Powell demonstrates the ways that sprawl have reinforced racial segregation. In Powell’s study, he outlines how sprawl has enabled inter district segregation even if the civil rights movement addressed intra-district segregation. Others, like Rothstein demonstrated the ways that the legacy of redlining has created continued segregation and a racial caste system in our country. In both cases, these scholars demonstrate the ways that government policies have explicitly perpetuated legal segregation. There is perhaps no place where that segregation has had a bigger effect on determining potential for success than in our school systems. Continued segregation of our education system has perpetuated this racial caste system.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio recently unveiled a plan to increase diversity in New York’s elite public schools. The backlash from white parents, even from many supposed progressives, demonstrates the difficulty of dismantling this systemic inequality. The plan would change admissions policies at the elite public schools so that the top 7% of performers at each public middle school would receive admission, rather than basing admission on test scores. The plan is similar to what Texas has applied to the University of Texas, where they admit the top 10% of performers from Texas public schools. Currently, Black and Hispanic Students make up just 10% of seats at specialized high schools, despite making u 67% of the public school population. De Blasio claims that if all his proposed reforms are passed, 45% of students at New York’s specialized schools would be black or Latino.
That modest plan has faced significant backlash from white parents, many of whom have tried to justify their objections through paternalistic concern for minority students facing stigmas for unfair admission. NYU professor Jonathan Haidt said “If this proposal is enacted, we are going to increase the racism and prejudice of our kids in the specialized high schools. Put yourself in the place of black and Hispanic kids who are there because of accounting methods.” Many white parents have expressed “concern” for these minority students who they claim would not be prepared to succeed at the more selective schools.
As De Blasio’s proposal faces resistance from upper-class parents, some New York communities have taken a more local approach to desegregation efforts. In Brooklyn School District 15, which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Sunset Park and Red Hook, approved a plan to designate a share of seats in selective middle schools for students from low income or homeless families.
Resistance to De Blasio’s efforts to integrate schools demonstrate that schools, particularly selective ones, remain racialized spaces. Bottom-up organizing, like what we see in Brooklyn District 15 may be the only effective way to overcome the systemic segregation that remains in our public schools.
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/parents-vehemently-oppose-mayors-plan-to-change-admissions-at-citys-elite-public-high-schools-1543945835
https://www.wnyc.org/story/brooklyn-families-adjust-changes-middle-school-admissions/
Ben, this is a really informative and important post about an increasingly evident issue within our school system. I think it’s crazy how prevalent segregation still is in our society and find it even more absurd that’s it’s occurring so frequently in public schools. I’m curious to learn what kind of success UT’s new admission plan has had in combatting segregation, if the demographics of the incoming classes have drastically shifted or essentially stayed the same. This new plan proposed by De Blasio is receiving backlash now obviously but it’s already sending shock waves to many other cities facing similar problems to enact change as well.
There was article published by the Boston Globe this past August titled, “Boston’s schools are becoming resegregated”, where it was brought to the public’s attention that nearly 60% of the city’s schools meet the definition of being ‘intensely segregated’ and “students of color occupy at least 90 percent of the seats”. Two decades ago that statistic looked very different with only 42% of schools being recognized as ‘intensely segregated’. And even though white people only make up about 8% all the public school students in the city, they occupy over 60% of the student body at public schools in predominantly white neighborhoods and 46% of Boston Latin (the city’s most elite public high school). Thus Boston is facing the same issue of segregation as New York’s schools except NYC’s mayor is actually trying to do something about it. Boston’s city council has been letting the issue exacerbate for decades now since the busing crisis of the 70’s where students were bused around the city to spread the demographics more evenly across schools. If Boston is smart it will see what De Blasio is trying to do in NY and try to make similar changes or else all the schools will just become neighborhood schools like in the old days.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/04/boston-schools-are-becoming-resegregated/brwPhLuupRzkOtSa9Gi6nL/story.html
Ben Katz wrote his term paper on segregation in NYC’s elite public schools and gifted & talented programs.