I was just hearing what privileged people thought about the admissions plan, and not the people who would benefit from it,” such as children from families like hers in Sunset Park.

When admissions results were released in 2019, even advocates of the plan were surprised by the results: Nine of the 11 middle schools reached the planners’ target range of 40% to 75% of offers to low-income students, up from four schools the year before, according to education department data.

In 2018, the last year when screens were used, just 16% of offers to M.S. 442 in Windsor Terrace went to priority group children. In 2019, the first lottery year, the rate jumped to 52%. In the south end of the district, at Dewey, 91% of offers went to students in the priority group in 2018; in 2019, that number fell to 67%.

“The plan had a big impact on the composition of schools,” said Adam Lubinsky, managing principal at WXY Studio, the urban planning firm that helped design the new system. “It was really encouraging to see.”

Across the district, economic segregation in sixth grade decreased by 55% and racial segregation decreased by 38% compared with the previous year.

‘No quick fixes’ in building inclusive school communities

The proponents of the District 15 diversity plan understood that redistributing students among the 11 district middle schools would not be the end of the job. (This year a 12th middle school opened in the district.)

“As hard as that demographic shifting piece is, it is relatively easy compared to the inclusion and equity work,” notes Carrie McClaren, who served as a parent representative on the working group for the diversity plan. “There are no quick fixes, unfortunately.”

That proved true for some students who were in the minority at their new schools. Melina Mays made the long commute from her home in Red Hook to Sunset Park Prep, which she had ranked first on her application, impressed on the tour by the warmth of the principal and the enthusiasm of the students. But Melina, who was one of just a handful of Black students in her class, encountered hostility from a group of boys who harassed her and her friend with racial slurs. Although the school did contact the ringleader’s parents, according to Melina, she says the behavior continued. (Sunset Park Prep did not respond to a request for comment.)

Neither Melina nor her mother, Dorothy Mays, felt the school community was especially welcoming to people from “outside.” Because Melina had injured her foot, Mays took her daughter to and from school during her eighth-grade year, but she rarely interacted with other parents when she was there. “The person I spoke to the most was the school crossing guard,” she said. Mays says she understood there was often a language barrier — some of the parents did not speak fluent English, and she doesn’t speak Spanish — but she added, “They really need to work on making you feel welcome.”

Mays summed up her thoughts on her daughter’s middle school years: “I hope other people have a better experience than she did. And that they really work on diversifying the whole school system.”

The planners had outlined an ambitious range of proposals to reinforce the diversity plan, including an ethnic studies curriculum, the hiring of more teachers of color and bilingual school counselors, attention to racially disproportionate suspension rates, and collaboration among PTAs to encourage “cross-cultural community building.”

But then came the pandemic, which sent the first cohort of the diversity initiative home to learn by Zoom in the spring of their sixth-grade year. The challenges of remote learning, and then of recalibrating for in-person classes, consumed educators, parents, and students for the next two years.

Some diversity support programs did get under way: The D15 Community Education Council arranged for implicit bias training for principals and assistant principals, and created an “equity team” in each middle school, composed of “teachers, parents, and anyone at the school who wants to participate in creating a welcoming school environment,” Camille Casaretti, D15’s CEC president, wrote in an email.

Some middle schools organized events to highlight diversity. One had a “peace and diversity day,” for example, and another recently held a Latinx Heritage Teach-in.

Now that the new school year has begun with some semblance of normalcy, plans are in the works to “identify inequities in resources and program offerings” among schools and to address those inequities, Casaretti wrote.

Students have also taken an interest in advancing conversations around diversity. With the help of Dalke, from Appleseed, and Sarah Stone, a middle school coach from IntegrateNYC, students formed Integrate clubs in each middle school, which provide a hub to discuss topics such as building relationships and restorative justice. The clubs from different schools also meet up to share perspectives. For one such meeting, the students visited Park Slope Collegiate, the only school in the district where students must enter through metal detectors, and discussed why the scanners might make some people feel targeted or fearful rather than safe.

‘All good schools’ but some still have more high-needs students

Four years ago, when families were first grappling with the new admissions system, “there was apprehension from parents about applying to or attending schools that were unfamiliar,” said Nyah Berg, Appleseed’s executive director.

Nevertheless, fifth graders that first year placed many more schools on their lists than their older peers had in previous years, and that trend has continued. “Students and parents were looking around the district a lot more,” said Lubinsky at WXY, rather than treading the same worn paths to the same few familiar schools. “That was really healthy for the district.”

Berg also believes attitudes have changed: “One parent said we used to have three ‘good schools’ and now we know they are all good schools.”

The application data back that up: More white families are applying to Sunset Park Prep and Dewey, and more immigrant families are applying to the schools that historically enrolled a large majority of white students, according to Dalke.

Nevertheless, some patterns of segregation have persisted. At Dewey, the share of offers that went to low-income students has crept up again after the initial decrease to 67%. Last year, 86% of offers went to children in the priority group, according to data shared by the district’s Community Education Council.

In the 2021-22 school year, nearly 90% of children at Dewey and Sunset Park Prep were living in poverty, according to DOE records — less than before the lottery but still well above the other District 15 schools.

Breaking those patterns, it seems, requires more than a lottery that gives a boost to historically marginalized students: It requires affluent families who recognize the value of a small, nurturing school like Dewey or Sunset Park, and who are willing to ignore entrenched assumptions about what a “good school” really means, advocates said.

Raymond-Tolan, the Dewey parent, has revised her own thoughts in that regard, in comparing the experiences of Charlie to that of her older son, who had attended M.S. 51, in Park Slope, which positioned itself as a school for academically gifted students.

“Is the school going to take care of my kid and help them when they need it, whether academically or socially?” Raymond-Tolan wrote in an email. “At Dewey, they knew Charlie well and were there for him — and us — when we needed it.”

WXY has begun an evaluation of how well the District 15 diversity initiative is working so far, which may illuminate why some habits and attitudes have been resistant to change.

With about a third of the city’s districts deciding to embrace lottery admissions, advocates and planners involved with District 15’s initiative will be watching closely.

“It’ll be interesting to see how these other districts respond,” Lubinsky said. “District 15 has been a useful precedent.”

Tracy Tullis is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn.

Supreme Court affirmative action cases could bolster attacks on school integration

2022-10-28T21:53:35+00:00

Monday could mark the beginning of the end for affirmative action in higher education.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments that day in two cases challenging the use of race in college admissions. The court’s decision earlier this year to hear the cases, which seek to overturn prior rulings that upheld affirmative action, suggests the longstanding policy might be on its way out.

The case doesn’t directly involve schools that educate kindergartners through 12th graders, yet its outcome could alter those students’ post-grad trajectories: If selective universities can no longer consider race in admissions, they are likely to enroll fewer Black and Latino students.

But the higher-ed cases could also portend changes to K-12 schools, where efforts to promote racial diversity already face legal challenges. Advocates fear that if the Supreme Court ends race-conscious admissions in higher education, K-12 integration efforts could be next.

“I think anybody who cares about preserving any semblance of diversity in educational institutions, be they K-12 or higher ed, is paying attention to this case,” said Stefan Lallinger, a desegregation expert who helped form a peer-support network for districts pursuing integration.

As the closely watched case begins, here’s what you need to know:

The ruling shouldn’t immediately affect K-12 schools

The central question before the court is whether colleges and universities should be able to use race as one of many factors in selecting students and pursuing educational diversity.

The cases stem from lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum. The group alleged that the admissions process at Harvard discriminates against Asian American students by holding them to a higher standard than other applicants, and that UNC’s process discriminates against Asian American and white students by giving preference to Black, Latino, and Native American applicants.

The institutions denied the allegations and lower courts ruled in their favor, saying the universities had met the strict standards for race-conscious admissions policies established through four decades of Supreme Court decisions. The plaintiff appealed the rulings to the Supreme Court, which agreed in January to hear the two cases.

Because the cases turn on legal precedents specific to higher education, their outcome should not directly affect K-12 schools with programs meant to increase student diversity, said Genevieve Bonadies Torres, an attorney at the the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is representing some students and alumni in the Supreme Court cases.

However, she warned that opponents of race-conscious admissions might use the higher-ed ruling to attack K-12 integration efforts.

“The ultimate goal of these groups is to scare and chill and litigate against diversity programs,” she said.

Colleges and K-12 schools follow different rules about race

Colleges and universities have more leeway than K-12 schools to use race in pursuit of diversity.

In rulings stretching from 1978 to 2016, the Supreme Court has set a high bar for race-conscious admissions in higher education, or affirmative action. Institutions may not set racial quotas, they must consider race-neutral approaches, and they may only use race as one factor among many in a holistic review of each applicant.

In the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 case in which the court upheld affirmative action by a 5-4 vote, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited two reasons for allowing the “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions:” Students benefit from diversity, and courts should defer to universities on academic decisions, including whom to admit.

Because of the “expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with” higher education, O’Connor wrote, “universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition.”

Four years later, the court declined to grant the same leeway to K-12 schools.

In a landmark 2007 ruling, the court ruled 5-4 to strike down two school districts’ voluntary integration plans. The goal of diversity, or “racial balance,” is not a sufficient reason for public school districts to assign students to schools based on their race.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts memorably wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed with the judgment but insisted that districts can take some voluntary steps to combat segregation. Whether by redrawing attendance lines or strategically locating schools, districts can try to promote diversity through race-conscious policies so long as they operate at a general but not individual level, Kennedy wrote. (The ruling did not affect court-ordered desegregation plans.)

But even though Kennedy’s concurrence left room for some voluntary integration, the threat of lawsuits has made most districts wary of walking that line.

There are more than 13,000 districts nationwide, but a 2020 report could identify only 119 districts with active integration plans. (The researchers also found 66 charter school organizations with plans.) The vast majority of the plans consider students’ socioeconomic status but don’t factor in race — even in the general way that Kennedy allowed.

For that reason, even if the Supreme Court one day banned any consideration of race in district diversity plans, relatively few schools would be affected.

“My first instinct is that this decision wouldn’t necessarily change the landscape that much for K-12 school districts,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, who co-authored the 2020 report. “Frankly, there are so few voluntary race-based integration plans in K-12 already.”

The end of affirmative action could lead to K-12 legal challenges

Still, if the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rules against affirmative action, as is widely expected, advocates worry it could invite challenges to the few remaining K-12 integration plans.

The most likely targets are elite public high schools with selective admissions policies. Many such schools have historically admitted few Black or Latino students, prompting some school districts — including Boston, New York City, and San Francisco — to adopt diversity plans.

Critics have attacked the high school diversity plans and affirmative action along similar lines. They say the schools have improperly tried to engineer a “racial balance” of students, failed to consider other ways to pursue diversity, and discriminated against Asian American and white applicants.

The “pernicious practice of racial balancing has spread to K-12 education, where it is now depriving children of spots at some of the best public schools in the nation solely because of their race,” reads a friend of the court brief supporting the challenge to affirmative action. Submitted by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative group that has won more than a dozen Supreme Court cases, the brief argues that race should play no role in either college or K-12 admissions.

Several K-12 education groups filed briefs supporting affirmative action, arguing that students at every level benefit from diversity. One brief urged the court to allow colleges and school districts to continue using race to promote diversity according to the standards set in prior rulings.

“The Court need not, and should not, revisit either longstanding precedent,” said the brief submitted by national associations representing school boards, principals, and counselors.

But even if the court’s affirmative action ruling does not address K-12 schools, future rulings might.

A case currently in federal court challenges the diversity plan at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, a selective public school in Fairfax County, Virginia. The prestigious school overhauled its admissions policies in 2020 following years of complaints that it enrolled very few Black and Latino students.

Last year, the Pacific Legal Foundation helped Coalition for TJ, a group that includes parents and alumni, file a lawsuit against the district. Similar to the Harvard case, the lawsuit accuses the district of discriminating against Asian Americans, whose enrollment dropped sharply after the admissions change. But unlike Harvard, the high school did not explicitly consider each applicant’s race, instead using other measures — such as admitting the top-performing students from each middle school — to boost diversity.

“That is still every bit as much of a violation of someone’s Equal Protection rights as if you sit in front of an audience and said, ‘I’m discriminating on the basis of race,’” said Erin Wilcox, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation, who called the school’s diversity plan “proxy discrimination.” (The district says its admission system is based on merit, not race.)

Lallinger, the integration advocate, called the foundation’s argument extreme because it suggests that even the goal of racial diversity is suspect.

“Essentially they’re arguing that any effort to address historical discrimination against Black and Latino students is inherently unconstitutional,” he said, “because, they argue, admissions is a zero-sum game.”

In oral arguments last month, a federal appeals court appeared skeptical of the case against the district.

If the group behind the challenge loses, it could appeal to the Supreme Court. And if the high court rules against affirmative action in higher education, that could bolster the case against diversity efforts in K-12 schools, Wilcox said.

“It will take away this reliance on diversity as a compelling government interest,” she said, adding that in her group’s ongoing legal campaign against school diversity plans, “That will certainly be a supporting precedent that we will use.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Applying to NYC high school? Here’s what you need to know.

2022-10-20T19:34:12+00:00

It’s not an easy time to be an eighth grader in New York City.

Across the five boroughs, 12- and 13-year-olds are in the midst of high school admissions season with newly changed rules that sort kids into different “groups” based on their grades from last year.

New York City has more than 400 public high schools with 700 programs. Roughly 120 of these use “screens,” such as grades, essays or exams. Twenty-five high schools require auditions. Eight base admissions solely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. Given this landscape, New York City is home to more schools that screen students based on academic performance than other large school districts nationwide.

Schools Chancellor David Banks defended the city’s system of stratifying students when he announced changes to this year’s admissions process, saying, “if a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored … you should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

The system concentrates lower-performing students on the same campuses and contributes to the city’s status as one of the most racially segregated school systems in the country. This year’s admissions process will likely reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains when competitive schools couldn’t rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures.

The changes for many families, especially those who may now be shut out of selective schools, has brought a wave of anxiety as they begin the process of ranking up to 12 choices on their applications.

“Anxiety is extra high because, once again, there are changes to the application process,” said Mahalia Watson, founder of the Let’s Talk Schools online parent guide. “I tell everyone to be sure to choose 12 schools that they would be OK attending and chances are more than likely that they will be fine. I don’t agree that the specialized high school or a few select screened schools are the only good options available … Focus on selecting a school that is a good fit for your student and not whether it’s a ‘good school’ or not.”

Other advice she gives parents: “Don’t try to outsmart the matching system. Only select schools that you would attend if an offer of admission is given.”

What else you need to know:

What are the important deadlines?

Applications are due by Dec. 1, and you can apply online through your child’s MySchools account.

Submitting your application early doesn’t give you any advantage, but many experts advise against waiting until the last minute.

“Start early. Don’t wait until the last minute to select schools,” Watson said. “There are so many that it can get overwhelming so the more time you can devote to the process, the less difficult or confusing it will be.”

Eighth grade families should have received a letter from the education department with a code to create a MySchools account, if they didn’t already have one. (Students not currently enrolled in New York City public schools can visit the education department’s website with instructions for new students.)

Offers are expected in early March.

What about the specialized high schools?

There’s a separate process for eight specialized high schools that require a test for admission, like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech. You must register for the SHSAT — again, though MySchools — by Nov. 4. Eighth graders attending the city’s public middle schools will take the exam at their respective schools on Nov. 17. Other students — at charter schools, private schools, home-schooled or at public schools with grades 6-12 — will take the exam at specific locations on Nov. 19, Nov. 20, or Dec. 11.

Last year, roughly 28,000 students took the test, and about 4,000 received offers. Basing admission on a single test has long been controversial because of the dearth of Black and Latino students who score high enough to get seats: Just 9% of the offers based on the test went to Black and Latino students despite making up about 66% of students citywide.

The specialized schools also enroll relatively few English language learners or students with disabilities. Children with testing accommodations giving them double time — which could be more than 6 hours — should talk to their schools about the possibility of multi-day testing, suggested Jenn Choi, who runs Special Support Services, which advises parents of students with disabilities.

Another specialized high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, uses auditions or portfolios for entry instead of the SHSAT, and requires a separate application via MySchools. There’s a common application for the 25 schools that require auditions, which means, for example, if you apply to three dance programs, you only need to send in one dance audition. A student’s lottery number will break a tie if students have the same rank, education department officials said.

Offers to these schools are given at the same time as other schools in early March.

How should you research schools?

After logging into your MySchools account, you can search for schools and research their information pages, which should include any tours (virtual or in person) as well as additional admissions requirements or selective criteria. Other helpful resources include InsideSchools, which offers write ups based on school visits along with other helpful data points, including results of school surveys on questions like bullying and safety.

“Make sure you are finding schools that are good fits for your child in terms of academics, rigor, interests, and teaching styles,” said Elissa Stein, a consultant who runs the HS 411 subscription service. “Consider quality of life issues like commute, start time, out[side] lunch, extracurriculars, and freshman support.”

After viewing so many options they might start to blend together, so it’s important to take notes, Stein suggested. Also, she advises families to involve their eighth graders in the process, “whether it’s doing post-touring recaps, having them research in MySchools, or spending time talking through options.”

Additionally, double check that your child is eligible for the programs and schools you’re considering, she said.

Watson advises families to visit as many schools as possible through virtual and in-person tours, and she was excited for the open house calendar on MySchools.

“In addition to visiting, the best way to find out information about a school is to speak to parents and/or students already enrolled,” Watson added.

What’s up with the new grouping process?

The city recently announced that this year’s eighth grade students will get priority to screened schools based on their seventh grade scores for coursework in core subjects. (State test scores are not factored in.) Students are grouped as follows:

Group 1: Those with final seventh grade course grades with an average of at least 94.33 qualify for the citywide threshold, as do students who are in the top 15% of their school, with an average of at least 90.
Group 2: Those with an average of at least a 90.25 average qualify for the citywide threshold (if they’re not in Group 1), as do those in the top 30% of their school with an average of at least 80.
Group 3: Those with an 83.5 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those in the top 50% of their school with an average of at least 75.
Group 4: Those with a 76.75 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those with seventh grade course grades in the top 70% of their school with an average at least 65.
All others will be in Group 5.

Applicants can find out which group they fall into through their MySchools profile. (Click on “edit profile” above your child’s name and scroll down to find the admissions group.)

If there are more applicants in Group 1 than available seats, students from that group will be selected by a lottery using the random number linked to each person’s application, according to education department officials. If seats are not all taken by Group 1 applicants, students from Group 2 are considered in the same way, and so on.

About 20 of the city’s selective high schools, including Beacon and Bard Early College high schools, require students to complete essays, school-based exams, or other assessments.

What about schools that are part of the city’s Diversity in Admissions program?

More than 40 high school programs set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance.

If students from Group 1 who meet those admissions criteria don’t fill all the available seats set aside for them, those seats will then go to “Diversity in Admissions” applicants in the next group, education officials said. For instance, Frank McCourt High School, Beacon, and Millennium Brooklyn High Schools give priority to students eligible for free or reduced price lunch for 66% of their seats.

What about students with disabilities?

When it comes to the enrollment process, students with disabilities who have individualized education programs, or IEPs, are considered in a separate pool if they have a special education service — either a special class, special education teacher support services, or SETSS, or integrated co-teaching, or ICT — for 20% of their week.

But not all high schools are inclusive when it comes to students with disabilities, said Choi, of Special Support Services, who trains parents how to research a school’s special education culture.

Like many parts of the city’s school system, for children with disabilities the onus falls on the family to figure things out.

“If you think about how fast a family can find out which schools have golf teams in New York City, it’s literally less than a minute,” Choi said. “We have to call to find out what ‘partial accessibility’ even means. That’s another fifty phone calls.”

