Why Does Bill De Blasio Get a Pass on Separate But Unequal Segregation in New York City Schools?

       NYC MAYORAL CONTROL, BREEDING SEGREGATION IN DOE SCHOOLS
Bill De Blasio inherited a public school system tremendously harmed by New York City's previous mayor, Mike Bloomberg. The latter, among his changes, had shut down dozens of schools and had them broken into small schools. This trend particularly happened at the high school level.

Yet, De Blasio has pushed hard in recent weeks for the renewal of mayoral control. With mayoral control he could have spent the previous three years reversing the damage that Bloomberg began. Instead, he continued it.

We see in rampant segregation in New York City schools the results of the changes that Bloomberg started and De Blasio continued. The New York Post yesterday posted an article on one parent who is suing the city for unequal resources. Some of the issues addressed in the story are the mere tip of the iceberg of the inequality issues in the city's high schools.

The disparity described in the article is regarding exclusive access certain physical education and disparate funds. An elite school in the former John Jay High School campus, Brooklyn Millenium High School, has access to a pool and $115,255 in a given year.  Park Slope Collegiate School and the other two schools in the campus do not have pool access and received $41,045 in the same year.

This echoes disparities easily evident in the 2017 New York City High School Directory. The pattern immediately becomes evident: small schools, particularly those with African-American and Latino populations have limited offerings. Few foreign language offerings. Limited sports activities. The schools do not offer Advance Placement courses. Instead, we see online instruction offerings. Continuing with Brooklyn, take for example, the Cultural Academy for the Arts and Sciences ine East Flatbush, at the former Tilden High School campus, which has a student body of 354. Only one language is offered as a foreign language. The description of Academics includes some topics that are more likely after school: "College Partnerships ... International Partnerships." Online learning gets mention in the first line, "Aventa/Fuel Education Blended On-Line Learning Courses." There are no AP courses.
Continuing with Brooklyn, Edward R. Murrow in Midwood with 3,885 students offers five foreign languages. There are 13 AP courses. This sample of offerings in the Academics section represents real classes not after-school programs: "Law Program, Psychology, INTEL, Journalism, Writer’s Institute, Film Review, Social History Electives, Shakespeare, Holocaust/African/Latin Literature."

Where is the outrage? Where is the coverage among the television network affilates?  Where are the hearings by the city council's education committee? It has gotten so bad that finally the New York Times in the last 12 months finally brought itself to address the issue. The Times recognizes that the segregation starts with Pre-K and that school choice has triggered this. De Blasio last month defended what has become the status quo. An education department spokesperson uses the word "diversity" to characterize the city system, instead of "segregated." Of course, no principled reversal of the Bloomberg destructive public school policies is in sight.

This shame of segregation is a scandal that De Blasio gets away with because his chancellor unresponsive to the public and the mayor and chancellor's rubber-stamping Panel For Educational Policy is an undemocratic institution. This is all the result of mayoral control. The media and political classes are silent abetters. 

Coal in the Stocking for Bill de Blasio: Point by Point Case How His DOE is as Heartless as Any Reformy Mayor

How different is Bill from Mike?

De Blasio: which side are you on? Your education record shows that you are on the same side as Bloomberg, Cuomo, Tisch and Coleman

De Blasio to sick and injured teachers: Drop dead

FACT:

The New York City Department of Education is still as heartless as ever, denying injured people their due days off. People with iron-clad doctor's documentation of valid sick claims are being denied their days off. After their return to work, the DOE comes after them for AWOL issues. Yet, the DOE is at fault, its modus operandi is to drag its feet on medical claims, and then after the injured teachers exceed their ten annual sick days, it targets them.
The NYC DOE is suddenly finding fault in the teaching acumen of a veteran teacher. He so happened to have taken a medical leave, yet in a likely case of retaliation for disputes over his leave and for his years of activism he is being targeted with repeat observations.

Interpretation: the DOE is being very tight-fisted with its budgeting, and that's why it is nickel and dime denying granting sick time to the injured or chronically ill.

