how come the record of the New York City Department of Education under Chancellor Klein has been so poor on issues of diversity and equity?
Klein is a outspoken advocate of the current fashion that schools should not be judged by their inputs, or what they put into the education of their students. Talk about the need for lower class size, and he will quickly counter that it is only outputs that matter. Outputs are hard data, such as student standardized test scores.
So what does the hard data show about the diversity and equity performance of the NYC Department of Education under Klein?
Sunday’s Daily News published the results of a study of New York City’s elite public schools which shows that the numbers of students of color enrolled in them has fallen dramatically during Klein’s tenure. The numbers of African-American students have fallen 10%.
No one at Tweed can claim ignorance here: in 2006, the New York Times published an article which showed the same trends. Four years later, they continue unabated.
All that has happened in the interim is that the Department of Education has dragged the program designed to increase access to the specialized schools — the Specialized High School Institute — through the maelstrom of reorganization after reorganization, first devolving it to regions where it languished, than recentralizing it. As always, the students paid the price.
And that is only half of what has happened. Take the ever shrinking numbers of teachers of color in New York City public schools. In 2001-02, the year before Klein took over, the numbers of African-American and Latino/a teachers hired hit a high point for the last two decades: 27.2% of new teachers were African-American, and 14.3% were Latino/a. Every year since, they have declined. In 2006-07, the last year for which I have data, only 14.1% of new teachers were African-American and only 11.7% were Latino/a. That is a stunning decline of nearly 50% for African-Americans, and close to 20% for Latino/as.
Is that the record of an administration that believes that education is a civil rights issue? One that does not simply talk the talk, but walks the walk?
UPDATE: Jenny Medina takes on the issue of the elite specialized schools and race on the New York Times blog.
6 Comments:
1 Phyllis C. Murray
· Feb 17, 2010 at 9:45 am
On Righting Civil Wrongs: The Civil Rights Legacy Must Continue
By Phyllis C. Murray
” Education is a field where this contest of ideas for the legacy of the civil rights movement is perhaps most evident, both because of the ways in which Brown had meshed the civil rights agenda with the quest for quality schooling for communities of color and the fact that so much of the promise of Brown remains unfulfilled.”…”Democratic citizenship and collective self-empowerment means that one stays and fights the good fight. “From: .American Liberalism, Education And The Legacy Of The Civil Rights Movement: By Leo Casey
Surely it was Martin Luther King who fought the good fight. And it was Martin Luther King who kept the faith. ” Visionaries like James Foreman, Kwame Toure, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, E.B. Nixon and Martin Luther King crafted strategies around mass mobilizations in African American communities, and deliberately, creatively violated the law in order to change the nation’s misguided public policies. It was common practice, for instance, in towns and cities where the 1960s Freedom Movement was in high gear, to turn out a city’s colleges and high schools for days on end.” states Bruce Dixon, Editor ofThe Black Agenda
But who will finish the course? Who will lead us today when schools fail to reflect democracy in action? Who will help ensure that parents, students, and teachers share in the decision making process in these turbulent and critical times?
“A significant portion of the black leadership in those days was responsible to black communities alone,”.notes Bruce Dixon while. reflecting on the past. “They crafted political responses to the public policy crises of that era which they pursued both inside and outside America’s legal system, responses aimed at changing public policies that harmed African American communities.”
Who will speak out against the school to prison pipeline which has fostered mass incarceration of people of color and created slave labor camps in 21st Century plantations aka prisons? Bruce Dixon reminds us that : “Attorneys Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall crisscrossed the continent defending black prisoners on death row and filing cases to overturn legal segregation. It was due to years of these efforts that Thurgood Marshall, in the 1940s became known as “Mr. Civil Rights”
As we move through the 21st Century, we are reminded that the dream of a new and just American society must not die because “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The dream of a new and just American society must not die because it is a dream based on the American dream of liberty and justice for all. The dream of a new and just American Society will not die because “The arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.” The words of Martin Luther King are remembered, today. Lest we forget that our time has come to ensure that the American dream is fulfilled for all of its citizens. Leo Casey is right”
emocratic citizenship and collective self-empowerment means that one stays and fights the good fight ” Surely, we must press on!.
Phyllis C. Murray
UFT Chapter Leader
2 jd2718
· Feb 18, 2010 at 10:05 am
This trend, the decrease in diversity, is a direct product of Bloomberg/Klein. One of the collateral costs of the Progress Reports is mindless test prep, to the exclusion of real education.
Our schools in our poorer neighborhoods are teaching kids to bubble accurately. And, in many cases, doing it well. But this is not real education.
We can award enough credit to graduate a student, we can prep him for the exams, or “scrub” the exam afterwards. And we produce graduates. But without real education.
From the Specialized HS numbers, to the amount of remediation necessary at CUNY, students, especially students of color, are paying the price. The Bloomberg/Klein policies are hammering our schools, and cheating our youth. It is time to return to real education.
Jonathan
3 John Yanno
· Feb 25, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Klein. Yuck.
The UFT was wrong to back Mayoral Control and to stand on the sidelines as Bloomberg went for a third term (we should have opposed changing the law to allow it, and we should have opposed his re-election).
Why did our ledership tell us not to fight back? It’s time to mobalize and end this dictatorship and put control back into the hands of the community.
4 no_slappz
· Feb 25, 2010 at 4:32 pm
You wrote:
:..a study of New York City’s elite public schools which shows that the numbers of students of color enrolled in them has fallen dramatically during Klein’s tenure. The numbers of African-American students have fallen 10%.”
The numbers show that black and hispanic students do not know enough to score high enough to earn seats in the city’s top public schools.
For that to change, black and hispanic students need to put in as much effort as the white and asian students who are getting the scores needed for acceptance. By the way, I believe the percentage of students at Stuyvesant who are asian is over 60%.
Black and hispanic students would benefit from emulating the asian students.
5 Michael Fiorillo
· Feb 28, 2010 at 4:02 pm
It’s very good to see the union taking up the gross hypocrisy of Klein, et. al. when it comes to rhetoric vs. reality.
In the future, please don’t forget to point out the declining numbers of African-American students accepted to Stuyvesant, students whose entire academic careers have been spent under the Bloomberg-Klein regime. Despite their obsession with testing, what happened? