Annmarie and I are working on a policy change for Brooklyn Technical High School and our main focus is on admissions. Both “Is Demography Still Destiny?” by Norm Fruchter and “School Choice Policies and Racial Segregation” by Amy Stuart Wells further explain the decisions involved in applying or not applying to schools.
In Fruchter’s article, he discusses the expansion of school choice to families and it not having such a successful result in racial equality throughout schools. It turns out students tend to attend high schools that match their middle schools. Those schools may not always be their first choice, but it is where students end up. With Brooklyn Tech, applicants have the choice of applying to high schools across the city and other specialized high schools. If students went to prestigious middle schools who offered students SHSAT tutoring services, I would not be surprised if those students receiving those services ended up in a school like Brooklyn Tech.
In Wells’ article, she discusses the components making a bad or a good school that effect school choices. These categories of “good” and “bad” are characterized mainly by the racial make-up of the school – those that are mainly white are deemed good and those that are mainly composed of minorities are not. Brooklyn Tech’s student population is majority white and Asian and is known as a prestigious school. This article makes me wonder if Brooklyn Tech was still a specialized high school, yet it was majority Black and Latino, would it still be seen as a “good” school. Are the specialized exams inherently racist? Are there fewer Black and Latino applicants? – If so, this goes back to Fruchter’s article and our discussion in class today. Families may not want to send their kids to specialized high schools because none of their family friends are sending their children to those high schools and because they may believe they are not meant for them.
When reading Fruchter’s article, “Is Demography still Destiny”, I thought a lot about the school my group and I are doing and the future of the kids that are currently attending it. Unlike the other groups studying schools, Ruby, Demain, and I are studying Simon Baruch Middle School which has a choice component in additional to the traditional zoning criteria for attending schools.
Fruchter spoke about the relationship between school choice and the demographics of the children who desire and attend their high school “choices”. A system created to establish more racial equality and equity, as it continues to expand becomes less efficient. Fruchter explains that although most students choose a school that they may consider to be “better” than their middle school: educationally, socially, and more racially diverse, they end of at a school similar to their middle school.
For the students of Baruch Middle School that will soon go through the process of ranking their high schools, this does not seem to be much of an issue. Because of the structure of the middle school, the children would end up at a good high school because the middle school is considered to be a school–Fruchter and Wells would agree. Due to the combination of different programs based on children’s geographic location, and academic skill, the school already has a mixture of children on different academic levels–an issue address in both these and previous readings about the importance of diversity in schools. Also, the school consists of middle class families, and is somewhat racial diverse, but still predominantly white and asian, making it an example of what Wells argues a good school is now considered to be.
As stated, students of Baruch Middle School–even if they do not get into their first choice of high school–will have less problems with their high school, due to them going to a great middle school. The issue lies with the rest of the New York Public School population who may not have the same opportunities of academic, economic and racial diversity in a middle school and, therefore have a slim to none chance of having it in high school. The cycle that is created is inherently bad, and makes it hard to break, and for everyone to thrive.
Thanks for these posts. Kiki, you are asking some tough questions about race and the value of “whiteness” in our society. Would a mostly Black and Latino Brooklyn Tech still be as highly regarded? If not, why? The notion that the admissions criteria that seem so objective might in fact be racists nonetheless is quite provocative, but it’s also difficult to answer in the negative since we know what each group of students admitted to Brooklyn Tech under the current system will look like, roughly. I look forward to seeing what you and Ann Marie come up with in your project.
Danae, your confidence in the prospects for Baruch Middle School students is admirable. Do you think they are all equally well-positioned? Even the students who have been admitted through zoning into the non-competitive regular program?