De Blasio to teachers exercising free speech: our Stasi is still active

FACT:

The DOE still has people dedicated to monitoring teachers' use of social media, such as Facebook. The DOE still has an alphabet soup of agencies with trench-coat men that administrators use against teachers over the flimsiest of accusations. From the number of 3020a's that the city is pursuing, it is doubtful that the city has dismissed its huge posse of attorneys in its teacher performance unit. The TPU works hand in glove with vindictive principals to target teachers on the most spurious of charges. This is continuing unabated under de Blasio/Farina.

De Blasio to teachers: we're coming after your pensions

FACT:

As the Chaz School Daze and the NYC Rubber Room Reporter have been documenting for years, the DOE has particularly set its sights on terminating senior teachers. (See previous section for the TPU's role here.) This is continuing at full strength and it includes the DOE's program to “thin the herd,” and terminate ATR's.

Harassment until teachers quit serves the same tight-fisted budget mentality: when the administrators harass teachers until they quit the DOE will be spared paying unemployment pay to these teachers.

Interpretation:

Bill de Blasio is just as much dedicated to prematurely ending careers as the previous mayor.

De Blasio to teachers: we could care less as to whether technology distracts students

FACT:

De Blasio and chancellor Carmen Farina lifted the cell phone ban and they lifted the DOE filters on YouTube videos and other highly distracting sites. It is very ironic that one cannot do certain legitimate searches on DOE computers (yet, in continuation from the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott years, the DOE allows floods of commercial spam on DOE emails); and meanwhile filters on certain searches in place four years ago have vanished. Students are using the cell phones in schools and in class rampantly. Police are suspecting that gangs at the Lehman high school complex are using them to coordinate fights and in the Westchester Square section of the Bronx this has led to weeks of mayhem, jeopardizing the neighborhood's commercial viability.

Interpretation:

On distractive technology Bloomberg actually had the better policy than de Blasio. Either the new mayor is just coddling the students or he is intentionally adding to factors that will distract students and thus bring down teachers' productivity.

De Blasio to teachers: just dare to evade Common Core and you'll be sanctioned for defying its mandate
FACT:

Common Core was drafted by people with no K-12 teaching experience; it fits perfectly into plans for standardized testing. These tests had alienated students across the country as hundreds of thousands refused to cooperate.
Common Core channels narrow interpretation of texts. It conceives of limited interpretations of text. Its methods mitigate against critical thinking. It demands the marginalization of literature. Its mathematical methods are highly unusual and profoundly alienate parents, thus disenfranchising parents from helping with their children's homework.
In contrast to de Blasio's public fights with New York governor Andrew Cuomo, he has said nothing on Common Core. As of this December 28, 2015 writing Common Core has virtual force of law in New York State and New York City. Administrators continue to insist that teachers follow it. 
Thus, it is inappropriate that the media have interpreted recent federal ESEA legislation and NYSED Common Core pronouncements as meaning there is a New York state shift away from Common Core. As any NYS or NYC teacher will tell you, administrators are still using Common Core to evaluate lessons.

The New York City Department of Education's own house sub-agency of standards refinement continues to adopt and enthusiastically refine New York state's version of Common Core. The NYC DOE, despite the widespread popular rejection of Common Core still cooperates with plans to further impose Common Core's focus on textual analysis on science, social studies and even physical education, dislodging the conventional agendas of those subjects. It continues to indoctrinate and train administrators and teachers in the methods of Common Core. 

Teachers have cited the CCSS-related tests' inappropriateness and their negative emotional impacts on many students. Parents have objected to the CCSS-based high stakes tests fundamental purpose in stack-ranking evaluations of teachers. Parents, and some teachers, have created a massive statewide movement against these tests, citing cooperating with the tests as educationally inappropriate and morally compromising. 

Your morals or you job:
NYC imposes a gag order on teachers and principals, forcing them to not advocate opting out; this mirrors NYS mandates that these professionals cannot even quote questions or answer choices from the tests. The NYC DOE under de Blasio and Farina is sticking by these stances against test opt-out just as tenaciously as the DOE under Bloomberg and Walcott, and just as tenaciously as the NYS under Cuomo and state regents chancellor Merryl Tisch.

