Author: Haolin

“School Choice Policies and Racial Segregation: Where White Parents’ Good Intentions, Anxiety, and Privilege Collide” by Allison Roda and Amy Stuart Wells and “Is Demography Still Destiny” by Norm Fruchter both explore the relationship between our school choices and racial diversity, which is a common theme that has been discussed over and over through the course of the semester.

Roda and Wells explore how As Roda and Wells state, “Given that these more advantaged parents have the most knowledge and resources to navigate the school choice system (see Bifulco et al. 2009), they are more likely to get their children into the highest-status schools regardless of the specific school choice policies in place.”, Parents always want their student to get into the best schools possible (264). However, such desire leads to more separation and imbalance among students by race and ethnicity throughout schools and programs. It is interesting that while many parents believe that diversity is such a really important part of a school’s success and they hope their children to attend racially diverse school where students are able to interact with people from different background, they also try to get their children into the “best” (mostly white) schools. In a sense, those parents who “value” diversity, define the quality of the schools by examining who goes to the school rather than what is offered in school.

In the meantime, Norm Fructher examines a different aspect of the problem where college readiness is highly correlated with student racial background. As Fructher illustrates, under Bloomberg administration, “educational option program offerings, which control school choice to increase equity of student opportunity, have significantly diminished” (8). Although Bloomberg administration expanded students’ school choices and invest heavily in narrowing students’ achievement gap, it seems not enough to achieve a greater equity.

As far as I am concerned, what makes a school great should be determined by the school itself instead of by the type of students who attend the school. If every school is able to share the same amount of resources, there will probably be no such thing as good or bad school. As Fructher argues, rather than focusing on creating new schools, we should concentrate on improving the condition of existing schools.

Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation by Matthew F. Delmont challenges us to rethink the history of busing, which I previously associated with the non-violence protests that took place in South during the 1960s. Prior to 1954 Brown decision, riding the school bus has always been a white privilege in the rural South. But as the school integration movement spread from North to South in the 1960s and 1970s, white parents and politician resisted such movement by realizing their objections through the crisis like “busing” and “neighborhood schools”. In this way, white supremacists advanced their own agenda and pushed black communities’ moral and legal claims off the political stage, while avoiding explicit racist remark.

One significant event happened in March of 1964, when more than ten thousand white parents protested under the name of “Parents and Taxpayers” in New York City, holding signs like “We oppose voluntary transfers,” “Keep our children in neighborhood schools,” “I will not put my children on a bus,” and “We will not be bused,” (23). They claimed that they were taking advantage of their civil right and “hoped to persuade the school board to abandon a school paring plan that called for students to be transferred between predominantly black and Puerto Rican schools and white schools” (23).

Delmont also discusses in detail how the media, in the meantime, failed to comprehend the protest and simply put a framework for these stories. It took white protestors’ emphasis on busing as an attack on taxpayers’ rights to control their own schools and neighborhood, while completely ignoring the fact that African American were also taxpayers in this country. White protestors received such a high media coverage simply because they were white and they adopted the tactics of Martin Luther King. The ignorance and bias from the media left no place for black activists to express their opinions publicly and intensify that battle between communities.

Located in the East 116^th Street, Benjamin Franklin High School is one of the most diverse schools in the nation. Unlike many other schools in NYC, which are segregated in some way, Banjamin Franklin High School has embraced different ethnic groups as well as different socioeconomic classes. As a school aims to “coordinate and extend the limited facilities now available for the greater benefit of the children and the community”, the astonishing diversity we are seeing now in Benjamin Franklin High School is a crystallization of generation’s endeavor as well as the great diversity of East Harlem (115).

It’s hard to look into the history of Benjamin Franklin High School without talking about the history of East Harlem and a great man named Leonard Covello. Throughout the 20^th century, various ethnic groups such as the Italian, Puerto Rican, and African American have thrived in East Harlem. However, since East Harlem was generally regarded as ghetto, the living condition was extremely harsh during the early to mid 20^th century (such as The Great Depression), and kids could not receive proper education, a need for modern high school, where kids from different backgrounds can receive the amount of education that they are supposed to have, became self-evident. Leonard Covello and his associates aim to build Benjamin Franklin High School as the “first class High School for East Harlem”, “a Community High School which the Community would feel was its own school”, and most importantly “a school for all children of all people” (115). And Benjamin Franklin has not only become a great school for many students to absorb knowledge and improve themselves, but also a birthplace for community leaders from every background.

However, in my opinion, as I looked into the history and the circumstance of the school, I find that the success of Benjamin Franklin High School is really difficult to replicate. Despite the ingenuity and hard work of Leonard Covello and his team, the incredible diversity of the school, to some extent, is also a result due to unique demography of East Harlem, just as Rothestien argues in his paper “Why Our Schools Are Segregated”, the segregation of the schools is the result of residential segregation, while segregation is a result of various reasons such as policy and racially motivated law.

From the NYC Department of Education report, “Equity and Excellence For All,” we can see NYC’s endeavor to create a classroom with equity and diversity. It shows that NYC is trying to remove its title of having “the most segregated schools in the country”. DOE states its goal clearly in this report: 1. To increase the number of students in a racially representative school by 50,0002. To decrease the number of economically stratified school by 10% 3. To increase the number of inclusive schools which allow ESL students and students with disabilities to attend.

The general purpose of this report is pretty much straightforward: To address the current problems regarding diversity and equity in our education system. According to the report “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction, and a Damaged Future,” NYC has “the most segregated schools in the country,” where many students are not only isolated by race, but also by income. It is ironic that NYC, which is considered as the most diverse city in the world, has failed so completely to represent such diversity in its education system. Therefore, the diversity stated in this report does not only refer to race and ethnicity but also refer to different socioeconomic statuses such as income, family education, and occupation. The goals of this report can be summarized as to stress diversity during school admission, to help students who come from a lower income family, to provide funding for students who have special needs such as ESL (English as second language) students, to create a friendlier school environment to students from every background, and, most importantly, to eliminate educational inequality among students. The report has made it clear that the DOE is working on letting students from diverse backgrounds receive equal access to better education. It is an important step toward the desegregation and equity of our education system.

However, some of its policies still remain in question. For example, in Policy 10 DOE is really vague on how do we create a more welcoming school climate for all students. Even though implementing a restorative approach is a good start, it is only a small part of having a welcoming school atmosphere to all students. As far as I am concerned, a good school climate is one of the most important things to a school and DOE should be really clear and specific on how to make this happen.

Even though many of the DOE policies have many flaws, it shows DOE’s determination to promote equality and diversity among many of the public schools in NYC. I hope that when DOE gradually implements those policies, it can also find the many drawbacks in these policies and improve them.