Families should ask, for instance, how a school flags when a student is not making appropriate progress and what happens next? Is there a conference or tutoring?

“Is the student’s entire curriculum on Google classroom? With reminders, reading material, worksheets, due dates, assignment information, and powerpoints?” she asked. “For many students with disabilities, it’s an essential accessibility need and for others, it’s just a desired good practice.”

What does your random number mean?

This year, for the first time the city is sharing students’ lottery numbers in their MySchools account profile. These hexadecimal random numbers may be hard to decipher — though that hasn’t stopped some from trying. For schools that have various admissions priorities, these numbers act as “tie breakers,” Joyce Szuflita, who runs NY Schools Help, explained on her blog. Someone with a lower random number in Group 1 still would be ranked higher than someone in Group 2 with a “good” lottery number, she explained.

Szuflita advises families to look at an array of schools, and understand your odds based on admissions priority to specific groups of applicants before others, such as to students who live in a specific borough, or continuing middle schoolers in a 6-12 grade school, or for Diversity in Admissions students, or students with certain grades for screened schools.

“Make a robust list of different kinds of schools, with different sizes, with different admission criteria, with different [applicant to seat] ratios, with different priorities,” she wrote. “The random numbers are a factor, but they are not your fate. Then rank your list in true preference order.”

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

24 principals in Manhattan’s District 3 sign petition against middle school admissions screens

2022-10-17T22:05:06+00:00

In a Manhattan district with a history of contentious battles over school admissions, two dozen principals have come out against the return of academic screens at district middle schools, according to a copy of a petition obtained by Chalkbeat.

The message to district leader Kamar Samuels from 24 out of 30 elementary and middle school principals in Manhattan’s District 3, which spans the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, comes as superintendents across the city decide whether their middle schools will once again be allowed to select incoming students on the basis of academic performance.

Admissions screens existed at hundreds of middle schools before the pandemic, but were paused the past two years because of COVID-19 and the shift to remote learning. Schools Chancellor David Banks has given superintendents until this week to decide if and how middle school screens will resume in their districts, with applications set to open for students Oct. 26.

In District 3, where schools are sharply divided by race and class, the debate is particularly fraught. Proponents argue that screens help match high academic performers to schools that can meet their needs, but critics say the competitive admissions standards unfairly divide students at a young age and drive segregation.

“We know that reintroducing academic screens for a few of our middle schools will lead to inequities and a lack of student diversity,” wrote the coalition of 24 principals in a letter dated Oct. 14.

“Ranking and sorting our students goes against a celebration of the rich diversity of cultures and races our students bring with them to the schools across District 3,” the letter continued.

Before the pandemic, roughly 40% of all city middle schools used some form of selective admissions criteria for at least a portion of their students, with 112 schools screening all their incoming students, and 196 using screens for specialized programs, according to the education department.

But the metrics middle schools traditionally used to select kids, including grades, test scores and attendance records, went out the window during the pandemic, leading former Mayor Bill de Blasio to pause screens at all middle schools starting in 2020.

That led to a modest increase in the share of low-income students and English language learners admitted to the city’s 46 most selective middle school programs, according to the education department.

The removal of screens had the potential to make an even larger impact in District 3 because of a district-wide diversity plan adopted in 2018 that required each middle school to prioritize low-income students for 25% of their seats. The original diversity plan did not require middle schools to remove screens. Set-asides for underrepresented students generally have larger effects when they’re paired with the removal of screens, integration experts say. The education department didn’t immediately share how the removal of screens affected demographics in District 3 schools.

Late last month, Banks announced that superintendents could decide whether middle schools in their districts resume screening kids based on their fourth grade academic marks. The education department gave little guidance on how superintendents should make those decisions, other than engaging with the community first.

“It puts the district office in the pressure cooker,” said Naveed Hasan, a parent of elementary schoolers and member of the Community Education Council for District 3.

Education department spokesperson Art Nevins said this year’s process for deciding on middle school screens is an example of the agency’s “commitment … to engaging with families and communities around the types of programs and schools they desire.

“The intention of this process is not to get to any predetermined result, but to have a decision based on a thoughtful consideration of the needs of each district and school community,” he added.

Samuels, who is in his first year leading District 3 and previously oversaw a districtwide middle school integration plan in Brooklyn’s District 13, has held two public discussions with parents and has another planned for Tuesday.

Lucas Liu, the president of the District 3 Community Education Council, said the “vast majority” of parents who have responded to the CEC’s survey have expressed support for some middle school academic screens, though the CEC said the full survey results wouldn’t be shared until Tuesday’s meeting.

One District 3 principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press, countered that the survey sample is likely not “representative of everyone … there are a number of parents in our communities who disagree with screens,” but who may have less “time and energy and agency to come together.”

Liu, who is also the co-president of the Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, which supports academic screens, argued that the lottery system in place for the past two years has sent lower-performing elementary school students “into competitive schools they’re not prepared for.”

He added that he’s heard from some parents who say they will pull their kids from the district if they don’t find a middle school option they view as sufficiently rigorous.

“You have your letter from the principals, but it’s the parents who decide whether their kids are going to enroll or not,” he said. “It’s the parents who we’re supposed to be serving.”

The principals also pointed out that, according to education department data, 97% of this year’s sixth grade class got into one of their top three middle school choices, and 76% got into their top choice.

The education department declined to make Samuels available for an interview.

Final admissions rules will be made public by the time middle school applications open on Oct. 26.

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

New NYC high school admissions rules could slow pandemic-era diversity gains

2022-10-14T22:44:03+00:00

Noor Muhsin, a senior at one of Brooklyn’s most selective public high schools, noticed that this year’s freshman class looked different than hers — and it filled the Millennium Brooklyn student with pride.

After admissions rules were loosened during the pandemic, many schools like hers saw a jump in the number of Black and Latino students admitted. At Millennium Brooklyn, the difference was significant: 43% of students admitted last year were Black and Latino, compared to just 20% the year before.

In New York City, where public schools are among the most segregated by race and class in the country, the pandemic upended school admissions: selective schools couldn’t rely as heavily on grades, test scores, and attendance records to screen students. The result at many of the city’s most competitive schools was a freshman class that looked more like the city as a whole.

But recently announced changes to high school admissions for next year could slow that progress, city education department projections show.

“I’m really concerned it’s just going to kind of go back to its old ways of being a mostly wealthy, mostly white school,” said Muhsin.

Millennium Brooklyn wasn’t alone in seeing a more diverse freshman class because of pandemic enrollment reforms. At the city’s 27 highest-performing screened schools, 40% of students accepted last year were Black and Latino, up from 28% in 2020.

“I would consider these pretty substantial changes,” said Sean Corcoran, a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University. Under last year’s rules, roughly 60% of all of the city’s eighth graders qualified for priority access to screened schools – a historically large swath of kids.

But that access is being tightened again under new rules announced last month by schools Chancellor David Banks. The new system prioritizes students who score in the top 15% of their school or citywide by grades, and average at least a 90% — earning them a “tier one” designation. Roughly 20% of this year’s eighth graders will end up in tier one for screened high schools this year, education department officials say.

Just 10% of students projected to fall in tier one are Black, even though Black students make up 26% of all eighth graders, according to education department projections. Latino students will make up a projected 23% of tier one, despite comprising 42% of all eighth graders.

The projections don’t give a perfect picture of who will end up in screened schools — that partly depends on who ultimately decides to apply, and who ends up at specialized high schools like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, which use a completely separate admissions system. But they do give a sense of how the process could play out, experts say.

Doubling down on academic screens

Last year’s rules drew sharp criticism from many parents, who argued they unfairly disadvantaged the very top academic performers by failing to give them a leg up over lower-performing kids.

Banks heeded those criticisms, saying as part of his admissions announcement this year that “if a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored … you should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

The schools chief offered an even blunter defense of the new admissions rules Thursday when he said students who work “really hard” should have priority access compared with “the child you have to throw water on their face to get them to go to school every day.”

Middle schools, which paused screens altogether during the pandemic, are also now allowed to restore competitive admissions standards at the discretion of district superintendents.

Parents of high schoolers will be able to see their child’s tier number in the application portal, which opened Wednesday. Education department officials didn’t immediately say what scores would land a student in the top 15% of grades citywide.

Overall, there are roughly 18,000 seats in the city’s 120 screened high school programs, and about 13,000 students will land in tier one, according to the education department. Competition is often fiercest at a small subset of screened programs, which receive far more applications than they have seats.

Emily Yolkut, whose eighth grade daughter is currently applying to high school, said looking at the statistics on applicants per seat is disheartening. “Every page you click on is more disappointing than the next,” she said.

And for kids whose grades might not land them in the top tier, but who are still interested in attending screened schools, the process can feel even more daunting.

Cynthia Arbulu-Vacca has an eighth grade son who’s interested in attending a specialized or screened high school, but has at times struggled to perform up to his academic potential, in part because of his learning disabilities, Arbulu-Vacca said. She worries that might restrict his options when it comes to high school.

“Screened environments … they want a particular type of kid who can just breeze through assignments,” she said. “All kids can’t do that.”

A move toward transparency

There are some changes that advocates and experts say could make the notoriously complex high school admissions process more equitable than it was before the pandemic.

For many years, the city’s roughly 120 screened programs had wide discretion to choose their own specific admissions criteria — using a mix of test scores, grades, attendance records, and other factors.

This year, nearly all screened schools will operate under the same set of rules, making it easier for parents to gauge their kids’ chances. Information on open houses will also be listed centrally.

Twenty-one schools including Beacon High School and the Bard Early Colleges with their own application processes, including essays and interviews, will still be allowed to operate outside the top 15% plan.

“A system like this is a little more transparent … it’s pretty clear how you qualify,” said Corcoran. “I like that aspect of it.”

Eliminating the use of state test scores could also have an impact on who qualifies for screened programs, Corcoran said, especially in terms of the gender balance.

“Grades especially advantage girls — you may see a big shift there,” Corcoran said. The DOE didn’t provide a projected gender breakdown of tier one.

Some screened schools already skew female: 61% of Millennium Brooklyn students are girls, according to the most recent education department data.

Banks, a frequent critic of testing, has argued that grades are a better indicator of a student’s academic level than test scores.

Admissions systems that draw top performers from each school also have the potential to broaden access — especially in systems like New York City, where middle schools are largely segregated by race and class.

But there are several provisions in the city’s new high school admissions rules that could dilute the “top 15%” plan’s potential to boost the number of underrepresented students.

For one, students must also score a minimum of 90% in addition to scoring in the top 15 %. And at schools with high numbers of high-scoring students, more than 15% of students can land in the tier one as long as they score in the top 15% of grades citywide.

Banks has stressed that the city is full of great, unscreened high schools that accept a wider range of students.

But some educators involved with unscreened schools say the very existence of screened programs can make their jobs more difficult by skimming off the highest-performing and least needy kids, while concentrating the kids with the biggest challenges in other schools.

David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that helps operate two dozen unscreened public high schools in New York City pointed out that when “when we use these [screens], what happens is certain schools have to take on an additional responsibility to solve for a higher-needs population and certain schools do not.”

“We’re proud of the work we do to serve every student who walks through our doors,” he said. “I would like that responsibility to be shared across all schools at the DOE.”

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

NYC schools chief criticized for saying some kids deserve top schools more than others

2022-10-13T18:46:52+00:00

In the wake of his decision to double down on selective admissions, New York City schools Chancellor David Banks offered a blunt argument in favor of that approach: Students who work “really hard” should have priority access compared with “the child you have to throw water on their face to get them to go to school every day.”

Speaking in front of corporate, nonprofit, and education leaders at a forum hosted by the Association for a Better New York, Banks said: “We made a decision, after hearing all the arguments, that merit really should matter.”

“If you’ve got a child who works really hard on weekends, and putting in their time and energy and they get a 98 average — they should have a better opportunity to get into a high-choice school, then, you know, the child you have to throw water on their face to get them to go to school every day.”

Banks added that “all children are valuable,” but “if you have a child, who you’ve noticed putting that extra effort, they ought to have that opportunity.”

The remarks immediately drew fierce criticism from some educators, parents, and advocates who said they were insensitive and reflect the view that some children vying for middle and high school seats are less worthy of quality schools than others.

“When you’re talking about admissions screens for middle school students, you’re talking about 8- and 9-year-old kids,” said Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, a group that pushes for school integration. The comments, she said, “lacked empathy,” as some students might have trouble getting to school for reasons out of their control.

This is horrifying from @DOEChancellor. Comments like this show zero understanding of our city’s children- who work hard and don’t get into screened schools. After years of teaching kids who don’t have breakfast or get sleep and struggle as a result, I’m disgusted by this. https://t.co/2rZpuTEqvT
— Liat in BK (@Liat_RO) October 13, 2022

Compared with other large school districts, New York City allows a greater degree of screening based on academic achievement, which concentrates lower-performing students on the same campuses and contributes to the city’s status as one of the most racially segregated in the country.

Banks’ statements come at a particularly contentious moment, as his administration recently announced that middle schools will once again be allowed to use metrics, such as grades, to admit students after a pause on competitive admissions during the pandemic. Regional superintendents are currently in the process of determining how middle school screens will work on individual campuses.

For high schools, students must score in the top 15% of their class or top 15% citywide with at least a 90 average in their core subjects to get first access to selective schools under Banks’ admissions policy.

Asked by a reporter about what message his comments might send to parents about who the city’s public schools are for, he said “it wasn’t meant to cast aspersions.” The description of a student who needed to be doused with water to wake up for school “came from a parent who said it to me,” Banks said, adding that his own four children had varying levels of motivation.

He also referenced the Eagle Academy schools he helped launch in 2004, which are geared toward young men of color and do not screen students based on academic ability. “My entire career has been spent working with the least of these, trust me,” he said. “But I do know that we have some kids who are more motivated than others.”

A few observers defended Banks’ comments, including Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a former public school teacher in the Bronx.

“If this outrages you ‘because equity’ there’s a good chance you’ve never taught low-income kids of color who work hard and get good grades,” he wrote on Twitter. “They are legion. And we teach them they’re chumps when we don’t recognize and reward them for it.”

This isn’t the first time Banks’ comments about academic screening have drawn scrutiny. In announcing the new middle and high school admissions policy, he made comments that some argued were similarly insensitive.

“If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” Banks said. “I think it’s really important that if you’re working hard and making the grade, you should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Tensions high as NYC soon starts middle and high school admissions season

2022-09-14T22:03:56+00:00

Tensions are rising ahead of an anticipated announcement about whether New York City middle and high schools will fully bring back selective admissions for the first time since the pandemic.

Removing test scores, attendance, and other “screens” from the selection process helped move the needle on desegregating the nation’s largest public school system, integration advocates said.

But families who support selective admissions thought the changes — sparked by pandemic-related learning disruptions — unfairly cost their children their top school choices.

Schools Chancellor David Banks is expected to unveil selection criteria next week, an education department spokesperson said, offering no other details. The Adams administration has not highlighted school integration as a priority. Instead, the mayor has embraced screened programs that have long been segregated by race, class, and academic performance: He expanded “gifted and talented” programs and signaled a desire to open more specialized high schools.

Families across the five boroughs are already mounting letter-writing campaigns and petitions for and against schools that use screens in sorting the city’s 10- and 13-year-olds into sixth and ninth grade. Some parent councils are calling for the removal of selective admissions, while others are calling for the opposite.

“We expect nothing less than the permanent elimination of middle school screens,” said Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, which advocates for removing screened admissions at middle and high schools. “It was unjustifiable before the pandemic, and it’s just as unjustifiable now to measure a child as young as 9-years-old’s educational attainment, and to judge them by that for access to public middle school.”

PLACE NYC, a group that has pushed to preserve strict admissions screens to public middle and high schools, is circulating a petition that calls for removing lottery admissions, arguing that “academically advanced students need programs that meet their needs.”

Black and Latino students, as well as those from low-income families, with disabilities, or who are learning English as a new language are less likely to meet admissions requirements for selective schools, leaving such schools unrepresentative of the school system as a whole.

Research has found that diverse schools can lead to a slew of academic and social benefits for students, including better test scores, an increased likelihood of attending college, boosting leadership skills and confidence, and combating racial bias or stereotypes, according to The Century Foundation.

A temporary change?

For this year’s incoming sixth graders, city officials paused screens for the second year in a row, instead admitting students through a lottery system.

After the city removed middle school screens the year before, its 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 education department data. The department has not shared demographic information on offer data for this school year.

Three-quarters of middle school applicants this year received offers to their first choice, an increase of four percentage points from 2021, according to department data. Ninety-one percent landed a spot in one of their top three choices, up three percentage points from 2021.

About a quarter of the city’s 400 high schools use screens to admit students. Ahead of this year, the city centralized the admissions process and eliminated the use of attendance and state test scores, but still allowed some selective schools to keep their own screens, including their own admissions exams, interviews, and essays. (Admissions to the city’s specialized high schools remained separate and unchanged.) About half of roughly 74,000 high school applicants got their first choice, up four percentage points from the previous year. Three-quarters of all applicants were placed at one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from the previous year.

The department didn’t release data for all high schools, but highlighted notable demographic shifts at some of the city’s most coveted high schools. Nearly a quarter of admissions at Townsend Harris High School went to Black and Latino students, up from 16% the previous year. And at Millennium Brooklyn High School, Black and Latino students received 43% of offers, an increase of 23 percentage points. (Those schools participate in the city’s Diversity in Admissions program, which allows them to give preference to underrepresented students.)

Debates heat up at parent councils

Brooklyn’s District 15 — which encompasses wealthy neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens along with working-class ones such as Sunset Park and Red Hook — is often viewed as a test case for dropping middle school screens. For the past four years its diversity plan admitted students to middle schools through a lottery system, prioritizing 52% of seats for low-income students, those living in temporary housing, and English learners.

In the plan’s first year, Black and Latino enrollment jumped at some schools that were largely white, while white enrollment increased, albeit at smaller rates, at overwhelmingly Black and Latino schools.

The local parent council, in partnership with New York Appleseed, drafted a resolution calling to permanently remove middle school screens. The resolution also calls for the city to keep recent changes to high school admissions instead of introducing more stringent requirements or changes. (Nathaniel Styer, an education department spokesperson, said officials are not considering dismantling District 15’s diversity plan.)

A discussion on Tuesday about District 15’s resolution laid bare some of the historic arguments for and against screened admissions that will likely surface when the city announces its plans.

Most people spoke in support of the district’s diversity plan and unscreened schools, recounting tales of stressed children who felt pressured as early as first grade to maintain perfect attendance to get into the middle school of their choice. One parent noted that her child, who was part of the inaugural sixth grade class chosen by lottery, attended a more racially diverse middle school than elementary school. Her daughter grew “academically, socially, emotionally,” and even became involved with a youth integration advocacy group.

“Families are much more relaxed and confident about the process once we explain how it works, how the lottery works, what their options are,” Amy Sumner, parent coordinator at the Brooklyn New School, said at the District 15 parent council meeting. “It’s removed so much of the tension and anxiety that the families go through every year.”

In arguing for screens, parent council member Vincent Lu argued that enrollment “dropped tremendously” in District 15 because of admissions changes.

“Families vote with their feet,” Lu said.

However, District 15’s enrollment changes are similar to citywide trends.

District 15’s enrollment last year in traditional public schools was about 88% of its pre-pandemic numbers. That’s in line with the citywide average of 89%, according to data from the Independent Budget Office. (The data excludes preschool for 3-year-olds or alternative programs, such as programs for overage and under-credited students).