Interpretation:
NYC mayor Bill de Blasio is cooperating with the most insidious aspect of the education reform movement: the turning education into an experience restrained from critical reflection and centered around teaching for standardized tests. NYC mayor by his complete cooperation with Cuomo and his perpetuation of the Bloomberg Common Core commitment is on the wrong side of the education's central conflict in our era; he is on the same side as David Coleman, Arne Duncan, John King and so on.

De Blasio to students of color and low income students: we're a Jim Crow system and we're not going to sincerely move to correct it -- Teachers, we'll punish you if you openly criticize it

FACT:

New York City as of Spring, 2014, ranked as the most segregated school system in thecountry. In just two years it moved from position of being reported as the third most segregated school system, behind Chicago.  Yet, not only does the city maintain different standards of school tone, curriculum offerings, sports offerings, library, P.E. resources for different ethnic populations, it maintains this by a class dynamic as well. Note that it was under de Blasio that the citytargeted a Bronx teacher for daring to speak out on behalf of student-athletes, on how their options were inferior to those in more privileged schools. 

Driving the caste system that the DOE maintains is a competitive application system. Students not only have to apply and compete for a high school slot, they must apply to intermediate and other lower level schools. Sickeningly, parents must apply to have their child enroll in pre-Kindergarten programs. As the subway ads emphasize, there are deadlines, much as colleges have deadlines. And the program itself is plagued by problems of failing to adequately serve the neediest populations.

The Atlantic wrote of de Blasio's program:

What Fuller and his team found is that the preschool seats are more prevalent in the city’s most affluent neighborhoods than they are in the poorest ones. Whereas 41 percent of the slots are located in the most affluent one-fifth of the city’s zip codes, just 30 percent of them are in the poorest one-fifth—a dynamic that researchers in part attribute to New York’s real-estate limitations. Upper-middle-class areas appear to have gotten about as many new pre-k seats as have the poorest ones. And roughly 11,000 4-year-olds living in those poorest neighborhoods aren’t even enrolled in the program, according Fuller.

 .   .   .

But the study finds that, though de Blasio’s office insists that the new program is benefitting lower-income parts of the city, that claim fails to take into account the much higher numbers of 4-year-olds living in poor neighborhoods than in more affluent ones. Following up on the administration's response, Fuller said the percentages reveal that de Blasio is "evenly spreading new seats across the city, rich and poor ... and this fails to move the system toward equitable access."

The high school placement program, in fact, was developed by the same developer that developed a medical school resident placement program. 

With the new competitive school choice model, the system concentrates level 1 (in English Language Arts or Math) students into “troubled schools,” and it concentrates levels 3 and 4 into “successful schools.” Thus, it is no wonder that the city's underperforming students are concentrated in the city's most segregated schools. Even the New York Post recognizes this fact. Yet, de Blasio, who is supposed to be a better, more compassionate mayor than Bloomberg cannot recognize this fact.

Also, as a New School study documents in great detail, with accessible maps to illustrate the point, New York City's school placement process actually creates schools that are far more segregated than the neighborhoods where they are located.

The fraud of school choice leading to school excellence has a huge infrastructure toll as well. In a city that is already strained to the limit with high population and a growing number of public transit users, school choice has forced thousands of students to commute, exacerbating the great

Gone are the days when a student could go to the school of his or her neighborhood, “school choice” means that students apply and that they are sent all over the city. This erodes the neighborhood-school connection for students to identify with. Also, if students must spend an hour on multiple transportation modes getting to school, you can be sure that parents have as hard a time getting to parent engagement nights.

Interpretation:

Bloomberg transposed the competitive model for education with his demolition of the traditional zone system in favor of school choice. Schools often realized their potential as spaces for social heterogeneity. Now, with the competitive model, the separation means that inequality worsens. De Blasio has perpetuated Bloomberg's caste-school system with no significant changes to eradicate the inequalities of opportunity.

