Jelani Cobb’s Class Notes reminds me of The Last Week Tonight segment where I was first informed that NYC had the most segregated schools in the country. As New Yonkers, we think segregation mainly exists in stereotypically less racially accepting environments, such as the south (which is actually the least segregated for black students). However, I never really connected the notion, that we all know, of what a large income gap NYC has and what effect that has on segregation. As whole neighborhoods become segregated due to this gap, inadvertently, schools based on neighborhoods also become segregated, fostering cyclical poverty.

As the article discussed, the state tries to mitigate this problem of cyclical poverty by closing under-performing schools in poor neighborhoods and now trying out the small school method. However, it seems like Jamaica High School was already a small school at its closing, with only two dozen graduating students. The state also put two other small schools in the same building. I don’t understand their reasoning to therefore close the school. The school still had teachers who taught the school when it was praised as one of the best, so the teachers weren’t the problem. And since it was so small, the size couldn’t have been the problem either and the kids who would have attended it now just get distributed to another school. So how can closing “bad” schools be an effective way to address the issue of educating poor communities? Closing down a school that was so widely successful for both financially and racially diverse student body only a couple of years ago not only diminishes the hope of the students in that neighborhood but also reveals a serious flaw in the government’s view toward education reform.