As enrollment has dropped in public schools across the nation, there is little evidence showing that admissions changes pushed families to leave district schools. Since the onset of the pandemic, the largest enrollment declines across the city have not been in middle or high school grades, but rather in prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, followed by second grade, kindergarten and third grade.

But other districts, such as Brooklyn’s District 20 and Manhattan’s District 2, are also citing enrollment in their resolutions in support of reinstating screened admissions, based on what they’ve heard from families. Manhattan’s affluent District 2, in fact, has about 91% of its pre-pandemic enrollment, while that figure is 90% for District 20, according to IBO data, both slightly higher than the citywide average.

That district’s parent council has not yet met to discuss the resolution.

“D2 students face these unequitable and demoralizing admissions results despite demonstrating excellent academic proficiency via grades and state test scores that consistently outperform state-wide,” the resolution said.

Though middle and high school applications were delayed the past few years, previously they were due in December.

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.

NYC’s specialized high schools continue to admit few Black, Latino students, 2022 data shows

2022-06-15T18:09:04+00:00

The low number of Black and Latino students admitted to New York City’s prestigious specialized high schools hasn’t budged, with those students making up just under 9% of offers for next year’s class, according to education department data released Wednesday.

That’s about the same as the previous year.

The specialized high schools are widely considered the Ivy League of public schools in New York City. But they have long been starkly unrepresentative, with Black and Latino students making up only about 10% of enrollment, compared to about 66% of public school enrollment citywide.

The education department also released data that shows the number of applications to all city high schools is down significantly, amid declining enrollment during the pandemic. About 74,000 students applied to public high schools in New York City, down from almost 78,000 the previous year.

With less competition for seats, more students were accepted into their top-choice schools, the city’s data shows. About 50% of applicants were placed at their first-ranked school, up from 46% the previous year. And 75% of applicants were placed at one of their top three choices — up two percentage points from the year before.

Updated enrollment data released Wednesday also shows dramatic declines this year across other grade levels. The city’s public schools are now home to 827,944 students, excluding charter schools as well as pre-K, which has been expanding in recent years.

That figure represents a 6% decline since last school year and a 9.5% drop since the pandemic hit. Over the last 5 school years, K-12 enrollment is down 13% — or 122,867 students.

The lack of representation at the city’s specialized high schools has been the subject of fierce debate in New York City. Many blame the disparity on how students are admitted: According to state law, admission is based on the result of a single exam. (There are eight schools that rely on the exam, and one performing arts specialized high school that uses auditions.)

Amid the COVID pandemic, the city has offered the admissions test during the school day in every middle school for the last two years — rather than at a central location on the weekends as in the past. However, more access to the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT, has not resulted in a more representative group of students landing seats.

While the share of Black and Latino students taking the test increased this year by more than five percentage points to almost 47% of test-takers, that did not translate into more students earning a score high enough to qualify for admission. (There is no cut-off score for admission. Rather, offers are based on ranked scores, starting with those earning the highest marks.)

Almost 28,000 students took the entrance test this year — 4,000 more than last year. The previous year saw large declines in the number of students sitting for the exam, which was administered in person at a time when middle schools were closed due to a spike in coronavirus cases.

Sean Corcoran, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied New York City’s high school admissions processes, noted that the percentage of test-takers compared to all high school applicants hasn’t changed over the last eight years.

“So, the in-school administration does not appear to have moved the dial in terms of overall participation. That said, I suspect we could not have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels as quickly without the in-school administration,” he wrote in an email.

While the previous mayor called on state lawmakers to reform the admissions criteria, current Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks have proposed opening more of the coveted schools. Previous expansions have not reversed the sharp segregation. The former administration used the annual release of the SHSAT results to push for changes, but city leaders this year did not release any new policy goals or even acknowledge the disparities in admissions offers.

Instead, the city highlighted that waitlists for all other high schools and middle schools would remain open longer than previous years — until mid-September — to give families more time to potentially land a spot at a more preferred school. Officials said they were making the change in response to parent feedback.

“This is part of our commitment to rebuilding the trust of families and reversing enrollment declines in the coming years. We see this as an opportunity to continue to innovate and tirelessly work towards ensuring our public schools are destinations for high quality learning, and a beacon for families across the country,” First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said in a statement.

Ultimately, the specialized high schools only admit a fraction of the city’s students, and some advocates have been calling for reforms to the larger high school admissions system to make it fairer. The city is home to one of the most segregated school systems in the country — a reality that many argue is driven by complicated enrollment policies and the practice of “screening,” which allows schools to select students based on their academic records.

The pandemic forced a number of changes aimed at making the process more transparent and admissions more equitable. Some of the new policies drew the ire of parents whose children earned top marks and from Asian American families who worried their children would be disadvantaged. A group called PLACE, or Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum & Education, which advocates for preserving competitive admissions standards, has called for a rally on Friday at the education department’s headquarters to protest the changes.

The education department noted some significant shifts at highly sought-after schools amid the new admissions process. At Townsend Harris High School, for example, 23% of admissions offers went to Black and Latino students, up from 16% the previous year. At Millennium Brooklyn High School, 43% of offers went to Black and Latino students, an increase from 20% the year before. Those schools also participate in the city’s Diversity in Admissions program, which allows schools to give enrollment preference to certain groups of underrepresented students.

Officials did not release comprehensive data on enrollment offers at all of the city’s screened schools. Nyah Berg, who leads the nonprofit New York Appleseed, which advocates for school integration, said it will take more time to know whether recent policy changes are making a dent in segregation.

“It’s going to take a lot longer to unravel some of these barriers to see demographic shifts,” she said.

There could be more changes to the admissions process coming soon. Along with the admissions data, Banks announced in a statement that the education department will share “preliminary” recommendations for additional tweaks and said that communities would have a chance to weigh in on the proposals.

“This is an ongoing process, and we will continue to work with families and partners as we institute improvements to the admissions process,” according to a statement from the education department.

Christina Veiga is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on school diversity and preschool. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

These schools will host ‘gifted’ classrooms as NYC expands segregated program

2022-05-24T20:43:48+00:00

The sites of new gifted classrooms were announced Tuesday, part of an expansion pushed by Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks.

Officials are adding more than 1,000 seats, most of them as new programs that start in third grade. Until now, the most common entry point for “gifted” programs has been in kindergarten, a practice long criticized for testing and sorting 4-year-olds.

Parents can begin applying for spots on May 31. Virtual information sessions will take place on May 24, May 26, and June 1. Live interpretation will be provided in Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu. To register for a session, click here.

The city’s gifted programs have come under fire for being segregated, with Black and Latino students starkly underrepresented. The classrooms also enroll few students who have disabilities, who are learning English as a new language, or are in temporary housing.

Gifted programs have long been seen as a way to keep white and more affluent families enrolled in public schools. In New York City, they have also been fiercely guarded by Asian families who see gifted programs as a ticket to higher performing schools. White and Asian students have historically made up about 70% of enrollment in gifted programs while only representing about a third of the school population citywide.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio had proposed overhauling the programs, ending the current model where students labeled as “gifted” are served in their own, separate classrooms and schools — an approach that fewer than 10% of school districts across the country follow. But de Blasio announced the reforms at the end of his tenure, and they were never implemented.

Instead, Adams and Banks have doubled-down on the current model that keeps students in segregated classrooms, opting to add more seats.

The city is also changing how students are admitted, partly in an attempt to enroll a more representative group of students. Now, kindergarteners will be recommended for the program by their pre-K teachers. In third grade, admission will be offered to the top 10% of students based on their grades in core subjects.

Some parent leaders remain skeptical that the new approach will result in much change. Some of the city’s existing third-grade programs are currently under-enrolled, with families in those districts not wanting to send their children to a new school after second grade. Additionally, some families and educators worry about a potential domino effect the new programs may have on drawing students away from other schools that are already suffering from enrollment declines.

Here are the schools that will host a gifted program in the 2022-23 school year, according to information provided by the New York City education department. An asterisk indicates a program that is new.

Programs that start in kindergarten:

01M015 - P.S. 015 Roberto Clemente
01M110 - P.S. 110 Florence Nightingale
01M539 - New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math
02M011 - P.S. 011 William T. Harris
02M003 - P.S. 033 Chelsea Prep
02M077 - P.S. 77 Lower Lab School
02M111 - P.S. 111 Adolph S. Ochs
02M124 - P.S. 125 Yung Wing
02M130 - P.S. 130 Hernando De Soto
02M198 - P.S. 198 Isador E. Ida Straus
02M217 - P.S./I.S. 217 Roosevelt Island
03M165 - P.S. 165 Robert E. Simon
03M166 - P.S. 166 The Richard Rodgers School of The Arts and Technology
03M334 - The Anderson School
04M012 - Tag Young Scholars (city-wide)
04M102 - P.S. 102 Jacques Cartier
05M128 - P.S. 129 John H. Finley
05M175 - P.S. 175 Henry H Garnet*
06M153 - P.S. 153 Adam Clayton Powell
07X49 - P.S. 049 Willis Avenue*
08X072 - P.S. 072 Dr. William Dorney
09X199 - P.S. 199X – The Shakespeare School
10X007 - Milton Fein School
10X024 - P.S. 024 Spuyten Duyvil
11X121 - P.S. 121 Throop
11X153 - P.S. 153 Helen Keller
12X458 - Samara Community School*
13K056 - P.S. 056 Lewis H. Latimer
13K282 - P.S. 282 Park Slope
14K132 - P.S. 132 The Conselyea School
15K032 - P.S. 032 Samuel Mills Sprole
15K038 - P.S. 038 The Pacific
16K081 - P.S. 081 Thaddeus Stevens*
16K243 - P.S. 243K- The Weeksville School*
17K316 - P.S. 316 Elijah Stroud
18K115 - P.S. 115 Daniel Mucatel School
19K149 - P.S. 149 Danny Kaye
20K102 - P.S. 102 The Bayview
20K104 - P.S./I.S. 104 The Fort Hamilton School
20K164 - P.S. 164 Caesar Rodney
20K200 - P.S. 200 Benson School
20K205 - P.S. 205 Clarion
20K229 - P.S. 229 Dyker
20K686 - Brooklyn School of Inquiry
21K095 - P.S. 095 The Gravesend
21K099 - P.S. 099 Isaac Asimov
21K215 - P.S. 215 Morris H. Weiss
22K052 - P.S. 052 Sheepshead Bay
22K193 - P.S. 193 Gil Hodges
22K195 - P.S. 195 Manhattan Beach
22K197 - P.S. 197 - The Kings Highway Academy
22K236 - P.S. 236 Mill Basin
23K137 - P.S./I.S. 137 Rachel Jean Mitchell*
24Q119 - P.S./I.S. 119 The Glendale
24Q153 - P.S. 153 Maspeth Elem
24Q229 - P.S. 229 Emanuel Kaplan
24Q290 - A.C.E. Academy for Scholars at the Geraldine Ferra
25Q021 - P.S. 021 Edward Hart
25Q032 - P.S. 032 State Street
25Q079 - P.S. 079 Francis Lewis
25Q165 - P.S. 165 Edith K. Bergtraum
25Q209 - P.S. 209 Clearview Gardens
26Q115 - The James J. Ambrose School
26Q133 - P.S. 133 Queens
26Q188 - P.S. 188 Kingsbury
26Q203 - P.S. 203 Oakland Gardens
27Q108 - P.S. 108 Captain Vincent G. Fowler
27Q042 - P.S./M.S. 042 R. Vernam*
28Q121 - P.S. 121 Queens
28Q174 - P.S. 174 William Sidney Mount
28Q220 - P.S. 220 Edward Mandel
29Q176 - P.S. 176 Cambria Heights
29Q118 - P.S. 118 Lorraine Hansberry*
30Q085 - P.S. 085 Judge Charles Vallone
30Q122 - P.S. 122 Mamie Fay
30Q150 - P.S. 150 Queens
30Q166 - P.S. 166 Henry Gradstein
30Q300 - The 30th Avenue School (G&T Citywide)
31R003 - P.S. 003 The Margaret Gioiosa School
31R008 - P.S. 8 Shirlee Solomon
31R042 - P.S. 042 Eltingville
31R045 - P.S. 045 John Tyler
31R050 - P.S. 050 Frank Hankinson
31R053 - The Barbara Esselborn School
32K376 - P.S. 376

Programs that start in third grade:

01M034 - District 1: P.S. 034 Franklin D. Roosevelt*
02M126 - P.S. 126 Jacob August Riis*
03M191 - The Riverside School for Makers and Artists
04M083 - P.S. 083 Luis Munoz Rivera*
05M161 - P.S. 161 Pedro Albizu Campo*
06M028 - P.S. 028 Wright Brothers*
07X043 - P.S. 043 Jonas Bronck*
07X359 - Concourse Village Elementary School
08X075 - P.S. 75 School of Research and Discovery*
09X204 - P.S. 204 Morris Heights
10X340 - P.S. 340*
11X106 - P.S. 106 Parkchester*
12X314 - Fairmont Neighborhood School*
12X214 - P.S. 214
13K287 - P.S. 287 Bailey K. Ashford*
14K084 - P.S. 084 Jose De Diego*
15K024 - P.S. 024*
16K021 - P.S. 021 Crispus Attucks*
17K289 - P.S. 289 George V. Brower*
17K241 - P.S. 241 Emma L. Johnston*
18K235 - P.S. 235 Janice Marie Knight School*
19K065 - P.S. 065*
19K346 - P.S. 346 Abe Stark*
20K127 - P.S. 127 Mckinley Park*
21K188 - P.S. 188 Michael E. Berdy*
22K203 - P.S. 203 Floyd Bennett School*
22K361 - P.S. 361 East Flatbush Early Childhood School*
23K599 - Brooklyn Landmark Elementary School
23K446 - Riverdale Avenue Community School*
24Q088 - P.S. 088 Seneca*
24Q007 - P.S. 007 Louis F. Simeone*
24Q087 - P.S./I.S. 087 Middle Village*
25Q024 - P.S. 024 Andrew Jackson*
26Q376 - P.S. 376*
27Q056 - P.S. 056 Harry Eichler*
27Q183 - P.S. 183 Dr. Richard R. Green*
28Q086 - P.S. Q086*
28Q140 - P.S. 140 Edward K Ellington*
29Q251 - P.S. 251 Queens
30Q092 - P.S. 092 Harry T. Stewart Sr.*
30Q151 - P.S. 151 Mary D. Carter*
30Q171 - P.S. 171 Peter G. Van Alst*
31R022 - P.S. 022 Graniteville*
32K274 - P.S. 274 Kosciusko*

Christina Veiga is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on school diversity and preschool. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia area schools among the most segregated in the country

2022-05-23T14:52:19+00:00

Schools in the Philadelphia area are among the most segregated in the country, especially for Latino students, a new report has found.

According to the index used by the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, the area comprising Philadelphia and Delaware County is the most segregated in the country for Latino students and ranks ninth for Black-white segregation. For white and non-white students in general, it ranked fourth in the severity of school segregation among the 403 metro areas studied.

Overall, the report found that school segregation is most extreme in the Northeast, and that most of that segregation is due to boundaries between districts. Charter and private school attendance and within-district patterns are smaller but significant factors.

In the report, segregation is measured on a scale of 0 to 1. A score of 0 means complete integration, with each school mirroring the demographic composition of the area studied. A score of 1 means complete segregation — that each racial group is completely isolated. Any score above .5 is considered severe segregation.

The national index for white-Latino segregation is .18. For the four-county region, including Philadelphia, Delaware, Bucks and Montgomery counties, it is .48. For Philadelphia and Delaware counties alone, it is .58.

The national index for white-Black segregation is .24; in the Philadelphia region it is .65. For just Philadelphia and Delaware counties, it is .64.

As with the country as a whole, most of the segregation in the area is due to school district boundary lines, according to the report. The city of Philadelphia is one big district, with more than 100,000 students and another 80,000 in charters. But there are more than 60 small districts in the surrounding counties, most with just a few thousand students each.

“Philadelphia is emblematic of many Northeast metropolitan areas in the way school district boundaries are incredibly segregating,” said Erica Frankenberg, a professor of education at Penn State and a desegregation expert.

The report comes out 68 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, ruling that schools segregated by race were inherently unequal. But Brown outlawed only de jure segregation — state laws that required segregated schools. It did not prevent or stem de facto segregation, which is caused by housing patterns and other practices, such as where school district lines are drawn.

While the Brown decision is the most famous, Milliken v. Bradley, a 1974 decision involving Detroit and its suburbs, had a bigger impact on what has happened in northern states. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that school districts were not obligated to desegregate unless it had been proven that the lines were drawn with racist intent.

Those decisions dealt with Black-white segregation; since then, Latinos have become the fastest growing ethnic student group in the country. They now comprise 27% of students. And they have remained largely segregated from whites.

“This diversity doesn’t always translate into integration,” the report said. “The de facto separation of students by race continues to be commonplace.”

Zahava Stadler of the national think tank Education Trust, who studies desegregation, said that Pennsylvania stands out among states for its many districts — there are 500 — and for the inequity of funding among them, due to a heavier reliance on property taxes to fund schools than in most other states.

“Wealthier communities are always incentivized to keep the walls up around districts to keep local dollars in and high needs students out,” Stadler said. “This is especially true in a state like Pennsylvania, which has very little policy governing those local dollars.”

In Pennsylvania, she said, “school district borders are drawn around homogenous communities” that grew largely due to “a long history of racial discrimination in home ownership. There’s a real racial element to property wealth differences.”

Philadelphia spends less per student than most of the surrounding districts, she noted, even though its students — most low-income students of color — generally have more needs.

“It really is the happenstance of local wealth and local decisions and not a lot of state action to ensure kids get access to what they need no matter where they live,” Stadler said.

That could change if plaintiffs are successful in a case challenging the state’s school funding system that is now being argued in Commonwealth Court.

“Lost in the public discussion of integration is the importance of integrated schools to better prepare students for democracy and building cohesion in communities that are increasingly diverse,” said Frankenberg. “More research is now showing how it matters for psychological and sociological reasons.”

Research also shows that attending integrated schools is associated with greater opportunities for Black and Latino students, she said.

‘The Civil Rights Movement failed in the Northeast’

Within Philadelphia itself, the Black-white segregation index is high – .579. Segregation within the district itself accounts for about a third of that, with segregation between public and private schools accounting for another 19%. Segregation between charter schools is a bigger factor – just over 25%.

Similarly, Latino students are highly segregated within city schools, with an overall index of .53. As with Black students, segregation within district schools is the largest single factor.

Latino educators in Philadelphia said that the findings are not surprising.

“The Hispanic-white segregation in this city is a result of the accumulation of decades and decades of federal, state, and city policies,” said Julio Nunez, assistant principal at Sheridan Elementary School. “We may have tackled racism on paper. We have yet to tackle it in our mindsets and hearts.”

Nunez noted that better schools are in areas with higher-priced housing that is often out of reach for people of color.

“If school integration is the goal, the approach should be multi-tiered at every level of government, and policy makers need to be ready to engage in courageous, disruptive policy decisions,” he said.

Adam Sanchez, who teaches history at Central High School, agreed.

“The increasing Latinx population in Philadelphia is living in a city and a country that hasn’t had the will to confront the legacy of racist government policy and private practices that have created neighborhood and school segregation,” he said. “There is a myth that we dealt with segregation in the 1950s and 60s — that the Civil Rights Movement was successful in doing away with the last vestiges of racism in this country. But that is nothing but a myth. When it comes to school and residential segregation, the Civil Rights Movement failed in the Northeast.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Johann Calhoun contributed reporting.

NYC education panel approves school funding formula after last month’s rejection

2022-05-19T01:26:50+00:00

Following a stunning rejection last month, New York City’s education panel approved Wednesday the city’s school funding formula for next year, as Schools Chancellor David Banks promised to create a group that will review the 15-year-old formula.