Summative interpretation:

Bloomberg was on a mission to transform the teacher from a respectful profession to one which is demeaned and harassed. This means that this teaching force would be a transient one that did not know its rights. De Blasio has done hardly anything to lessen the severity of how the DOE despised teachers. 

The Bloomberg changes did not produce educational improvement. The proof of this is the widespread de facto policy of "just pass everybody," the credit recovery programs that give a semester's worth of credit for merely completing a single assignment. This is blatant cheating, used to desperately cover a tremendously failed record. This has given a poor lesson to New York City students: that they can pass, regardless of taking personal responsibility. This has meant that New York City students are poorly prepared for even CUNY community colleges. This has meant that the scholastic worth of a New York City diploma is rather contestable, particularly if the school is one that practices the intellectually dishonest practices just mentioned. Yet, all the trends of administrator lax standards, as documented on the Chaz School Daze blog, are continuing under de Blasio-Farina with no apparent change from the Bloomberg years.

If the 2013 mayoral election were to mean anything it would have meant correction of the many ways that the DOE had taken a wrong course since 2002. Yet, Farina failed to clean house and replace the principals that fostered a climate of fear. Farina and de Blasio failed to appoint Tweed (DOE headquarters) officials that would part from the destructive ways of the Bloomberg administration. 

Brooklyn event on NYC school segregation, 9/16: Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

New York City schools remain highly segregated nationally, in terms of race and class, as indicated in this UCLA study last year. Both mayor Bill de Blasio and schools chancellor Carmen Farina have failed to adequately address the issue.

A forum at the Brooklyn Historical Society tomorrow addresses the issue. (128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Why New York? Our Segregated Schools Epidemic

Click here to register for the free tickets. 

Of course, the UFT, with its eternal mode of cozying to leaders, has failed to recognize or struggle on the issue publicly. It stood quiet while this segregation escalated in the Bloomberg years.

NYS' Racially Segregated Schools - The Scourge the NY Times Can See, But Cuomo Cannot

New York State's schools are the most segregated in the nation, as reported by a University of California-Los Angeles study last year. New York City's are the third most segregated in the nation, after those in Chicago and Dallas, as discussed in 2012. See also, this article, from Al Jazeera, on the resegregation of United States schools, from last May, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Lost in the New York education news of the last few weeks was this January 9, 2015 editorial by the New York Times calling attention to the school segregation.
Still very disappointing: the article mentions "the Chancellor," but not Dr. Merryl Tisch by name. Likewise, Governor Andrew Cuomo is only mentioned in the last paragraph. For all their righteousness, why do not Tisch or Cuomo heed attention to this issue?

Racial Isolation in Public Schools

New York City and its Segregation

As many note, the key thing is to achieve neighborhood integration. New York, like some other core metropole cities such as Chicago or Atlanta, is segregated despite its diversity. And several cities from ex-Confederate states, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia, ironically, did better in city integration than New York City. NYC ranks 19th of the 45 cities over 400,000.

 How NYC Apartheid/Caste schooling impairs the education and health of students in the lower half of the city's high schoolers

As high school teachers in the lower Social Economic schools will tell you, large percentage of the students are not from the neighborhood. Their travel commutes span across one or two borough lines, and run for 1 1/2 to 2 hours in one direction. Pediatricians recommend that school starting times are too early for teens in general. However, those teens making long commutes must wake even earlier than the population that the pediatricians have in mind. Those not waking early enough for punctual arrival end up arriving to school late or missing school entirely. (This blog has previously written on the segregation of the NYC schools, and how the schools in the subaltern direction lack diversity in courses and other amenities.)

School closures (far) disproportionately impact students of color

See this report at National Opportunity to Learn Campaign. Keep in mind that this graphic comes from a page published, April, 2013. The number depicts just closures from 2013.

