Author: kgiannoulas

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.

Reading this chapter from Matthew F. Delmont’s Why Busing Failed, has changed my view and understanding of the notion of busing. White mothers in the early 1960s protested against busing and held signs reading “I will not put my children on a bus” and “keep our children in neighborhood schools” (23). White mothers were going against the “pairing plan” of transferring students between black, Puerto Rican and white schools because of the bus ride there. The bus ride reasoning is clearly not the reason behind these mothers’ protests, but a gateway excuse to show that they were opposed to desegregation.

Some parents were more forward with their intentions of the protest and sent the Board of Education unambiguous letters complaining about the distance their children would travel to get to school and some letters were explicitly racist. In Dr. Kenneth Clark’s Commission on Integration’s zoning report, Clark dismisses the rumors from the white parents stating that their kids would be brought into black neighborhoods since those rumors were planted. Reports have shown that white parents would put their children on buses to take them a very far distance to get to a white school, so in a way, they are contradicted themselves.

Aside from this, the white mothers protest of three mile walk received so much publicity and media attention just because they were white. On the contrary,  it took years for black families to get attention and a ton of more walking, or at least more time and effort. Similar to the Harlem Nine and the Gary Plan families, a group was formed for the white anti-busing families called the Parents and Taxpayers. In a way, the white parents do not see themselves as equal to black families who are also parents and taxpayers. The white mothers and families protesting saw themselves as superior to the black families and the thought of desegregation as an inconvenience to them based on their racist beliefs.

“Leonard Covello and the Making of Benjamin Franklin High School” by Michael C. Johanek and John L. Puckett discusses the creation of a community-centered high school in East Harlem. Covello’s goal for creating this high school, was to create a school that is more than just a few hours a day in a classroom, he wants the school to create a community amongst all of the school members and the surrounding neighborhood: “The responsibility of the school as an educational factor does not cease at the hour of dismissal in the afternoon; it extends far beyond the walls of the school” (141).

Covello wanted a school that would be a launching pad for well-rounded students who would then influence their families and communities. Similarly, in W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools”, Du Bois discusses the idea of having highly educated black scholars teach at the predominantly black and low-income schools, so that the students would be positively influenced by them. The thirties were seen as the “Golden Age” of education because of its teachers which was one of the components of Covello’s high school. Comparing both of these texts to P.S. 307 who had great teachers and a hardworking principal, I believe it is safe to say that teachers play a huge role in student development.

I believe we were assigned this reading because while it may be about a different demographic group and in the thirties, the goals are the same and so are some of the issues. For example, the Italian-American students attending Benjamin Franklin High School had low self-esteem because of the way they were portrayed in media and viewed in society. Du Bois, knew low self-esteem was a factor that effected black students education during his time and present day it is socio-economic status. The problems we see today have been noticed and have been happening for a while – the project we are working on in this class is on how to fix these policy problems.

This report was very eye opening to me because of how little I know about the diversity statistics of NYC public schools especially after having attended them my whole life. To read that the NYC DOE’s expects only an 80% high school graduation rate and only 2/3 of graduates being college ready after the implementation of these policies was shocking. In my high school, not going to college was not an option – we spent all four years preparing for college. Reading that at least a third of students are not ready and that the reasoning behind that number is tied to a lack of diversity in NYC schools is disappointing. It is 2018 and I believe that this report was very well overdue.

I think that the comprehensiveness of this report is what people liked about it. The DOE provided goals and defined them, as seen on page 4. I think another good feature of this report is the hopefulness of the NYC DOE. It lists many steps to achieve diversity and provides descriptions as to how diversity will be achieved. It also continuously promises throughout the report that they will prioritize making schools diverse. As a specialized high school alum, I am glad to see that SHSAT preparation courses are being provided in certain middle schools through the DREAM program. It takes a lot of money to send a child to SHSAT preparation courses and having the courses provided at schools for free is a great help for the parents and for the child’s future.

This report has a lot of plans for the future, but it seems that some of these may be easier said than done, which may be why people have criticized this report. For example, Policy 8 reminds me of the New York Times article we read by Nicole Hannah-Jones, “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City”. Just like the parents of the children attending P.S. 8 did not agree with the re-zonings and called a meeting with school officials, who is to say there will not be a great pushback on the re-zonings mentioned in Policy 8. The report also uses a lot of numbers to show statistics to validate the legitimacy of the DOE’s statements, however some are not that promising. For example, the 10^th policy is vague and includes numbers of staff trained and number of schools these programs have been implemented in (which is 400 out of the 1,800 schools). The approach to increase these numbers is unclear and there are no specifications as to what creates a welcoming school climate or what the reform in school discipline is.

While this report is hopeful, there is still a lot that the DOE can clear up on their end and expand further upon.