The commitment from the city followed concerns from some panel members and public school advocates who want the current funding formula to provide more support for additional groups of high-needs students, such as students living in temporary housing.

The panel voted 12-1, with an additional abstention, to approve the formula, known as Fair Student Funding. The 15th member, a Staten Island borough appointee, quit last month. Chancellor David Banks said he, too, supports a more equitable formula, calling it a “horrible and ridiculous” situation that he inherited from previous administrations. He said he would put in writing his commitment on a working group.

But Banks, who called last month’s vote “deeply disappointing,” said schools could not afford a delay in getting their budgets if the formula was rejected again. Receiving a delayed budget could hamper hiring decisions, making it tougher to plan out classes for next year — an issue schools faced over the past two school years as the pandemic wore on, officials said.

“Passing it tonight does not mean that this is a chancellor who doesn’t give a damn — quite the opposite,” Banks said. “I have to keep the system moving.”

Officials had planned to get budgets to schools this month before the panel’s rejection in April. After Wednesday’s approval, it was not immediately clear when schools would receive their budgets.

Each year, department officials ask the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), composed mostly of mayoral appointees, to reapprove the funding formula. The formula accounts for $10 billion in funding and 65% of school budgets. It is structured to send more money to schools that are struggling academically, as well as those with higher shares of students with disabilities and English language learners.

But after hearing from public speakers last month who opposed the current formula, six panel members, who were not appointed by the mayor, shared their own concerns. Some pressed city officials about why the previous administration never released a report created by a 2019 task force that was charged with reviewing the funding formula.

Even then, the formula likely would have been approved at last month’s meeting. But Mayor Eric Adams, who appoints nine of the panel’s 15 members, had failed to replace an appointee who was forced to resign in March, and another of his appointees was absent. As a result, five panel members appointed by borough presidents abstained from voting on the formula after raising concerns, and a sixth elected representative voted against approval — leaving the city one short of the necessary votes.

Hours before Wednesday’s meeting, City Hall officials announced the appointment of Kyle Kimball to fill the final mayorally appointed seat which became available after the panel member was forced to resign over anti-gay remarks. Kimball is a former Bloomberg and de Blasio administration official who oversaw the New York City Economic Development Corporation. He is now vice president of government relations for Con Edison.

It’s possible that a future working group could look at what the 2019 task force came up with. A draft report from the task force called for adding weights to the formula for more student groups, such as children who are homeless, living in poverty and in foster care, as well as increasing weight for high schools to match those that have specialized academic portfolios — a matter related to how the formula sends money to some higher performing schools, which tend to enroll fewer Black and Hispanic students. The report did not specify what the weights should be.

On Wednesday, Banks said he would have First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg oversee the creation of the new working group and put that commitment in writing. He also said before the vote that revamping the formula would take time, and that another rejection of the formula “would bring the system to a grinding halt.”

Still, roughly two dozen people — mostly parent leaders — asked the panel to again reject the formula because it was not equitable.

“This is not new,” said Isha Taylor, a member of the parent council in Bronx’s District 10. “We appreciate the new [department of education] administration for creating a space for us parents to be a part of this process, but we really ask you, take a hard look and hold your team accountable for making these decisions.”

Some speakers asked the city to create a commission that would be independent of the education department so that it would feel free to analyze and pick apart the formula. Panel member Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, who is an appointee of Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, said she voted to approve because the panel received a commitment from the chancellor to review the formula. Still, Salas-Ramirez wants a commission with experts who can conduct a financial analysis of the formula.

Tom Sheppard, the lone elected member of the panel who voted no, said he was torn over how to vote but couldn’t ignore what he heard from the community. He, like Salas-Ramirez, said he wants a commission with financial analysts.

“That said, please don’t take my no vote to mean that I am uninterested in fixing this — I am very much interested in fixing this,” he said.

Christina Veiga contributed.

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.

Newark area has some of the country’s most segregated schools, study finds

2022-05-18T17:37:08+00:00

The schools in Newark and nearby communities are among the most severely segregated in the nation, according to a new nationwide analysis.

The Newark area ranks first in economic segregation and second in Black-white segregation, according to the analysis of public and private schools in all 403 metropolitan areas in the United States. The rate of segregation between Black and white students in Newark’s region is nearly three times the national average.

The Newark metropolitan area includes 118 school districts spread across six counties in northern New Jersey and one county in Pennsylvania. The vast majority of racial and economic segregation in that area occurs between school districts, not within them, according to the analysis, which also found that school segregation is more extreme in the Northeast than in other regions of the country.

The new report was published Tuesday, exactly 68 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools are inherently unequal. On the same day four years ago, a coalition of families and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit claiming that New Jersey’s widespread school segregation violates the state constitution and harms students.

“Almost seven decades after Brown v. Board, we still see intense levels of segregation across the country,” said Halley Potter, author of the report and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank.

The Newark area “stands out as one of the most segregated metro areas,” Potter added, though the legal challenge, which a state Superior Court judge is expected to rule on in the coming weeks, has the potential to change that. “It also stands out to me as one of the places where I do see some hope.”

Potter partnered with the Segregation Index, a project led by researchers Ann Owens and Sean Reardon. Their analysis, including an interactive map, is based on data from the 2017-18 school year across all metropolitan areas, which are home to about 85% of the U.S. population.

The analysis uses a 0-1 index to measure segregation, where 0 indicates that students in different racial or economic groups are evenly spread across schools and 1 means the groups are fully separated. In this model, a value above 0.5 is considered “very severe” segregation.

Among all metro areas in the U.S., the average level of Black-white student segregation is 0.24, the analysis found. But in the Newark metro area, the segregation level is a staggering 0.71 — second only to the Milwaukee area, whose level is 0.73.

The segregation level shows the average demographic gap, measured in percentage points, between schools in a given area. The way the analysis explains it: If the average Black student in the Newark region attends a school where only 10% of students are white, then the average white student goes to a school that is 81% white — a 71-point gap.

While the analysis combines seven counties in the Newark area, vast racial disparities also can be found within individual counties. For example, in Essex County where Newark is located, 75% of students in the Glen Ridge school district are white. Just three miles away in the East Orange district, only 1% of students are white.

“One of the top-line findings continues to be that Black-white segregation is the most extreme form of racial segregation in our schools,” Potter said.

Schools are also divided by family income. Across all metro areas, the average economic segregation level is 0.19, according to the analysis, which used students’ eligibility for free or reduced-priced lunch as a proxy for low family income.

But the Newark area’s rate, 0.49, is more than double the national average and higher than in any other metro area. In other words, the analysis says, if the average poor student in the Newark metro area attends a school where 75% of students are also poor, the average non-poor student goes to a school where only 26% of students are poor.

The analysis also sought to pinpoint the sources of this segregation. It looked at how students are sorted between public and private schools, within and across school districts, and between different types of public schools, such as traditional and charter schools.

It found that, nationwide, private schools and charter schools account for a small portion of racial school segregation — just 12% and 4%, respectively. By contrast, 35% of the segregation between white and non-white students happens among traditional public schools in the same districts.

But the bulk of racial segregation — 54% — is caused by the differences between districts, not within them. In other words, white students and students of color are more likely to be enrolled in separate districts than to attend different schools in the same district.

A table in the report shows the main drivers of racial school segregation in each region and among all metropolitan areas.

Many districts are “wildly different from each other,” Potter said, “even though the schools within each district might not have that many demographic differences.”

The story is somewhat different for economic segregation. The analysis found that nationwide, 57% of the sorting of poor and non-poor students happens within school districts, while 43% occurs between districts.

However, that is not the case in the Northeast, where 73% of economic school segregation and 76% of racial segregation happens across district lines. The reason: States like New Jersey are home to hundreds of small school districts that map onto segregated communities, all but ensuring that schools will reflect the localities’ divided demographics. By contrast, Southern states, many of which faced federal desegregation orders in the past, tend to have countywide school districts that each encompass a range of communities.

The Newark area offers an extreme example of how fragmented districts can drive segregation. A whopping 96% of economic segregation and 88% of racial segregation occurs between the area’s small, demographically divided districts, according to the analysis. Only a fraction of the segregation happens within those districts.

Segregation between districts presents a special challenge.

“That’s not a problem that school district leaders — superintendents or school boards — can solve on their own,” said Potter, noting that those officials control the enrollment policies and attendance boundaries only inside their own districts. “It really requires having some state or federal involvement.”

In the decades since the Brown decision, conservative majorities on the Supreme Court have struck down or curtailed school desegregation plans. Meanwhile, many federal desegregation orders have been lifted or gone unenforced.

But advocates in New Jersey believe they can circumvent those legal obstacles by turning to the state’s own constitution, which explicitly bans school segregation. In their lawsuit, they propose possible remedies, such as creating magnet schools that enroll students from multiple districts, allowing students to attend schools in different districts, or consolidating districts.

On Tuesday, three racial justice groups in New Jersey released a statement lamenting the persistence of school segregation in the state so long after the 1954 Brown decision. The groups — Salvation and Social Justice; the Inclusion Project; and the Latino Action Network, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit — said they hope New Jersey’s high court will force the state to live up to its ideals.

“Now, thanks to a lawsuit filed four years ago today,” they wrote, “New Jersey students have a path toward a fairer, more diverse education.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city and across New Jersey. Contact Patrick at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

What the education panel’s rejection of NYC’s funding formula means for schools

2022-04-28T23:52:27+00:00

What began Wednesday night as a routine vote by the city’s Panel For Educational Policy ended with concern among principals, union officials, and even the schools chancellor about the potential delay of school budgets and plans for the upcoming school year.

The panel, a mostly appointed board that makes decisions on major contracts and policies, rejected an annual request from the city to approve its 15-year-old school funding formula, which sends more money to schools that are struggling academically, as well as those with higher shares of students with disabilities and English language learners.

The formula accounts for about $10 billion in funding and makes up 65% of a school’s budget, most of which goes toward hiring staff, and the vote could delay school leaders’ ability to build classes for their students next year, said Lindsey Oates, the department’s chief financial officer. Though city officials said they are “committed” to reviewing the formula, Chancellor David Banks called the vote “deeply disappointing.”

The matter may be made moot by a May 18 meeting if all of Mayor Eric Adams’ appointees are present — one of them was absent Wednesday night — or if he appoints a new panel member to replace one he forced to resign in March.

Either way, the controversy highlights longstanding concerns about whether the formula is equitable enough, such as it not providing extra support for students who are homeless. When members of the public raised those concerns, at least one panel member who had planned to vote “yes” abstained instead.

“It was a moral vote in the sense of making sure that we held the city accountable for once again forgetting the most vulnerable students,” said panel member Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, who was appointed by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “We do not in any shape or form want it to impact school communities, and we will definitely do our best to push forward and to have some form of clarity or agreement.”

The panel’s vote is unlikely to have an immediate effect on school budgets, according to a former senior education department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. But if the panel does not approve the funding formula at its next meeting in May, or if panel members approve a modified version that requires recalculating school budgets, that could delay principals’ ability to plan and make hiring decisions for next school year since they won’t have a clear sense of their upcoming budgets.

“Do I think it’s the end of the world? No,” the former official said. “Do I think it’s a really bad practice? Yes.”

How did this happen?

The mayor appoints nine people, or a majority, to the 15-member board, meaning the administration’s proposals are rarely rejected. However, Adams has failed to replace a minister who was forced to resign after the New York Daily News revealed her anti-gay writing.

Additionally, another mayoral appointee was absent because of a family emergency, according to Gregory Faulkner, panel member and mayoral appointee. That left the administration with seven of the eight votes they needed. While they all voted yes, the members appointed by borough presidents all abstained, and the elected member, Tom Sheppard, voted no.

Wednesday night’s vote stunned some observers. To some, the vote suggested that City Hall and the education department were not paying close enough attention to how PEP members planned to vote — or even ensuring they had filled every vacancy allocated to the mayor.

“Weeks leading into a PEP meeting you had to understand where people were on the issues,” the former education department official said. “Is someone managing this process?”

Still, the former official said: “The likeliest outcome is they commit to the PEP to rethink the funding formula for next year and they bring it back for a vote.”

That’s along the lines of what Salas-Ramirez is hoping for. Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, education department officials briefed the panel members on the funding formula.

Salas-Ramirez said she raised concerns about the formula during her group briefing and in a one-on-one discussion with a department official.

Eventually, Salas-Ramirez felt that Oates and other department officials were frank with her, understood that the formula needs to change, and were committed to reworking it, so she had planned to vote “yes” Wednesday night.

“But then last night, the community outreach was so powerful,” Salas-Ramirez said. “Having so many [Community Education Council] members and folks in the community talking about the inequities in the Fair Student Funding formula for students with disabilities, the limitations that it has in terms of serving marginalized communities, the lack of accountability of students who live below the line of poverty and temporary housing — all of those things really resonated with us.”

Some of the panel members seemed to be swayed by NeQuan McLean, president of the parent council in District 16, who said that he was part of a city task force that spent nine months making recommendations to change the formula that were ultimately not released to the public.

A copy of that draft report, which was never officially released by the de Blasio administration, shows nine recommendations. They include adding new weight to the formula for students living in poverty, are homeless or in foster care, and increasing weight for high schools to match those that have “specialized academic portfolios” — an issue related to how the formula sends money to some higher performing schools, which tend to enroll fewer Black and Hispanic students.

There were no specific recommendations about what the weights should be, but instead suggestions on what steps the city should taske next. Some of the recommendations appeared to have the support of a majority, but not all, task force members.

Members of the panel asked why that report wasn’t released, and some asked to see a copy, including Salas-Ramirez. Faulkner, the mayoral appointee, said in an interview that he’d like a copy, too.

On Wednesday night, Oates, who worked during de Blasio’s tenure, said she “cannot speak to the previous administration’s decision to not release the report,” but noted that the release was planned around when the pandemic hit.

She said the city should discuss how the formula can be improved and that she understands “the frustration” around the task force’s work not being released or enacted upon. But what should also be considered is that the recommendations in the report “would require new resources to pay for [them]” which won’t be an easy lift. Despite this, the city previously addressed one of the biggest criticisms by giving schools all the money they were owed under this formula, following historic increases in state funding and an infusion of federal stimulus dollars.

Salas-Ramirez said she and other borough appointees had no plan to abstain together during the Wednesday vote, and said she abstained instead of voting “no” because she had not discussed the matter with Levine, her appointer. Still, she called the resulting vote “a strategy” to get the city to commit to working on a revamp of the formula.

“What we can do with this vote is take this opportunity to have a formal commitment to make a change by next year,” she said.

Faulkner said he felt fully informed during his briefings. He agrees that there are problems with the formula, but last night felt like the wrong time to vote it down. He also felt “somewhat surprised” by the comments because no one on the panel had raised issues with the formula until Wednesday night.

“I think there are definitely issues with the formula but because it was last-minute, we need to err on the side of, ‘What’s gonna do the least harm?’” Faulkner said. “If this was a bad formula, like, OK, I get it, but do we now put all of the kids in jeopardy?”

What does this mean for schools?

It wouldn’t be the first time school budgets would be delayed. Oates said schools received their budgets in July and June in 2020 and 2021, respectively, due to the “extreme fiscal crisis” the city was facing due to the pandemic.

Before the pandemic, schools typically received their budget plans in mid-May, meaning that they knew how much money they would get for the following school year and could begin to make decisions on hiring and how many classes they may need.

Former Washington Heights principal Julie Zuckerman said the delay in her budget last year caused a hiring mess at her school. She was feuding with the education department over an apparent miscalculation, which prevented her from hiring another teacher before the start of the school year — issues that perhaps could have been resolved had her budget come on time.

“It’s a many-tiered situation, and when one little piece goes off, it has a lot of repercussions,” Zuckerman said.

Mark Cannizzaro, head of the city’s principals union, said he doesn’t anticipate a major impact to school budgets if the PEP approves the funding formula at its next meeting but warned of disruptions to school planning if funding uncertainty extends beyond that.

“It’s got to be straightened out at the next meeting,” he said. “The city and the DOE should have made sure this was going to pass prior to the vote.”

Before the vote was cast, Banks said his immediate reaction upon hearing concern from panel members was to table the matter, but it was too late to do that.

“Essentially what we’re saying is that we don’t have time to address it now, which leaves you essentially with no choice as PEP members in how we should be moving forward,” Banks said. “I’m not happy with that process.”

An education department spokesperson declined to say what the city was planning to do next.

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.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

De Blasio promised to overhaul NYC’s ‘gifted’ programs. Chancellor David Banks will likely shift course.

2022-04-06T18:39:48+00:00

With just three months left in his tenure, former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced one of his most controversial education proposals: to phase out the city’s highly coveted gifted and talented program for elementary schoolers, which often segregate students by race and class.

Instead, the city vowed to replace it with a new, yet-to-be-defined model available to every student.

The promised changes kicked off a flurry of engagement sessions with parents and educators in each of the city’s 32 school districts. The city convened an expert panel and reviewed reams of research. Education department leaders put it all together into a 32-page vision, called Brilliant NYC, for a more inclusive approach to gifted education where a single test given to preschoolers would no longer be the gatekeeper for admissions.

The blueprint, a copy of which was obtained by Chalkbeat, seems to have been quietly shelved as a new administration took over, promising a different approach.

Now, three months into Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure, his schools chancellor, David Banks, said he will soon announce what will happen to the program. The new mayor and chancellor have indicated that dramatic changes are off the table.

Families, meanwhile, remain in limbo on how their children will be admitted to gifted programs next year. Advocates who had hoped to see significant reforms feel like they are starting all over again.

The city has long grappled with the program’s vast underrepresentation of its Black and Latino students: They fill only 14% of gifted seats, but make up nearly 60% of kindergartners citywide. But attempts to reform the program have often been met with backlash, including from Asian-American families whose children make up a majority of enrollment in the classes, and who worry that any changes will shut their children out of high-performing schools.

In public appearances and town halls, Banks has dropped breadcrumbs about how he may reshape the program. It could continue in kindergarten, which makes New York City an outlier — many other districts don’t start gifted programming until later grades — but with other opportunities to enter the program in third grade.

Banks has also suggested the previous approach of using a single test given to preschoolers to determine admissions is unlikely to stick. Many critics blame the test as a main driver for segregation in gifted classrooms.

“G&T is not going away with us. There’ll be some changes,” Banks said at a recent town hall with parents in Manhattan’s District 3. “We’re looking to expand on a G&T model in the third grade. We’re not going to eliminate the G&T at the kindergarten level. But I will tell you — I’m not a big fan of testing 4-year-olds.”

Carolyne Quintana, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning appointed by Banks, said at the town hall meeting that the city’s approach will be “some redesign in some of our current schools, and some new opportunities as well.” She pointed to the need for more teacher training and curriculum.

Typically, about 15,000 out of 65,000 rising kindergarteners have vied for just 2,500 seats in gifted programs across New York City. The biggest flashpoint — and question mark — is over the idea of expanding the city’s gifted programs.

Under the city’s traditional approach, seats were so limited that most students who qualified for gifted classes based on their test scores didn’t get admitted. Programs were also often inaccessible, especially in the city’s low-income neighborhoods where there were no gifted programs because few students took the admissions test or scored high enough to enroll.

De Blasio’s plan called for phasing out the city’s current programs, where students are separated into classrooms at about 100 schools as well as five citywide schools that are solely for children with the highest scores on the admissions test. But he and others argued it would be an expansion, with “accelerated” learning opportunities available to all students.

That approach would end the separate classrooms and even entire schools that currently serve students who qualified based on the test — a goal of diversity advocates. Critics, however, said that amounted to ending gifted and talented, arguing it’s difficult for teachers to meet the needs of students who are on so many different academic levels in the same classroom.