Cuomo and his allies are duplicitous in their adopting the civil rights mantle for their education policies. The pattern of the school closures is one that disproportionately impacts African-American and low income communities. Gone are the neighborhood schools and their institutional memory of richly varied curricula.

The New York Times was right to criticize Cuomo on segregation. The case needs to be made more broadly: with the segregation comes lower resources, such poor curricula choices, poorer technology, less access to libraries, fewer after-school activities.

One More Week: See Exhibit on Civil Rights Art at Brooklyn Museum, in City of Segregated Schools

The art of the Civil Rights era, by artists, in the 1960s and early 1970s, in and out of the movement, captured the imagination, urgency, justice and passion of the need for racial equality and justice. Some excellent pieces are displayed in the exhibit, "Exhibitions: Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties," at the Brooklyn Museum is being held over until July 13, 2014. 

We cannot help but note and emphasize:  while of course, huge gains were made, and rights were secured that are taken for granted today, on some issues the mission of integration and justice of equality of resources remains as vital today. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) noted this spring, New York State schools are the most segregated in the nation. And New York City schools are the third most segregated in the nation, after those of Chicago and Dallas.

A placard next to an art piece speaks of segregationist policies in Brooklyn in the early 1960s. What a shame that this is continuing today under so-called progressive New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, so-called progressive governor Andrew Cuomo and the so-called progressive president Barack Obama. New York City's caste system of schools have up-to-date resources in the integrated schools that have more White and Asian students. Yet, in the city schools that are 90 percent plus Black or Latino students, we see the concentration of schools that lack librarians. 

Where are the Brown vs. Board of Education suits today? Oh yes, the New York City Parents Union is attacking teachers as the problem, ignoring race and class bias in the distribution of resources. As Green party candidate for New York lieutenant governor Brian Jones was quoted in the July 4, 2014 issue of "The Chief,"

"The attack on Teacher tenure is about scapegoating Teachers for the conditions of our schools," said Mr. Jones. "Why aren't they filing suit against Cuomo for shortchanging local schools for funding by $9 billion?"

UCLA’s Civil Rights Project: Most Segregated Schools in the Nation: NY

Report: New York State's schools are the most segregated in the nation. As I noted a year and a half back, the Chicago school system is the most segregated big city schools system. New York City's, according to the cited New York Times report, were the third most segregated urban school system.
What are Gov. Andrew Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio going to do about it?