Lucas Liu, the president of the Community Education Council in District 3, did not support de Blasio’s plans for reform and thought it’s too late for dramatic changes to admission for next year’s incoming class.

When the city had to pivot quickly last year on gifted admissions — following a surprise move by the citywide Panel for Educational Policy refusing to renew a contract for the test —it ended up using a system of recommendations and a lottery.

“We’re just running out of time. Schools need to prepare. Parents need to prepare, teachers need to prepare,” Liu said.

Liu is also a co-president of an advocacy group called PLACE — Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education — which has pushed for maintaining separate programs for gifted students.

He said the Banks administration has met with the presidents of local education councils to get feedback on how to move forward on gifted and talented. The new administration is listening, he believes.

“They’re saying all the right things,” Liu said. “G&T is expanding. That’s not a question anymore, So the next part is: How? How do we do it?”

On the other hand, those who hoped for the end of separate, segregated gifted programs feel like they’re having to start their activism all over.

De Blasio finally came around to pursuing changes in the gifted program after years of lobbying, and official recommendations from city-appointed working groups that went largely ignored.

Eventually, the pandemic forced his hand, with the Panel for Educational Policy’s rebuke of the admissions test contract. Panel members cited concerns about diversity, in the midst of historic civil rights demonstrations after the police killing of George Floyd, as well as health and safety during the pandemic, since the test was administered in person.

Forced to come up with an alternative, education department leaders went on a 45-day sprint, collecting feedback from 4,000 people to draft a plan that included project-based learning. It was supposed to be phased in over four years.

Allison Roda, a professor at Molloy College who is a staunch advocate for ending the current model, contributed an analysis of research for the de Blasio administration’s report. Her understanding was that the next step would include a push to train teachers and other educators in a radically different approach.

“It’s a shift from a deficit model that labels students, segregates them, and separates them into separate classrooms… to a belief that all students have brilliance and it’s the school’s job to cultivate that,” Roda said.

Instead, the report does not appear to have been released publicly. Roda and at least one other researcher involved said they haven’t heard from the new administration.

“It did give me hope,” Roda said. “But it was, like everything else, political. And the timing was off.”

New Jersey says it studies charter school segregation, but won’t share the findings

2022-03-21T20:11:38+00:00

Do charter schools increase segregation?

Under state regulations, the New Jersey education department is required to answer that question. The agency’s findings could have far-reaching implications, including potentially affecting the outcome of a historic court case centered on New Jersey school segregation.

So what has the department found? It won’t say.

Last year, when the Education Law Center, a Newark-based advocacy group, requested to see records of the mandated analysis, the education department said no such records exist. The group responded by suing the department to gain access to the analysis, a move that led the state attorney general to make a surprising argument: The state doesn’t have to reveal its segregation findings — or even put them in writing.

Making his case in a legal brief last month, New Jersey’s attorney general quoted the education department’s comments about the issue from several years ago.

“The Department disagrees [that] the annual assessment of segregative effect must be reduced to writing,” the department wrote in 2014, when the Education Law Center first proposed making the segregation analyzes public. In most cases, the agency added, writing down those assessments would not be “cost, or resource, effective.”

Now, several advocacy groups, including the New Jersey NAACP and the Latino Action Network, are suing the state to compel it to produce and publish records of its assessments of whether charter schools exacerbate the segregation of students by race, ability, or English-speaking skills in traditional public schools. Written records are crucial for monitoring the state’s oversight of charter schools, said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that was filed in October.

“Without that, there’s no way to know if the commissioner even does it,” he said, referring to the segregation assessment. “And, more importantly, what the findings are.”

Charter schools often have been accused of adding to segregation due to the racial imbalance found in many of the schools, which are publicly funded and independently operated. In New Jersey, 86% of charter school students were Black or Hispanic and only 8% were white in the 2016-17 school year, compared with 45% of students statewide who were white, according to one analysis.

The question of what causes New Jersey to have some of the nation’s most racially segregated schools is at the heart of another lawsuit, which a state Superior Court judge will soon weigh in on. In that case, which the Education Law Center is not involved with, advocates allege that the state’s enrollment policies and district boundaries are the main drivers of school segregation — but that charter schools make the situation worse. The lawsuit says the racial imbalance in many schools violates New Jersey’s constitution, which explicitly forbids school segregation.

The state should be able to answer the question of whether charter schools worsen segregation.

New Jersey regulations require the department to annually assess the “segregative effect” that each charter school has on neighboring traditional schools by enrolling a portion of local students. Last year, the state Supreme Court added that the department must also consider how opening or expanding a charter school would affect the racial makeup of the local district and its share of students with disabilities and English learners.

The court’s ruling stemmed from an earlier Education Law Center lawsuit challenging former Education Commissioner David Hespe’s 2016 move to allow several Newark charter schools to enroll thousands of additional students. The lawsuit alleged that Hespe had not properly considered how the expansion could increase segregation in the Newark school district.

While the court declined to reverse the enrollment expansion, it called the commissioner’s decision “deficient” because it “did not include any reference to the schools’ potential impact on racial segregation in the district schools, much less the careful consideration of that issue that Englewood requires,” Justice Anne Patterson wrote in the court’s June 2021 ruling, citing a previous case.

But even after that ruling, the education department has not provided evidence that it gives “careful consideration” to each charter school’s effect on segregation.

In explaining her recent decisions to allow two Newark charter schools to continue operating but not expand, acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillian made no mention of segregation, according to summaries of the decisions that the department provided to Chalkbeat. (The department said the summary of a third decision is not yet complete, and a spokesperson said the agency cannot comment on pending litigation.)

The state says there is a simple reason why the commissioner said nothing about segregation: She doesn’t have to.

In his Feb. 4 brief in response to the Education Law Center lawsuit, acting New Jersey Attorney General Andrew Bruck argued that a “plain reading” of the charter school regulations shows there is “no requirement that annual assessments of student composition of charter schools and their segregative effect be publicly reported or formalized” in writing.

To be clear, he added, the department does conduct the required assessments — it just doesn’t share them.

In January, the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association and a charter school parent, identified only as A.S., filed a motion to intervene in the case. They argue that state agencies make many decisions that aren’t captured in writing, and that the advocacy groups are only seeking written reports on charter school segregation to use as fodder for lawsuits.

“What they really want is to be able to use each annual report as a springboard for litigation,” said Thomas Johnston, the charter association’s attorney in the case.

But in a reply brief, the Education Law Center dismissed that allegation.

The plaintiffs’ “sole interest in bringing this action is to ensure that the Commissioner fulfills her regulatory responsibility to conduct the assessments as a means to ensure charter schools do not have a segregative impact on their district of residence,” wrote Education Law Center Senior Attorney Elizabeth Athos.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network, which supports families of New Jersey children with disabilities. Diana Autin, the group’s executive director, said it got involved in the case due to its longstanding concern that charter schools do not enroll a fair share of students with disabilities, especially more serious disabilities that require intensive support services.

Of the roughly 60,000 students in New Jersey charter schools, 10% have disabilities and 6% are still learning English, according to the charter school association. By contrast, 17.4% of public school students statewide have disabilities and 7.4% are learning English, according to the most recent state data from 2019-20.

“I have no idea whether the commissioner is looking at that data,” Autin said. “I just know I don’t see any evidence of steps being taken to address it.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city and across New Jersey. Contact Patrick at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis district will sue if forced to cede schools to Germantown suburb, say officials

2022-03-16T22:31:02+00:00

Memphis school officials are promising a legal challenge if Tennessee tries to force them to cede three schools to an affluent suburban district in Germantown.

Two legislative committees this week passed legislation to require Memphis-Shelby County Schools to sell or transfer the valuable properties without guarantees of what would happen to their future students zoned for those schools.

“My client’s not afraid to go to the courthouse, and that’s where they’ll be headed” if the bill becomes law, said Tony Thompson, lobbyist for the Memphis district, during testimony Tuesday before a House education panel.

“It’s about land for them, it’s about kids for us,” he added.

The legislation, pushed by the town of Germantown, is the latest development in an ongoing dispute over schools operated by the Memphis district in several suburban towns that created their own school systems after Memphis and Shelby County school systems merged in 2013.

At issue are Germantown elementary, middle and high schools — known locally as the “three Gs” — which are operated by Memphis-Shelby County Schools under the terms of a 2013 legal settlement reached with the town of Germantown in federal court. Most students zoned to the schools live in unincorporated areas near Germantown, just outside of the suburb.

Memphis leaders have said there are undertones of race and class in the tug-of-war. Most students at the three Germantown schools are Black, and about a third are considered economically disadvantaged. Most students attending schools in the Germantown municipal district are white, and about 5% come from low-income families.

But Rep. Mark White, a white Shelby County Republican whose district includes Germantown, said the issue is local control.

“These school buildings are in the municipality of Germantown. All they’re asking for is to be able to manage and operate these schools,” said White, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Germantown Republican Sen. Brian Kelsey.

Last year, White agreed to back off from similar legislation if all parties resumed negotiations that had broken off several years earlier. Leaders from the Memphis district and the town of Germantown have since met 13 times but failed to reach an agreement.

This year’s bill, which would take effect on July 1, 2023, says a county district cannot operate a school within the geographic boundaries of a municipal district. It essentially would require Memphis-Shelby County Schools to transfer the properties to Germantown’s district, which would pay fair market value for the land, but not for the aging buildings.

White said the 3,300 students currently attending the three schools would be allowed to complete their education on those campuses under a lease agreement with Memphis-Shelby County Schools. But he could not promise the schools would be available for future students zoned to attend them, which Thompson said is the issue.

“Out of 3,300 or so students, we think we can absorb the elementary school kids and middle school kids, but we need a new high school,” Thompson said. “Properties appraise right now for $25 to $30 million for all three. It costs about $70 million to $90 million to build a high school.”

Thompson added: “I have no authority to settle this, but if they offered us enough money to build a high school and the time to build it, I would imagine we wouldn’t be here.”

The bill says the properties “must be used for educational purposes” but also says the land can be sold if it’s “in the community’s best interest.” If sold, the net proceeds would be split between the two districts.

On Wednesday, Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo testified before the Senate Education Committee that his community has no immediate plans to tear down buildings or sell the properties.

“We would use it for K-12 educational purposes,” Palazzolo said. “Our growth patterns show 15 to 20 years from now, we’ll need additional land and campuses. I would envision that since these buildings were built between 1959 and 1980, that in 20 years from now — even with the tremendous amount of deferred maintenance on the buildings — we would tear down a campus or two to build a campus or two.”

At a January presentation to Germantown’s school board, a demographic researcher projected stagnant student enrollment in the town for the next decade.

Kevin Woods, a Memphis school board member who participated in the negotiations, said he supports litigation if necessary.

“We will do everything in our power to continue to protect the interest of those families and employees currently attending 3G schools,” Woods told Chalkbeat. “We know the law is on our side.”

You can track the bill here.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

To reduce stigma, New York moves to change ‘emotional disturbance’ label to ‘emotional disability’

2022-03-14T21:30:51+00:00

Roughly 8,400 of New York City students with disabilities are classified as having an “emotional disturbance,” a term that has rankled advocates and families for creating a stigma around behavioral challenges. That term may soon be scrapped.

New York state officials proposed Monday to end using the term emotional disturbance as a designation for children who struggle with regulating their behaviors, including certain mental illnesses.

Policymakers want to replace the term with “emotional disability,” in hopes that it will reduce the stigma that may come along with “emotionally disturbed.”

The matter will go out for a 60-day public comment period before it gets a final vote from the state’s Board of Regents later this year.

If the change is finalized, New York would join 13 other states that use “emotional disability.” Currently, New York is one of 27 states that use “emotional disturbance” or “serious emotional disturbance.”

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa called the change “critical” because the current terminology “created the kind of labeling and internalizing for young people that really did not serve them well.”

The current terminology, advocates and families say, disparages students with behavioral differences and is applied disproportionately to Black students. In the 2020-21 school year, Black students comprised nearly 48% of those who were labeled as emotionally disturbed, even though they make up roughly a quarter of all students. Three-quarters of students with this label were boys.

State officials first considered changing the term in January 2020, then paused as they responded to the pandemic. Currently, emotional disturbance is one of 13 designations for students with disabilities. The definition of who qualifies as having an emotional disturbance can be broad and somewhat vague. A student might meet the criteria, for instance, if over a long period of time they cannot create “satisfactory” relationships with students and teachers or they display “inappropriate” behaviors “under normal circumstances.” Children with a “pervasive” mood of unhappiness or depression could be classified with the disability as can those who exhibit “physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.”

The number of children classified as emotionally disturbed dropped more than 16% last school year from 2018-2019, according to city data. The dip, however, could be the result of fewer referrals for special education services during the pandemic.

Last fall, state officials surveyed nearly 1,100 people — including special education teachers, families of students with disabilities, and related service providers — on their opinions about the term “emotional disturbance.” Eighty-nine percent of respondents said the term carried a negative perception, according to the state.

Lori Podvesker, a policy expert at disability rights advocacy organization INCLUDEnyc, applauded the change and called it “the beginning” of a systematic change in how people think about students with various disabilities.

The term emotional disturbance “implies that a student is extremely disruptive and demonizes” them, Podvesker said. That could affect how a teacher or someone else aware of the label treats a student. In contrast, using the word “disability” makes it clear that these students are a protected class of people, just like other people with disabilities, she said.

“The cultural implications of this and the power of language and how it will help us as a system humanize people with mental health disabilities is paramount,” Podvesker said.

Podvesker pointed to how students classified as having an emotional disturbance were disproportionately placed in District 75 programs — where they learn alongside other students who have more severe disabilities — when compared to students with disabilities citywide. She hopes that Monday’s move is one of many steps that could further integrate students with disabilities with their peers without disabilities.

“If we can talk about these kids and educate them in a way that we see autistic kids or kids with learning disabilities, we can get these kids into general education settings and change their lives,” Podvesker said.

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.

N.J. lawsuit says district choice could help desegregate schools. Would it work?

2022-03-10T20:38:17+00:00

Emma Barnes still remembers the time her granddaughter made a white friend at school.

Her granddaughter, Abia, was in kindergarten at Mount Vernon School in Newark. Abia, who is Black, was seated beside a quiet boy whose family had just emigrated from Russia. Abia took him under her wing and helped as he learned English. Before long, he was making friends and teaching his classmates Russian words.

“That was really cool,” Barnes recalled. “The kids loved him.”

Yet opportunities to make white friends are rare at Mount Vernon. While the elementary school has a diverse mix of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students, less than 1% of the enrollment is white.

The issue isn’t a lack of white families living nearby. Within walking distance of Mount Vernon sits Clinton Elementary School, part of the South Orange-Maplewood school district. At that school, 61% of students are white.

What separates the two schools is an impenetrable district boundary.

Under state law, most students must go to school in the districts where they live. Whether a child resides on the Newark or Maplewood side of the district line determines which public schools they can attend, what their classmates will look like, and how much local wealth flows into their schools. In Newark, the median household income is just over $35,000, according to U.S. census data; in Maplewood, it’s about $139,000.

Although many New Jerseyans don’t know it, a state program allows some students to cross district lines. Yet few students have been able to use the program, leaving the border between Newark and Maplewood and many other districts sealed.

Now, in a historic lawsuit that went before a state Superior Court judge last week, a coalition of families and civil rights groups are arguing that New Jersey’s closed-off districts have confined thousands of Black and Hispanic students to segregated schools. And one way they suggest the state could remedy the situation is by expanding the program that lets students switch districts.

Parents “should have the ability to send their kids, if necessary, across district lines to gain the benefits of a diverse and integrated education,” said Lawrence Lustberg, an attorney for the plaintiffs, at last week’s hearing. And the state “should encourage and foster and nurture that possibility.”

An opening for integration?

The decades-old Interdistrict Public School Choice program lets families apply to certain schools outside the districts where they live.

But the program’s growth has been stunted. Districts must opt into the program, and only about 120 out of some 600 districts have done so. In Essex County, not a single district has signed on, including South Orange-Maplewood.

Even if more districts wanted to participate, as some say they would like to, the state has stopped letting more join. And districts in the program cannot add more seats for transfer students even if demand grows.

As a result, just 5,000 students — or less than 1% of the statewide enrollment — use the program. And, partly because the districts surrounding majority Black and Hispanic cities like Newark and Paterson don’t accept transfers, families who use the program are disproportionately white.

Christian Estevez is one of the advocates who believes New Jersey will never shed its distinction as having some of the country’s most segregated schools unless those district barriers are pried open. Today he is president of the Latino Action Network, one of the plaintiffs in the segregation case, but years ago he was a school board member in Plainfield, where about 75% of students are poor and fewer than 1% are white.

“What I realized by the end of my term is that we can do all this stuff and make changes around the edges, but the core problem still exists,” he said. “Who do you integrate with if every school is basically poor?”

The judge in the segregation case is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks. If he sides with the plaintiffs then the state could appeal, but it eventually may have to come up with a desegregation plan — which could include expanding the district choice program.

Meanwhile, the pandemic might actually have made expansion easier. School enrollment declined statewide after school buildings closed. In Essex County, for example, 20 of 23 districts lost students last school year, according to state data. Any seats that remain open could create space for transfer students.

Glen Ridge, an affluent, majority-white district about five miles north of Newark, previously chose not to join the choice program because of limited capacity, said school board President Elisabeth Ginsburg. But now the district has more space and would consider joining — if the state lets the program grow.

“We would certainly take a look at it,” she said.

Mount Vernon School in Newark is racially diverse — except for white students.

Barnes, whose granddaughter is now a fourth-grader at Mount Vernon, suspects that racial bias has played a role in some districts’ decision not to accept transfer students.

“Rather than come together and make this thing work for the sake of the children, they’d rather just keep them on the other side of the gate,” she said.

If the state did expand the choice program, some communities would put up a fight, she predicted. Yet she also believes that many people will welcome a chance to integrate.

“Some people want change, some people want diversity,” she said. “Some people want equal opportunities.”

A popular choice program is ‘stymied’

New Jersey created the district choice program in 1999 as a small experiment, which let approved districts enroll students who live outside their borders. In its first year, only 10 districts and 96 students participated.

The program quickly attracted interest. Districts with declining enrollments used it to fill vacant seats and raise revenue. Families turned to it if they were dissatisfied with their nearby schools or sought offerings, such as performing arts or Advanced Placement courses, that weren’t available locally.

“It’s a fabulous program for the people in it,” said Marguerite Downham, a former state education department official who oversaw the program. “Parents love it.”

The program launched amid a nationwide push for school choice, which holds that students should not be bound to their neighborhood school. Charter schools are the best known form of choice, but district choice programs are older and found in almost every state.

More than 40 states allow families to transfer to other districts, according to a 2017 study; about half make it optional for districts to accept transfer students, while only 13 make it mandatory.

New Jersey’s program is voluntary, and after the state legislature made it permanent in 2010, a growing number of districts signed on. By 2015, 130 districts and more than 5,100 students participated.

But the program’s popularity backfired. Its cost ballooned to more than $50 million in 2015 because, under state law, districts that students left, as well as those they transferred to, both received special funding. (The program cost about $56.6 million this fiscal year.) In response, the state capped the number of districts and students who could participate.

“When you read the statute, it’s very clear that every kid is supposed to be able to take advantage of this,” said Dr. Robert Zywicki, the superintendent of Mount Olive School District, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the district choice program. “However, that has never been the case.”

Glassboro, a diverse South Jersey district, is a poster child for the program.

After joining in 2010, the district created specialized academies in its high school where students can study the performing arts, medicine, or business while taking classes at nearby Rowan University. The program gives transfer students access to rigorous courses that might be unavailable where they live, and it covers the cost of the college classes for both resident and transfer students.

“Some districts do it to fill empty seats,” said Glassboro Superintendent Mark Silverstein. “Our goal here was to raise the academic bar.”

But Dr. Silverstein echoed many other superintendents in expressing frustration that the state stopped the program’s growth. Even as families clamor to get into the academies, Glassboro can only admit a total of 17 transfer students, which leaves only a few openings each year.

“It’s really stymied the program,” he said.

Michael Yaple, a spokesperson for the state education department, said program enrollment has been flat since 2015 due mainly to budget constraints.

“Due to limited state funding, among other factors, enrollment limits on choice districts were put in place and additional school districts have yet to be identified,” he said in an email.

Adding integration to the mix

Supporters of the district choice program, long accustomed to promoting its benefits for families and districts, have started making a new case for expansion: It could help desegregate schools.

The Interdistrict Public School Choice Association, which represents participating districts, submitted an amicus brief in the school segregation case pitching the program as a tool for integration. The voluntary program would be less divisive than “more drastic measures,” such as district consolidation, the group argued.

“It’s a great way of bringing diversity and choice,” said Valarie Smith, the association’s co-director.

District choice programs, sometimes called open enrollment, have been used for desegregation outside of New Jersey. For instance, in response to a 1995 lawsuit, Minnesota created a choice program that let Minneapolis students from low-income families transfer to suburban schools.

New Jersey’s program was not designed for integration. Yet it’s had that effect in some districts.

A 2006 report by researchers at Rutgers University-Newark found that a handful of districts grew more diverse by enrolling transfer students. In a recent survey by the choice association, about a third of the 69 districts that responded said transfer students boosted schools’ racial diversity. One district, Englewood, used the program to increase diversity at a high school as part of the settlement in a segregation case.

But the lack of an integration mandate has curtailed the program’s impact on diversity. In 2018-19, more than 60% of participants were white, compared with 40% of students statewide who are white, according to state data compiled by the district choice association. In many cases, white students use the program to transfer from one majority-white district to another.

“For the most part, the composition of choice students mirrors the composition of the resident student body,” then-state education commissioner, William Librera, wrote in a 2003 report. Despite a state law requiring the commissioner to report on the program annually, the education department has not issued a report in years.

Retooling the program to promote integration would require major changes. First, experts say, the legislature or education department should make integration an explicit goal of the program. The state also would likely have to lift the cap on student enrollment, ramp up promotion of the program, and offer financial incentives to entice more districts to join.

Several experts said the best way to broaden the program’s reach, and strengthen its potential for integration, would be to make it mandatory for districts with open seats to accept transfer students. But in a state where most education decisions are made at the local level, neither lawmakers nor the governor are likely to enact such a far-reaching change without a court order.

“I don’t know that there’s anything approaching a sufficient level of political commitment or courage to undertake something like that,” said Paul Tractenberg, a former Rutgers law professor who studies school segregation.

The pitfalls, and promise, of integration

There are other obstacles in the way of converting the choice program into a vehicle for integration.

One challenge is recruitment. Many families have no interest in sending their children to another district, which can entail lengthy commutes and social adjustments.

“I don’t want to have to bus my kid way across town when I have a school right here,” said Rev. Douglas Bell, the president of the neighborhood association in Newark’s Ivy Hill section, where Mount Vernon School is located. “The main thing is not to be moving kids to different districts. We just want to make sure the schools are comparable.”

Mount Vernon School

Irvington Public Schools Superintendent Dr. April Vauss echoed that argument, saying it’s not fair to ask students of color to leave their communities in pursuit of great schools. She insisted that students can receive an excellent education in her district, where about 75% of students are Black and 24% are Hispanic. She also worried about engaged parents abandoning the district if the choice program is expanded, and Irvington children facing hostility if other districts were required to accept transfers.

“Do we want to go somewhere where someone has to be forced to take us?” she said. “Or do we want to build within our community?”

Even some advocates for the choice program fear a backlash if districts are ordered to participate.

“It’s designed to be a choice program,” said Downham, who co-directs the choice association. “When you start to force it, that’s when you get pushback.”

Another risk is that the program might unintentionally diminish some schools’ diversity. Wildwood, a racially diverse district where about 85% of students are economically disadvantaged, filed a brief in the segregation case saying it has lost white students as families use the choice program to switch districts.

“Our experience locally is that it’s contributing to the problem,” said Wildwood Superintendent J. Kenyon Kummings. He added that the state should closely monitor the program’s impact on school demographics.

For all its flaws, advocates say the program still holds promise for desegregation because it moves students across otherwise impassable district lines.

Estevez, the Latino Action Network leader, said some people might initially oppose efforts, like the choice program, that bridge the state’s divided districts. But he believes their fears will subside as they see children of different races and backgrounds learning side by side.

“The hope,” he said, “is that that kind of experience gets people to think differently.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city and across New Jersey. Contact Patrick at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

11th-hour changes may be coming to NYC’s high school admissions

2022-03-04T20:14:32+00:00

Despite New York City’s looming high school application deadline, last-minute changes might be on the horizon, schools Chancellor David Banks suggested Friday.

Banks has been listening to concerns from parents and elected officials about the new admissions process and could announce changes “very early next week, Monday or Tuesday, exactly what position we will take,” he said during a state hearing over mayoral control of city schools.

Every New York City public school student must apply to attend high school. They rank their top-12 high school programs and are eventually matched with a school. Banks noted that he’s up against a deadline: Applications are due March 11. Any new changes to the labyrinthine admissions process stand to cause panic among families who have navigated the new system and have already submitted applications or have, at the least, decided which schools to rank.

Banks didn’t detail what changes he’s considering, but he noted that the process at some of the city’s coveted “screened” schools is a lottery this year — which has resulted in backlash from parents of students with high grades and been criticized for harming Asian American students.

“It’s a process that I kind of inherited as I got here, and I didn’t have a long time to fully absorb all of it,” Banks told state lawmakers. “And I know decisions had to be made for parents to know what’s going to be happening for next year ... And if there’s a change that’s going to be made, you’ll know about that over the next couple of days.”

Announced this winter, the process now includes a “centralized” screening rubric that schools can choose to use instead of creating their own admissions criteria. Schools can screen for grades from a student’s seventh and eighth grade years — whenever their marks are the highest. They cannot consider attendance or test scores, since last year’s state tests were opt-in and most students did not take them.

This year, students will be placed in four different groups based on how high their grades are. The education department will then run a lottery, beginning with the students with the highest marks.

While most high schools in New York City have no admissions criteria, about 100 screen for at least one program. Eight of the city’s prestigious specialized high schools admit students based on an exam. (A ninth specialized school for the arts uses auditions.)

Integration advocates welcomed the changes, but backlash stemmed from families of children with high grades about how students will be chosen.

At a Queens public meeting last month, department officials said they expect the new process to result in a 13% increase in offers made to Black and Latino students, who, along with English language learners, students with disabilities, and low-income students, are underrepresented at many of the city’s most competitive schools

Vocal parents have complained that the new model doesn’t acknowledge the hard work of students with top grades, and that the rigor of instruction will be watered down if students with a greater range of academic achievement are admitted to the city’s most competitive schools.

Felicia Wilson, a parent in Morris Park in the Bronx, hasn’t been very concerned about the new lottery system because there aren’t as many screened schools in the Bronx as other boroughs. She’s not sure she wants her son traveling very far because she’s worried about his safety, so Wilson said she would like to see more screened schools in her borough.

The biggest obstacle in the process, she said, has been simply trying to find information about schools near her. Wilson started a Facebook group just for Bronx parents weighing their high school options, but said it would be more helpful if the city centralized information, such as when campuses host open houses.

“If you are a parent who is in the Bronx, a lot of the schools that are here are not being talked about in those groups, and a lot of the schools that are also being talked about tend to be the schools that are the screened schools — the schools that everybody is killing themselves to get into,” she said. “If you’re a Bronx parent, a lot of the things that they’re talking about may not apply to you.”

Francine Almash, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools, an education department advisory group, said she has been dismayed by debate around the lottery system. She said it has taken focus away from how the process disadvantages certain students, including those who, like her own son, have a disability.

“I am of the camp that I thought the high school process was bad to begin with. I actually think the changes that we’re making are a move in the right direction,” she said. “I actually think there is a small number of parents making a lot of noise about this idea, that one of the things that’s happening is that we’re losing our ability to sort and segregate students the way we used to be able to.”

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.

Christina Veiga is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on school diversity and preschool. Contact Christina at cveiga@chalkbeat.org.

Does New Jersey have to desegregate its schools? A judge will soon decide.

2022-03-03T23:03:47+00:00

Hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students in New Jersey attend schools where they are racially isolated and surrounded by poverty, despite strong state laws forbidding school segregation. One of the nation’s most segregated states, New Jersey has allowed the problem to fester for decades — now, it must fix it.

That was the argument made in court Thursday by plaintiffs who filed a historic lawsuit nearly four years ago arguing that schools across the entire state are unlawfully segregated — the first lawsuit in New Jersey, and one of few nationally, to attack the issue in such sweeping fashion. If the challenge is successful, it could lead to fundamental changes to New Jersey’s school system and large-scale desegregation efforts not seen in the U.S. for decades.

“I truly feel the burden of history,” said Lawrence Lustberg, attorney for the plaintiffs, at the start of oral arguments. It is time, he later said, “when we in New Jersey finally begin to acknowledge a problem that we have seen so clearly for decades, but really have done so little about.”

The administration of Gov. Phil Murphy, a liberal Democrat, has vigorously defended the state in court after early settlement talks broke down. The state’s lawyer argued Thursday that the plaintiffs had failed to prove segregation is a statewide problem and, in a line of defense that has appalled some advocates, added that students can receive a quality education even in segregated schools.

The question at hand Thursday was whether the state is liable for the racial and socioeconomic segregation found in many New Jersey schools. After three hours of arguments, Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy declined to rule from the bench, saying the weighty issues merit further consideration and he would issue a ruling “in due course.”

Whatever the judge decides, appeals are likely to follow. But if the plaintiffs prevail, then the state will be forced to begin exploring ways to desegregate schools. The remedies, which advocates say will vary depending on local conditions, could include redrawing district boundaries and allowing students to attend schools in neighboring communities — changes sure to provoke strong resistance from some parents and taxpayers.

“This is a very difficult political issue,” Lustberg said Thursday, arguing that is why the court must compel the state to act. “We need that court order to bring all the players together in order to reach a resolution.”

New Jersey has the sixth most segregated schools nationally in terms of Black students’ exposure to white students, and the seventh most segregated for Latino students, according to an analysis of 2016-17 data.

More than 377,000 Black and Latino students, or nearly two-thirds of that population, attend schools where more than 75% of their peers are other students of color, according to data from 2015-20 cited in the lawsuit. Some 244,000 white students, or about two-fifths of that population, go to schools where 75% or more of their classmates are also white.

Those statistics helped inspire nine students, their families, and a coalition of religious and civil rights groups to sue the state in 2018. They filed their complaint on the 64th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which said racially segregated schools are inherently unequal.

The suit claims that many New Jersey students are denied the social and academic benefits of diversity due to a state law requiring students to attend schools in the communities where they live, which often are deeply segregated by race and class. This situation violates the state constitution, which is unique in its explicit bans on school segregation, and prior court rulings that held the state responsible for addressing segregation regardless of what caused it, the suit says.

Advocates who helped coordinate the legal effort concluded that New Jersey’s courts would be more likely to order schools to desegregate than would lawmakers or the governor.

“To fully engage in this space would probably be a political nightmare for a candidate,” said Rev. Charles Boyer, founding director of the advocacy group Salvation and Social Justice, during an interview on NJTV during last year’s governor’s race. “There is still a lot of disdain for Black people in white communities, whether that be housing or schools.”

Some advocates hoped the lawsuit might provide Murphy political cover to address segregation, which he has publicly acknowledged as a problem. Instead, they were taken aback by his administration’s forceful opposition to the lawsuit and legal maneuvering that has dragged the case out for years.

On Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Christopher Weber said the state recognizes the value of “an integrated education.” However, he argued that the plaintiffs relied on “raw data” that only shows a subset of schools are segregated, and failed to prove the problem stems from state actions rather than housing patterns, changing demographics, or parents’ choice of schools.

“In their complaints, the plaintiffs asked this court to find that the state’s entire school system is unconstitutionally segregated and therefore requires a complete overhaul,” he said during the hearing, “based solely on the existence of selective, raw demographic statistics.”

In response, Lustberg said the data they presented clearly shows the problem is statewide and not limited to just a few districts. He also argued that the state is obligated to solve the problem, not only because it helped create it, but also because only the state has the authority to create desegregation programs that involve multiple districts.

Lustberg took particular issue with the state’s argument that attending a segregated school does not necessarily violate a student’s right to a “thorough and efficient” education.

“In New Jersey, there are school districts that are predominantly of a single race, which perform at high levels,” the state wrote in its most recent brief. Lustberg said that amounts to saying that separate schools are acceptable as long as they are equal — a claim the U.S. Supreme Court shot down in its Brown decision nearly 70 years ago.

“This is a truly disturbing” claim, he said Thursday, “for it amounts to arguing that separate but equal is somehow constitutionally unproblematic.”

Several groups have intervened in the case, including a few school districts and several charter schools. Lisa Scruggs, a lawyer for the charter schools, said Thursday that her clients did not cause school segregation and that the issue should be further analyzed.

The court “cannot just make this monumental decision exclusively based on the data that plaintiffs have presented,” she said.

One point on which all sides seemed to agree is that if the court orders the state to desegregate schools, figuring out how to do that will be a long and complicated process.

Possible solutions could include creating magnet schools that enroll students from multiple communities, letting more students cross district lines to attend schools, or combining some of the state’s roughly 600 districts. The plaintiffs say most of the programs could be voluntary — not the “forced busing” that opponents often fear — and that local officials, educators, and families should play a role in the planning process.

Lustberg said at the hearing that he does not believe the state will start that arduous and likely divisive process unless the court orders it to solve the problem of school segregation.

If not, he added, “there is one thing that we know for absolute sure from history: That problem will persist.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city and across New Jersey. Contact Patrick at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Newark activist Junius Williams on teaching, and making, Black history

2022-02-28T21:13:17+00:00

How do you describe someone like Junius Williams, who has seen and done more than most during his 78 years of life? Well, let him try.

“I’m a historian. I’m an attorney. I’m an educator. I’m a blues man. And I am an organizer.”

That was how Williams — the Southern native, longtime Newark resident, Yale-trained lawyer, Civil Rights Movement veteran, community organizer, city of Newark historian, and blues harmonica player — characterized himself last year on an episode of his podcast. Oh yes, the septuagenarian is also a podcaster.

At a moment when Black history, how it’s told and how it’s taught to students, is the subject of bitter debate in statehouses and school board meetings nationwide, Williams has not only studied and written chapters of that history, he has also lived it.

Born in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1943 and raised in Richmond, Williams grew up amid the dehumanizing racial segregation of the Jim Crow South, where separate water fountains, swimming pools, and schools for Black and white children were facts of life. Pushed to excel academically by his educator parents, he attended Amherst College in Massachusetts — where he was one of very few Black students — and later Yale Law School.

While still in college, he traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the fight for Black voting rights. Marching downtown, the demonstrators encountered angry police “whipping anyone and anything within the radius of their wild swings,” Williams has written. He and other protesters were arrested and detained in a state prison.

Not long after, Tom Hayden, cofounder of the radical activist group Students for a Democratic Society, recruited Williams to join its campaign to organize Newark residents around housing and economic issues. It was a fateful invitation. In Newark, Williams discovered his prowess as a community organizer and witnessed the 1967 uprising against police brutality, which left 26 people dead and altered the course of the city’s history.

The following year, Williams helped Newark community members negotiate a deal with officials that downsized the footprint of a new medical school, which would have displaced thousands of people of color, and secured jobs and housing for residents. In 1970, he managed the successful campaign of Kenneth Gibson, who became Newark’s first Black mayor.

More recently, Williams has focused his energy on educating the next generation of leaders. He founded the Abbott Leadership Institute at Rutgers University-Newark, which teaches Newark parents and students how to advocate for better schools; wrote a memoir, “Unfinished Agenda,” that turns his life experiences into an activist’s playbook; and hosts the lively podcast, “Everything’s Political,” about “the politics we don’t see that shape our lives.” Lately, he has been assisting the Newark school district in its efforts to teach students a more robust and accurate account of African American history.

Why spend so much time sharing the knowledge and wisdom he’s earned over a lifetime?

“I learned a long time ago that I’m not going to be here forever and I’m not going to be able to do all the things that we want to get done in this lifetime,” he said. “So you have to pass it on.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Williams recently about his life, his work, and the ongoing struggles around history education and school integration. The interview has been edited and condensed. You can view the entire interview in the video below.

Chalkbeat Newark: I wanted to start by talking about your own education. You entered the public school system in Richmond, Virginia, at a time when segregation was still the law of the land. Then, during your education, there was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case where the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation violated the Constitution. I’m curious, what was it like for you first attending segregated schools? And then did you see any changes after the Brown ruling?

In Richmond, everything was segregated, right down to the water fountains. Well, one day they decided to desegregate the city buses. So my mother and father instructed us to be cool — this was the day. And, of course, as young people we were going to make sure we sat in the front of the bus. So we did. We sat as close to the bus driver as we possibly could.

We were in junior high school at that time, and every day we took that bus. The older people looked at us and were afraid; they just didn’t know what was going to happen. They went to the back of the bus. We sat there. We had this bus driver whose neck got just as red as it could. We were just giggling and tee-heeing. Outside the people who we passed looked at us with awe because we had done something that they were not able to do.

Throughout my actions in the South — that was also true in Montgomery when we challenged the voting rights situation and I eventually went to jail there, state prison — the older people held back, the younger people charged forward. That was basically my experience with desegregating anything.

After the thrill wore off, we went back to the back of the bus where we could cackle and tee-hee and not worry about what those older people were saying about us as they looked at us with stern warnings. But not on that day. We were leading them.

Did the Supreme Court ruling ring true to you — that separate facilities are inherently unequal, whether it’s buses or schools? That even if the facilities themselves were equal, just the fact of separating people by race creates a sense of inferiority or inequality?

Well, yes, that was true. That’s what desegregation was all about.

We were treated as second-class citizens and we were branded as second-class citizens by the facilities that were made available to us. Because separate was never equal.

It’s now been almost 70 years since the Brown decision and schools across the country in some places are still racially segregated. And in fact there’s a court case right now in New Jersey challenging school segregation here. Having lived through this, what is it like to see that so many schools remain segregated?

The grandeur, the allure of integration has long since left me. When I became a part of the Black power awareness, one of the things we realized is that we don’t need to be with white people to know who we are and to do well. So desegregation has not worked to fortify people in that respect.

What desegregation does, or integration, it gives you an opportunity to see just what white people are like and how they operate. I don’t mean that necessarily in a defamatory way. I’m just saying, I went four years at Amherst College and three years at Yale Law School — I know white people. They put their pants on in the morning just like I do.

That’s what desegregation does. It doesn’t really help the race, it helps those individuals who have been exposed.

The current case is still in the courts. If the state is found liable for segregation and ordered to make changes, how do you think that would go over among people in the state?

Resistance on the part of whites, great acceptance on the part of Blacks and brown people.

The resistance on the part of white people …. They do not want to see Black people taking their resources. They don’t want to see them in their spaces. They don’t want to be around them. But from the standpoint of Black people, parents who want to see their kids get ahead and they realize there’s only one chance for these kids, they would go for that.