Most Segregated Schools in the Nation: NY John Kucsera March 26, 2014 Civil Rights Project   Public school students in the state are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow.
	This Day in History: On Feb. 3, 1964, 464,000 New York City school children — almost half of the city’s student body — skipped school as part of a protest against segregation within their school system. , Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
	LOS ANGELES--A report released today by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project finds that public school students in New York continue to be severely segregated. Public school students in the state are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow, according to the CRP report, “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future.” The study explores trends in enrollment and school segregation patterns from 1989 to 2010 at the state and regional levels, including the New York City metropolitan areas of Long Island and the New York City District, and the upstate metropolitan areas of Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.   The report also documents the history of school desegregation in the state and across its geographic regions, including key desegregation cases and remedies in Yonkers, Rochester, and Buffalo. In New York City, in particular, the report highlights both historical and current practices and policies perpetuating racial imbalance and educational inequity across schools, and challenged by parents and community organizations.   Educational problems linked to racially segregated schools, which are often intensified by poverty concentration, include a less-experienced and less-qualified teacher workforce, high levels of teacher turnover, inadequate facilities and learning materials, high dropout rates, and less stable enrollments. Conversely, desegregated schools are linked to profound benefits for all students.  “This report runs the geographic gamut: from the upstate metros dealing with transforming demographics and an urban-suburban divide, to Long Island, one of the most segregated and fragmented suburban rings in the country, and New York City, the largest school district in the country,” said John Kucsera, lead author of the report. Specific findings at Various Geographic Levels Statewide: At the state level, the proportion of Latino and Asian students has nearly doubled from 1989 to 2010, as the exposure of these groups to white students has decreased. Concentration levels have increased for black students in intensely segregated minority schools (where less than 10% of the student body is white), and there has been a simultaneous and dramatic increase in black exposure to Latino students over the last 20 years. In terms of poverty concentration, statewide patterns show that schools become more low-income as their enrollment becomes majority minority. Nearly 50% of public school students were low-income in 2010, but the typical black or Latino student attended a school where close to 70% of classmates were low-income. Conversely, the typical white student attended school where less than 30% of classmates were low-income. Upstate Metropolitan Areas: In Buffalo, the typical white student attended a school with 30% of poor students compared to 73% for the typical black student, two and one half times more. Black and Latino students experienced a substantial increase in the percentage concentrated in intensely segregated schools (those with less than 10% white students) since 1989. In the Syracuse metropolitan area, the proportion of black students grew by 4%, but black isolation rates skyrocketed. The average black student attended school in 1989 with a third of students from their own race; twenty years later, the typical black student attended schools with nearly half black students. The majority of school districts in upstate New York remain predominantly white.  In the Rochester metro, however, near a quarter of school districts are drastically changing, with most substantially integrating nonwhite students. In the Albany metro, 97% of the metro’s multigroup segregation – measured by the distribution of racial groups in schools across the metro – occurred between rather than within districts.  A total of 59 out of 65 districts in 2010 were predominantly white or nonwhite. New York City: Across the 32 Community School Districts (CSDs) in New York City, 19 had 10% or less white students in 2010, which included all districts in the Bronx, two-thirds of the districts in Brooklyn (central to north districts), half of the districts in Manhattan (northern districts), and only two-fifths of the districts in Queens (southeast districts). 73% of charters across New York City were considered apartheid schools (less than 1% white enrollment) and 90% percent were intensely segregated (less than 10% white enrollment) schools in 2010. Only 8% of charter schools were multiracial  and with over a 14.5% white enrollment (the New York City average). Magnet schools across the New York City district had the highest proportion of multiracial schools (47%) and the lowest proportion of segregated schools (56%) in 2010.  However, 17% of magnets had less than 1% white enrollment and 7% had greater than 50% white enrollment, with PS 100 Coney Island having a white proportion of 81%. New York Metropolitan Area: For the New York City metro in 2010, the five boroughs represented nearly 60% of the state’s total black students, two-thirds of the total Asian and Latino students, but only 10% of white students. In Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, where charter schools consist of around 10% of all public schools, nearly all charters were intensely segregated in 2010, with less than 10% white student enrollment. 100% of the Bronx charters, 90% of those in Brooklyn, and 97% of the Manhattan charters were intensely segregated. Author Kucsera states, “Many of these areas, particularly suburban ones, have experienced dramatic demographic transformation coupled with a lack of diversity-focused policies, and this inevitably leads to problematic segregation patterns.” With the help of various New York-based community groups, researchers, and civil rights organizations, the report provides a host of recommendations and actions to help create and maintain integrated schools from the federal level down to local communities and schools.  These include altering school choice plans to ensure they promote diversity, supporting communities that are experiencing racial change by helping them create voluntary desegregation plans, and creating regional or interdistrict programs in urban/suburban areas. “In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York State has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation--no Southern state comes close to New York,” commented CRP Co-Director Gary Orfield. “Decades of reforms ignoring this issue produced strategies that have not succeeded in making segregated schools equal.  It is time to adopt creative school choice strategies to give more New York children an opportunity to prepare to live and work effectively in a highly multiracial state.” Read the report and see a complete breakdown of the data. This report is the fifth in a series of 12 reports on East Coast school segregation trends.

And in the Manchester Guardian, 

New York has most segregated public schools in the US, study finds

With less than 1% white enrolment in most of its charter schools, New York City's school system ranks among the least diverse:

In New York City, the largest school system in the US with 1.1 million pupils, the study notes that many of the charter schools created over the last dozen years are among the least diverse of all, with less than 1% white enrollment at 73% of charter schools.

"To create a whole new system that's even worse than what you've got really takes some effort," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project and an author of the report.

 . . . .