Therein would lie the conflict. It would be just like down South, but with a more gentle touch. You wouldn’t have the violence, but there would be a certain political awakening among the white suburbanites to keep Black people where they are. And to make sure that their children didn’t have to come to the urban schools.

I wanted to talk a little about your activism. When I was reading about it, it just struck me how young you were when you were doing that organizing. So what role do you think young people played in the civil rights movement and more recent movements like those for LGBTQ rights and Black lives?

Without the energy and the fearlessness of the youth, any movement will peter out and be less than what it is really capable of.

If we look at the voter rights movement now, we see some young people. But I don’t see the enthusiastic support that we saw in my era because we wanted the vote. We saw the vote as not just the exhibition of democracy, but we said, voting is power.

Young people don’t see that today because our politicians and people we put in office have not been held accountable for what they do and don’t do. So instead of young people saying, “Hey, we got to hold these people accountable,” they just say, “Well hell with the vote.” Some, not all.

In New Jersey, we have the Amistad law that was passed in 2002, which was meant to make sure students are learning about African American history, slavery, the contributions of Black Americans. But over the years, there have been questions about its implementation. The new leadership of Newark Public Schools is working to change that and create a new curriculum, and I’ve heard they’ve asked you to help.

Well the first thing we did is put together a curriculum based on the website, Rise Up Newark. We also started a similar website in Detroit. My lead researcher, Peter Blackmer, and I, we put together a curriculum based on the city of Newark.

Not only were we looking at the white ethnic groups who rose to power, we were comparing that to the Black progress. How did we get power in Newark? That’s being used in 10 high schools already and hopefully it will be more.

Right now, they’ve asked me to look at some of the other curricula they have proposed and to propose some alternative curricula with that in mind all the way from kindergarten up through middle school, thus far.

And are you helping them in particular with Newark history?

With respect to the work I’m doing right now, it’s more general. It’s like, for example, if I’m going to be looking at a history of Africa. You don’t shy away from words like colonialism and slavery.

And if you’re looking at the American scene, we don’t start the history with slavery, we go back to where Africans were before they were brought to this country to be enslaved. What was their civilization like?

We want young people to understand that the mother of civilization is the continent of Africa. Not only did the first people come from there, but the first great civilizations came from Africa.

We want people to get a view of the world as it really is, as opposed to a homogenized, white perspective, which is white-supremacy-oriented.

This seems self-explanatory, but it’s being debated right now: Why is it so important for students to get that full, truthful history that includes the contributions of Black people but also oppression and white supremacy?

People of color have been taught, still, you ain’t mmm compared with white people. So it’s necessary, it’s not just nice, that people learn who they are. That they come from something that’s much better than you really have been told has happened.

You can’t expect people to do well on math tests and whatever other skills are prescribed if they don’t feel good about who they are.

Newark has such a rich history, and you’ve been part of some of the pivotal moments. Are there certain key periods of history or events or themes from Newark’s history that you’d like to see Newark students learn about?

One of my big future projects — hopefully not too far in the future — is to examine the role of music in Newark.

Newark is a music city. A lot of people don’t know that. You’ve got people like Sarah Vaughan and Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston. All these people have roots in Newark — not just Newark, Newark music.

The last I saw, there are at least 36 states in the past year or so that have introduced or adopted policies that would restrict teaching about race and racism, talking about things like white privilege or structural racism, or even topics that would make students feel guilty or uncomfortable about the past. As someone who’s steeped in history, what are your thoughts when you see these efforts to limit what students can learn?

That has happened because of the killing of George Floyd. When George Floyd was killed, for nine minutes everyone in the world saw a Black man being murdered by one cop in particular, but two others were his assistants.

Something went off in the minds of young people especially — young, white people — watching that in this country. And for the first time, there were more white people in the street in some places than Black people protesting that death. And the white folks in charge said, “Whoa, what’s going on here?”

Then some of the adults who were in charge in the suburbs were saying, “We really don’t know what’s going on with Black America. They’re saying that there’s white privilege, and we saw it, and we got to talk about that. We’ve got to really study it and do something about it.”

That’s when the reaction came. When the young white people want to know that perhaps it’s not so good to be white, quote-unquote, it’s not so good to have this privilege. That this privilege is driving us in economic ways, political ways, social ways, and we ought to do something about it, we need to learn more.

That’s when the folks in charge said, “We got to stop this shit.”

The last thing I wanted to ask you: When you think about what your legacy will be and how your story will be told, what do you hope it will be?

I want to educate people. I want to pass on the knowledge that I have, that we’ve accumulated, that I learned from standing on the shoulders of giants.

My latest chance to do that is with “Everything’s Political,” the podcast. Everybody’s doing that, so the challenge is: How do you make your podcast stand out? How do you continue to still speak truth to power?

And I have been fortunate enough to have people who agree with me and see this as part of our collective legacy and have helped me do that. So I’m going to keep on doing that as long as I can.

Amid court battle, N.J. lawmakers consider a different way to pursue school integration

2022-02-08T23:25:38+00:00

While New Jersey officials fight a lawsuit that would force the state to confront segregation in its schools, a state lawmaker is seeking to sidestep the legal battle and jump-start the search for solutions.

A new bill, which the senate education committee narrowly approved last week, would establish a Division of School Desegregation within the state education department. The division would analyze racial and socioeconomic segregation in New Jersey schools, study its impact on student outcomes, and create a plan to promote integration.

Despite New Jersey’s diverse population and its state constitution’s ban on school segregation, many of its students of color attend separate and unequal schools. New Jersey has the sixth most segregated schools nationally in terms of Black students’ exposure to white students, and the seventh most segregated for Latinx students, according to an analysis of 2016-17 data.

State Sen. Joseph Cryan (D)

State Sen. Joe Cryan, the Democrat who introduced the bill, said New Jersey has a moral obligation to address the issue.

“You cannot live in one of the most diverse states in the country,” he said, “and also have one of the most segregated populations in your educational system.”

Cryan’s bill comes nearly four years after a group of parents and advocates sued New Jersey, arguing that the state maintains segregation by requiring students to attend school in the municipalities where they live, which often are racially imbalanced. On average, 62% of Black students and 58% of Latinx students in New Jersey attend schools where fewer than 20% of their classmates are white, according to data from 2015 to 2020 cited in a filing by the plaintiffs last month.

While Gov. Phil Murphy has stressed the importance of school integration, his administration has battled the lawsuit since it was filed in May 2018. In a December court filing, the state’s deputy attorney general argued that the plaintiffs had failed to show that segregation extends beyond a subset of school districts, and wrote that forcing integration would amount to “obliterating the state’s entire public school system.”

The case has dragged on after settlement talks broke down in 2019. The next hearing before a superior court judge is scheduled for March 3.

Cryan said he shares the plaintiffs’ goal to reduce school segregation in New Jersey, but added that he has not coordinated with either side in the case.

“The plan is to work the issue legislatively as it should have been addressed years ago,” said Cryan, a member of the legislature’s joint committee on public schools whose district includes Elizabeth and Union Township. He said Building ONE New Jersey, an advocacy group that promotes racial equity, helped generate the idea for the bill.

It remains to be seen whether lawmakers will get behind the idea of a desegregation office — or whether such an office could drive real change.

The New Jersey education department formed a similar division in the 1980s called the Office of Equal Educational Opportunity, according to a 2019 report funded by Rutgers University-Newark. The office ordered some districts to create desegregation plans, and it contributed to integration guidelines the state issued in 1989. However, the guidelines no longer appear to be enforced and the office was disbanded, according to the report, which recommended reestablishing the office and expanding its authority.

At the committee meeting last Thursday where the new desegregation office was discussed, several advocacy groups endorsed the bill, including the state teachers union, the principals union, and the school boards association. A representative from the Education Law Center, which has challenged segregation in New Jersey charter schools, proposed several changes to the bill, including that it allocate $5 million to fund the division’s work and allow it to hire its own staff and director rather than pull from the education department’s existing workforce.

A representative of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association said the group supports the bill and the goal of integration but, echoing arguments made by the state, added that more analysis is needed to determine “what’s actually possible.” He also said charter schools could offer one way around residential segregation by enrolling students from multiple districts.

Both Republicans on the committee, senators Michael Doherty and Samuel Thompson, voted against the bill. (Neither lawmaker’s office responded to a request for comment.) During the hearing, Thompson cited a district where the majority of students are Latinx and asked, “Would they have to bus a lot of their kids out to surrounding towns and then bus the other kids in to balance this out?”

The question reflects a common belief that school desegregation requires mandatory busing of students to schools or districts often far from their homes. However, integration advocates typically promote voluntary approaches, such as magnet schools that enroll students from multiple districts or incentives for districts that pursue integration.

The bill, S-820, would require the new desegregation office to consider ways to expand an existing program that lets students attend schools in neighboring districts. The decades-old program is voluntary and only serves about 5,000 students out of some 1.4 million public school students statewide.

Still, Cryan told Chalkbeat that he doubts the state’s entrenched school segregation could be uprooted solely by relying on families to choose more diverse schools. Other solutions that advocates have floated, such as consolidating or greatly expanding districts, could provoke a backlash from residents committed to New Jersey’s tradition of “home rule,” where communities help fund and control their local schools.

“There absolutely will be” opposition to any sweeping desegregation efforts, he said, but added that his bill would only task the new division with proposing solutions, not enacting them.

Cryan said he has not yet spoken with officials from the state education department or the governor’s office about his proposal, but added that he is confident Murphy “wants to work toward an equitable education” for all children. (A department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

“I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you fix overnight,” Cryan said. “It’s going to take a cohesive, long period of effort and focus.”

Study: Common school ratings biased, often inaccurate

2022-01-24T19:57:39+00:00

There is a powerful, intuitive idea that has long shaped perceptions of American education: the schools with the highest test scores are the best schools. It seeps into everything from conversations among parents to real estate websites.

But this thinking is profoundly misleading, according to new research. Schools with the top scores aren’t necessarily the ones that actually help students learn more. On top of that, rating schools based on overall scores unfairly penalizes those serving more students of color, potentially exacerbating racial segregation.

“If you just go by published accountability ratings, you will be guided to the schools that have the most white and Asian students,” said Josh Angrist, a professor at MIT who recently won the Nobel Prize in economics. “You’re not actually being guided to the best schools.”

This conclusion isn’t new in education research, but the paper, by Angrist and three other economists, is among the first to rigorously examine the validity of the measures used by the popular third-party rating site GreatSchools. The study comes after reporting by Chalkbeat in 2019 showed that GreatSchools ratings effectively steer families towards schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Using data from middle schools in Denver and New York City, the researchers compare the components of GreatSchools’ ratings to their own statistically sophisticated measurements of school performance. (The researchers look only at test scores, mirroring how GreatSchools rates middle schools.)

They find that the part of a school’s 1-10 rating that is based on students’ proficiency on state exams is particularly off base, and is strongly skewed in ways that hurt schools with more students of color.

Another part of the rating, the academic “growth” score, is much less biased and a strong gauge of how much a school contributes to student learning, the researchers conclude.

Angrist says their point is not to pick on GreatSchools but to show that the test score metrics widely used by states, media outlets, and other third-party sites are fraught with bias. U.S. News and World Report faced similar criticism last year after rolling out its own rankings of elementary and middle schools across the country.

“We think of [GreatSchools] as emblematic of what’s going on in the domain of school ratings,” Angrist said.

The new research was partially funded by the Walton Family Foundation, which is also a funder of both Chalkbeat and GreatSchools.

Jon Deane, the CEO of GreatSchools, said the organization welcomes this type of study. “This is the work we do: to consistently try to provide the best information to families,” he said. “When we see a signal that there may be better information, we get excited about that.” Deane also noted that the research is limited by its focus on middle schools in just two cities.

Still, he said the work validated GreatSchools’ recent shift to place more weight on academic growth, which — when available — is now the biggest factor in the site’s ratings of elementary and middle schools.

Asked why GreatSchools continues to use proficiency as a significant component of their school ratings, in light of this and other research, Deane said, “We believe combining multiple measures is really important to share a richer picture of what matters most.”

The researchers say that some of the differences in proficiency rates across schools reflect factors outside of schools’ control that affect students’ test scores. Those include poverty, food insecurity, and environmental hazards, like lead poisoning, that students of color are more likely to experience.

Of course, school ratings are only one factor in how parents choose schools. Another recent study suggests that school demographics themselves make a big difference.

In a survey-based experiment, White, Asian, and Hispanic parents in New York City were all much less likely to say they would send their children to a high school with mostly Black students compared to one with fewer Black students. White and Asian parents were also less likely to select a predominantly Hispanic school than a racially mixed or mostly white school.

This was true even when parents were provided with information showing that the school’s graduation rate and safety were similar to other schools with a different racial makeup. These survey results closely mirror families’ actual decisions in New York City’s high school application process.

“People often use these ratings as a way to justify the preferences they already have coming into making school choices,” said Chantal Hailey, a University of Texas at Austin professor who conducted the study. “They already have preconceived notions of which schools are quality schools based upon the demographics.”

Still, a third recent study offers some reason to believe that putting more emphasis on progress would encourage less racially segregated schools. Presented with growth data on nearby schools, white and high-income families were more likely to say they would choose one with more students of color and low-income students.

“One of the chief virtues of measuring and reporting growth is that it upends the conventional wisdom that the most effective schools are almost always the Whitest and most affluent,” wrote researchers David Houston of George Mason University and Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Any effort to use growth scores to point families to high-quality schools is going to face a major roadblock in the years to come, though. State testing was canceled in 2020, and many fewer students took the tests than usual in 2021. That means it will be challenging — although some say not impossible — to calculate accurate school growth scores.

Currently, GreatSchools ratings are largely based on tests taken in spring 2019. Deane says the organization is still figuring out how to use data from state tests taken last year.

A Brooklyn district forges its own path to replace segregated ‘gifted and talented’ programs

2021-12-10T20:31:45+00:00

Julie Hollar notices something unsettling in the mornings when students line up to enter P.S. 282 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In some of the lines, almost all of the children are white. Those are the “gifted and talented” classes.

Most of the students heading to general education classrooms, meanwhile, are Black or Latino.

“I worry about the message we’re sending to kids,” said Hollar, a mother of two white children in the general education program at P.S. 282. “They see that the kids in the class that’s called ‘gifted and talented’ are white, and the other kids are not.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio caused a firestorm with a recent proposal to phase out the city’s current gifted programs amid long-standing criticism that the classes, though coveted by many, segregate students.

“It’s about all students in the school and all teachers in the school.”

Well before the mayor’s announcement, school leaders, parent advocates, and education department officials in District 13, where P.S. 282 is located, had been laying the groundwork for reforms of their own. Some in the district are hoping to implement the globally recognized International Baccalaureate program, not only as a more inclusive alternative to gifted classes but also to help improve struggling schools. If they’re successful, the district — which spans from Brooklyn Heights to Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, and Clinton Hill — could provide lessons for a city locked in a bitter battle over the future of gifted education.

“In terms of building a district more equitably, and building a district with a common set of expectations, this is our goal,” said District 13 Superintendent Kamar Samuels. “It’s about all students in the school and all teachers in the school.”

Segregated, but impervious to reform

While most New York City kindergartners are Black or Latino, they make up only 14% of enrollment in gifted programs. Meanwhile, 70% of seats go to Asian American and white students, who make up less than a third of enrollment citywide. Also starkly underrepresented are students who come from low-income families, are homeless, have disabilities, or are learning English as a new language.

Most enter the gifted program in kindergarten. Admission is based on the results of a single test taken when students are about 4-years-old. Once enrolled, they can stay for the rest of elementary school.

Many academics, educators, and parents agree the city’s program has major flaws, including the competitive admissions process and limited number of seats available — only about 2,500 for some 65,000 kindergartners each year.

But it has been largely impervious to reform, seen as a way to keep white, middle class families — and the resources they often bring — in public schools. Many immigrant families, particularly those who are Asian, rely on gifted programs as a ticket to higher-performing schools.

After resisting calls to overhaul gifted for most of his tenure, de Blasio in October proposed phasing out the current program and replacing it with a vaguely defined plan called Brilliant NYC. Among the few details provided by the education department are that all kindergartners would receive “accelerated” learning. Training would be provided for teachers. The program would scale up a grade each year, with universal screening in third grade to determine whether students continue to receive some sort of specialized instruction.

The proposal has been met with intense backlash and skepticism that it will meet the needs of advanced learners.

The week after de Blasio announced it, Samuels, the District 13 superintendent, met with parents to discuss the district’s own plans, already in the works, to phase out gifted programs.

A diverse but segregated district

District 13 is a diverse corner of Brooklyn, including the gentrifying, historically Black neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, historic brownstones in Brooklyn Heights, and clusters of public housing including the Farragut Houses in Vinegar Hill.

For years, parent leaders and educators there have been laying the groundwork for change. The district was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 during a bitter elementary school rezoning that shifted attendance boundaries around P.S. 8, an overcrowded, mostly white school in Brooklyn Heights, and Vinegar Hill’s P.S. 307, which enrolled mostly Black and Latino students with room to spare. New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones elevated the issue nationally when she wrote about it in personal and frank terms: Her daughter attended P.S. 307.

Since then, the local Community Education Council, or CEC — a volunteer parent board that approves zoning changes — has continued to wrestle with segregation within its boundaries. The district has landed state and city grants to come up with plans to spur more diverse schools. That work has continued throughout the pandemic with town hall style meetings on race and equity. Other parents in the district have taken their own actions. At P.S. 9, for example, the school community recently decided to end its gifted program.

Forging a new path forward has been full of competing problems and viewpoints. While selective programs, such as gifted, are seen as shutting out Black and Latino students, CEC member Cynthia McKnight said that many of the district’s parents of color were skeptical of outright eliminating them. In fact, she said, the area’s middle-class families of color, many from the Caribbean, have flocked to “screened” schools, or those with competitive admissions criteria.

District leaders also had to confront the fact that many parents were opting out of local schools. Three elementary schools in District 13 have been identified by the state as low performing, according to the superintendent. McKnight said that enrollment has been such a struggle at some, she’s surprised they haven’t been closed.

“We have to elevate everyone.”

Eliminating programs, even segregated ones, did not change “how the DOE is failing to educate our Black and brown children,” she added, using an acronym for the Department of Education.

“We don’t agree with the gifted and talented right now, testing 4-year-olds. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t value rigor and accelerated learning. We do,” McKnight said. “That’s why we pushed back.”

She said Samuels, the superintendent, listened. Using some of its grant money, the district applied for eight elementary schools and four middle schools to become International Baccalaureate schools, a program that has lured some local families to other schools in neighboring districts.

“They came hard at him, and he was like, ‘I can’t just take away and not give,’” McKnight said. “We have to elevate everyone.”

Like the name suggests, IB is a program recognized around the world that emphasizes teaching skills that students use in self-directed, project-based work and sometimes includes a foreign language component. It requires an intensive, multi-year accreditation process for the schools and specific training for teachers. Unlike the gifted programs, which operate as separate classrooms in the building, IB can be implemented school-wide in the younger grades.

Park Slope’s P.S. 282 has long been grappling with what to do about its gifted and talented program.

Not ‘just for some schools’

As a potential replacement for the gifted program, IB may hold some specific advantages. Unlike de Blasio’s plan, it’s an established program that doesn’t need to be built from the ground up — something that lends itself to recognition. That may appeal to parents who value programs like gifted for their exclusivity.

Samuels hopes that will win over families and also bring more equal investments to school when it comes to improving teaching and learning.

“It means something for a teacher to be an IB teacher. It means you’ve gone through a process… and you’re really pushing the envelope as you think about all your students,” he said. “And I am of the opinion that it shouldn’t be just for some schools, and my district is of the opinion that this shouldn’t be just for some schools.”

Whether parents see the IB program as a viable alternative to gifted classes remains to be seen. Many have argued for separate classes to make sure the needs of advanced learners aren’t overlooked in a mixed-ability setting.

Eric Calvert, associate director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, said the IB program is “strong” and called himself “generally a fan.” But, he said: “It’s compatible with, but not a substitute for, a continuum of services for gifted and advanced learners.”

“The ‘fix’ can’t be to move from a status quo where only a privileged few gifted students get the education they need to one [with] no gifted students,” he wrote in an email. “In a more ideal world, IB curriculum would be used in the core curriculum, but there would still be opportunities for those students who are functioning multiple years above grade level to accelerate.”

Uncertain path forward

Any shift away from gifted programs isn’t likely to happen fast. The training and accreditation process for IB takes years, though schools have already started on that path. District and school leaders say they are planning for a series of parent meetings to explain the program and hear concerns.

What comes next is far from clear. District leaders had planned to have school leadership teams, made up of teachers and parents, vote on whether to remove their gifted programs. That was before de Blasio announced his plan to phase them out.

If the mayor’s plan sticks, no vote would be necessary. But de Blasio has just weeks left in office. He’ll be replaced on Jan.1 by Eric Adams, who, at least in the past, has offered a different view for gifted programs.

Incoming Schools Chancellor David Banks stressed that he’ll be focused on expanding sought-after programs like gifted, saying “parents are all, kind of, chasing after the handful of good programs that are out there.”

“Making sure that we integrate our schools will be a priority. But I will tell you, even above that, will be just building quality schools,” he said Friday during an interview on NY1.

With the future uncertain, Amy Rodriguez, the principal of P.S. 282, is moving ahead with the IB program. Her teachers have already received countless hours of training and are starting to implement some of the practices in classrooms. She hopes that as the school shifts to a new way of teaching, parents will conclude that gifted classes are no longer necessary.

“It won’t be seen as needed because every kid is getting a rich, exciting curriculum,” she said.

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 reconsiders elimination of high school attendance zones, borough admissions priorities

2021-11-15T23:01:20+00:00

In another topsy turvy admissions cycle this year, one thing seemed clear: New York City would do away with the last geographic priorities remaining for high school admissions.

After all, the elimination of admissions preferences based on where students live had been announced last year, and was printed in this year’s recently released admissions guide.

But now, Mayor Bill de Blasio says he is reconsidering removal of geographic screens — preferences given to students living in the same borough as a school or within a local attendance zone — saying final decisions on this year’s process “have not been made.”

“We are still reviewing all issues related to admissions,” he said at a press conference on Monday. “This is something we’re going to keep working on.”

A spokesperson for the education department put it more bluntly.

“We are reevaluating the policy to remove high school borough and zone priorities this admission cycle based on feedback we’ve received from school communities,” spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon wrote in an email.

New York City students must apply to middle schools and high schools, navigating a complicated process and competitive admissions requirements that are often blamed for cementing the city’s status as one of the most segregated school systems in the country.

While most high schools do not base admissions on where students live, some have managed to hold on to geographic priorities, which helped some neighborhoods keep access to local schools.

Amid the pandemic, city leaders said last winter that any geographical admissions priorities would be eliminated for students entering high school in 2022.

At the time, a city press release said the removal of geographic preferences “will expand opportunity and increase choice for all rising high school students.” It is also in line with recommendations made by a task force appointed by de Blasio to come up with proposals to spur more school diversity.

Removal of those screens started last year, when 48 high schools ended priorities given to students living within their school district.

That was supposed to be followed this year by the elimination of all other admissions preferences based on location. Currently, 27 high schools give priority to students living in a certain zone for some seats, and only one is zoned for all seats. In addition, 235 high schools offer a borough priority, according to figures shared by the education department.

De Blasio could try to run out the clock before making a final decision. A new mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, will be sworn in this January. In New York City, the mayor also leads the education department. A spokesperson for Adams did not return an email request for comment.

More Chicago students are going to college. But their neighborhood can affect whether they graduate.

2021-11-04T16:11:07+00:00

Even as more Chicago students go to college, the neighborhood where they live — not just the high school they attend — has a major impact on whether they ultimately attain a degree.

New research from the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project shows that community areas have a significant impact on educational attainment outcomes — findings that researchers say underscore the need for deeper investments in housing security, health care access, and transportation to address the barriers facing Chicago students.

Researchers examined community areas to see whether boosting school choice was enough to improve educational attainment. By analyzing high school enrollment and college graduation data by where students live, as well as where they go to school, the report notes, researchers could “more clearly see the consequential impacts that the legacy and current reality of racial segregation has had on students’ educational experiences throughout Chicago.”

School choice can improve a student’s chance of getting into college, but they found “where students live deeply shapes their likelihood of obtaining a certificate or college diploma.”

Dominique McKoy, study author and associate director of engagement for the To&Through Project, said the study, accompanied by a new data tool launched Thursday, focuses on Chicago’s community areas, the 77 geographic areas that make up the city, rather than just focusing on high schools as a lens to look at educational attainment.

In compiling data, researchers found some community areas still have a centralized high school that the majority of students attend, while other community areas are home to students who may be dispersed among more than 40 different high schools across the city, McKoy said.

The dispersion of students outside of their community high school is particularly pronounced in predominantly Black neighborhoods, McKoy said.

Over the last two decades, Chicago Public Schools has expanded school choice, which has resulted, in some instances, in more than 75% of students leaving their neighborhood to attend schools outside their communities areas.

This data “provides us an opportunity to better understand how school choice is being exercised throughout community areas,” McKoy said.

While high school contributes to shaping student’s lives, a student’s community area plays a large role in whether they complete a college degree, said Jenny Nagaoka, study author and deputy director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research.

“We all already know the rates of high school graduation vary widely by high school,” Nagaoka said. “But when you organize the same students by the community area where they live, the high school graduation rates start to look pretty similar across all the community areas in the city.”

Across the city, more than 70% of CPS students are graduating from high school compared with graduation rates below 50% nearly two decades ago, Nagaoka said. The citywide five-year graduation rate is 83.8% in 2021.

The researchers found similar patterns for college enrollment, too.

“When we look at college enrollment rates by community area, they’re pretty similar across the city,” Nagaoka said. “In almost every single community area in the city, high school graduates are going to college at rates at 50% or higher.”

But after high school, a community area may influence whether a student attains a degree. This could be attributed to levels of support and resources that vary based on community area, researchers said.

“Changing the educational trajectories of Chicago’s young people also requires institutions and organizations across sectors to address other deep-seated inequities through investment in the communities in which students live,” McKoy said.

Rather than perpetuate stereotypes of community areas, McKoy and Nagaoka hope this data tool sparks local conversations to better understand how student experiences both “inside and outside CPS classrooms” impact educational outcomes.

Greater investment in students’ college graduation could have huge implications for intergenerational change inside communities, Nagaoka said.

“If a community area has more students graduating from high school, going to college, and graduating college,” Nagaoka said, “that has the potential impact of really changing what is happening inside of community areas and provides human capital for the future.”

Among the report’s other findings:

In about one-third of Chicago’s community areas such as in North Lawndale and West Garfield Park on the city’s West Side and Riverdale on the city’s far South Side, less than 25% of ninth grade students are projected to complete a college credential within 10 years if current attainment rates do not change, compared to more than 50% in five community areas including Armour Square on the South Side, and Lincoln Park and Lakeview on the North Side.
About 16% of high schools had college enrollment rates below 50% (21 out of 124), and four had rates below 40% (according to CPS data, many of the city’s alternative schools also have enrollment rates well below 40%). At the other end of the spectrum, in four high schools, more than 90% of graduates made an immediate transition to a two-year or four-year college.
Out of the city’s 77 community areas, 15 neighborhoods showed the most commonly-attended schools were charter schools, but all of them enrolled 20% or fewer of the CPS ninth-graders living in the community area.

U.S. News’ school rankings gain local traction, but could fuel segregation

2021-10-26T16:32:22+00:00

On Twitter, the U.S. News and World Report’s new rankings for elementary and middle schools were roundly castigated. “Truly just an appalling use of your time and expertise,” wrote one commentator. “This is terrible and will reinforce and exacerbate inequalities,” said another.

Elsewhere, the reaction was more favorable. The new metrics drew an avalanche of local news coverage listing an area’s top-ranked schools, with the rankings sometimes treated as if they came from a government source.

“New Report Reveals Best Elementary, High Schools in Illinois,” declared NBC Chicago.

Some school districts promoted the results, too. Denver Public Schools, which serves mostly low-income students of color, heralded the rankings in a newsletter: “Several elementary and middle schools in DPS have been ranked among the top in Colorado in a brand-new ranking!” Each of its top 10 schools, according to U.S. News, serves mostly white, affluent students.

The response illustrates the continued appeal of ranking systems that use test scores to sort and classify schools, despite a growing understanding that the results often mirror school demographics — potentially reinforcing and exacerbating school segregation.

Experts say U.S. News’ approach is particularly crude, and a Chalkbeat review of four states found that the rankings appear closely tied to student demographics.

“There is no way that that is a good indication of whether that school is instructionally effective or not,” said Tomás Monarrez, a researcher at the Urban Institute who studies school segregation. “It’s more noise in an already noisy environment.”

But, he said, “It’s very clear that there’s a demand for that product.”

U.S. News has long produced influential but controversial college rankings, which are a key source of revenue for the publication. It’s also ranked high schools for some time. This year, U.S. News created rankings of the country’s elementary and middle schools.

Half of a school’s score is based on the share of students who reached proficiency on state standardized tests. The other half uses the same data but compares schools to other schools that serve similar populations, by race and poverty levels. (The test scores are from 2019, the last widely available state exam data.)

Monarrez said that the overall approach is rudimentary and misleading. “Nobody that takes statistics seriously would have done something like that,” he said. A more accurate measure, researchers have long argued, would use academic growth to estimate how much schools contribute to student learning. The U.S. News rankings do not include a measure of growth or consider other factors, like attendance, safety, or diversity.

U.S. News defended its use of overall test scores with limited statistical adjustment, saying “we believe parents value environments where most children arrive prepared to learn and teachers can provide a culture of enrichment.”

Not surprisingly, U.S. News rankings do appear closely linked to student demographics.

In Colorado, all top 10 ranked elementary schools served few low-income, Black, or Hispanic students — less than 35%, and most far less. In California, a similar pattern held, with only one top-ranked school serving a significant share of those students.

In Mississippi, eight of the top 10 schools serve few Black or Hispanic students, though a number of highly ranked schools enroll significant shares of low-income students. A number of the top schools are selective programs that admit students based on their test scores.

An analysis by Aaron Pallas, a Columbia University sociologist, found that there was a strong correlation between New York City middle school rankings and family income, as well as students’ entering test scores. That suggests that the rankings are largely identifying schools already perceived to be effective.

“The U.S. News ratings provide very little useful information to anybody,” said Pallas.

U.S. News analyst Eric Brooks acknowledged that there is a correlation between the rankings and school demographics, but emphasized that there are exceptions.

“While there is a relationship between demographics and performance on state assessments, there is not a perfect correlation,” he said in a statement. “There are abundant cases where schools with greater socioeconomic diversity ranked higher than schools with lesser socioeconomic diversity.”

Brooks pointed out that in Georgia, the top-rated middle school — a selective enrollment program in Jonesboro — serves mostly low-income Black students. All the other top-ranked middle schools in the state serve far fewer children from low-income families.

Chantal Hailey, a professor at University of Texas at Austin, worries that the rankings will exacerbate — or at least affirm — existing racial biases. She’s found that white parents are reluctant to send their child to a school with a lot of Black students, even when schools have similar graduation rates and levels of safety.

Rating systems “often justify people’s racialized and class perceptions,” said Hailey.

“Parents really want to send their kids to the best school — and a lot of the forces that we have out there are pushing white parents into whiter schools.”

Research suggests that, if U.S. News’ rankings are widely used, they could lead to more racial and economic segregation in schools and in housing. One study found that when the popular rating website GreatSchools rolled out its ratings in an area, housing prices around highly rated schools increased. Those areas then drew in more white, Asian, and high-income families.

Other research has found that Florida’s state ratings drove up housing prices around schools that received an A grade, and those schools attracted more advantaged families. And in a recent survey experiment, parents were more likely to say they would move to a district with a higher share of white and high-income families after being provided data on test score proficiency.

“Parents really want to send their kids to the best school — and a lot of the forces that we have out there are pushing white parents into whiter schools,” said Shira Korn, a researcher who has studied how families choose schools.

Brooks argues that the rankings actually offer a countervailing force. “Without data-based rankings many parents may rely on heuristics like the wealth of their school districts to predict quality,” he said. “U.S. News’s rankings disrupt this by letting math and reading scores speak for themselves while adjusting for students demographics.”

Regardless, it remains an open question how much of an impact the U.S. News rankings will have, given the crowded marketplace.

GreatSchools boasts of tens of millions of annual page views, and has partnerships with real estate websites. A 2019 Chalkbeat analysis found that GreatSchools ratings were also closely tied to students’ race and income. It has since tweaked its formula to place more emphasis on student academic growth, although proficiency scores that are highly linked to demographics continue to play a role in the ratings. Other ratings sites include Niche and SchoolDigger.

One recent effort to overhaul the way schools are rated has struggled to gain traction. Tom Brown, a Chicago-based realtor, started the website SchoolSparrow to offer ratings that do not systematically favor high-income schools. ”Other school rating sites obscure the truth about public schools,” the site says.

So far, though, Brown said he hasn’t gotten outside funding or convinced real estate sites to adopt his ratings. Pageviews for the site have been anemic: 2,500 over a recent 30-day period.

Meanwhile, states and districts aren’t taking the lead. Many state report cards are difficult to understand or access, not available on phones, and not translated into languages other than English.

District-based ratings have also become more politically fraught in some places. Denver, for instance, recently scrapped its own school performance scores, which heavily weighted student growth.

All that leaves many parents sorting through a sea of information.

Ramie Johnson, a New Orleans parent who works for the group EdNavigator, which helps families choose schools, says she’s wary of the new U.S. News rankings and hasn’t found their high school rankings helpful previously. Many of the top high schools are selective admissions and out of reach for most students.

“Being at the top of a list is nice, but if being at the top of that list then makes that school inaccessible or hard to get into, then parents have to look at other options,” she said.

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.

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.

I live in one of NYC’s most diverse neighborhoods. Here’s why it’s so hard to desegregate our local schools.

2021-09-30T17:12:29+00:00

My son attended Intermediate School 145 Joseph Pulitzer, a large zoned middle school in Jackson Heights, Queens. We chose I.S. 145 for our child because it is our assigned neighborhood public school with a project-based learning model, a dual-language bilingual program, and a maker club.

The school is situated in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City, a progressive enclave that mobilized to elect Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the local public schools do not reflect the neighborhood's diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and family income, something true more and more throughout the city.

At I.S. 145, nine in 10 students are Latinx and low-income. If I'm outside at 7 a.m. on a weekday, I can watch elementary children of white and affluent parents wait for a yellow bus that will deliver them to schools with whiter and wealthier student populations than their zoned school. The families whose children exit the zoned schools are heading to "gifted" programs, charter schools, unzoned lottery-based schools, Catholic, and private schools — schools that don't accept every student.

This sorting is no secret to parents in the neighborhood, our school's leaders, officials in New York City's District 30, the education department's central office, and even the federal government. When our child, who is white, started as a sixth grader in 2018, I.S. 145 was well into a multimillion-dollar, multiyear federal magnet grant designed to reduce the “isolation of Hispanic students" at the school. I spent the next three years watching as that goal receded further and further from reach.

The story of that failure reveals something about the striking hierarchy of schools in our system, the forces that keep things that way, and the ugly reality that much of the school desegregation work happening around the city is just parents and educators spinning their wheels.

After my son enrolled, I joined the school's diversity committee, which planned events to showcase the school to the community, including a Saturday STEAM day with project stations and a trip by the student dance team to an elementary school. We were under no illusions that we could change the perception of the school among all families but were confident we were reaching some.

In reality, the effort had no effect. In January 2020, I sat in a meeting with a local politician, the schools chancellor, and education advocates where a magnet school grant report was shared. It showed "Hispanic isolation" had slightly worsened at I.S. 145 and nearby P.S. 92 over the grant's first three years.

That spring brought a breakthrough: A group of privileged parents, impressed by the open houses and all the school had to offer, had ranked it first on their children's middle school application. But when school assignments came out, I.S. 145 was so under-enrolled that the principal warned about potential staff cuts.

When we reached out to the central enrollment office, we were told that more than 150 students residing outside the I.S. 145 zone ranked it first on their middle school application. But the enrollment office capped the number of out-of-zone students accepted to I.S. 145 at 46 — and had for years, unbeknownst to the school. More than 100 students were turned away, even though the school was under-enrolled.

This cap seemed at direct odds with the magnet grant application: "The only way highly minority group isolated schools with large numbers of poor, Hispanic students in District 30 can become more racially and socioeconomically diverse is if students can cross district lines." As parents asked around, they learned that the students were instead assigned to whiter, wealthier lottery-based schools in other neighborhoods.

At an emergency meeting with the school leadership team and the district superintendent in June 2020, the undermining of I.S. 145's integration work became apparent. Enrollment office officials argued that I.S. 145 needed to keep seats amounting to 9% of the sixth grade class open for students who might arrive in the school zone over the school year. Only zoned schools are required to keep these open seats.

The education department's explanation made clear the pecking order of schools in the area. Rather than all schools being required to set seats aside for newcomers, some schools are allowed to curate their enrollment, while others struggle to achieve even a modicum of integration.

These patterns are often justified with the language of choice. The District 30 superintendent has said, for example, that we must "give parents the opportunity to find the school that fits their child." But study after study shows that when privileged parents exercise school choice, they rarely choose a school with more Black and Latinx children over other options.

Years earlier, when my son was nearing elementary age, I watched families I knew from the playground and playdates become desperate to find any other option than the zoned school. Parents called kindergarten admissions "worse than college" as they traded "Gifted and Talented" test prep books on the local listserv. It is rare to find parents educated in the U.S. who have not bought into the zero-sum mindset that "good school" seats are limited and you must enter the game early or be left to the "bad schools." Parent organizing efforts I've been a part of since 2013 have moved some families to reject this pressure, but they have not significantly altered the pattern of school segregation.

The more tragicomic force working against integration efforts at I.S. 145 is other money allocated for school integration that fails to make any change.

New York state's program "to support integrated schools and classrooms" recently awarded an additional $2.5 million in grants to District 30. But on the ground, the funds are being used only for teacher training and parent workshops. One series of lectures for parents focuses on topics including "cancel culture" (framed in a way similar to its spotlight at the 2020 Republican Convention), power and privilege, and responding to your child's needs with empathy. While the topics are worthy of discussion, it is unclear how lectures will result in school integration. Teachers told me their training was time-consuming and, during a pandemic, resulted in students doing more "asynchronous" work.

Professional development alone is not an integration strategy. I've seen enough to know that District 30 needs an admissions plan so that students at its elementary and middle schools reflect the district's diversity. The $2.5 million should be used to craft and implement that plan.

As white and affluent children exit Jackson Heights and literally cross the paths of their immigrant neighbors on the way to school, all children internalize a message that some schools aren't good enough for white or privileged kids. Racism is sustained, generation after generation.

"They don't want their children with our children," the PTA president at my children's elementary school, an immigrant parent, told me once. "They have their own schools." In 2021, we can do better.

Amanda Vender is a co-founder of Jackson Heights People for Public Schools and has been an educator and activist for public school equity for over 10 years.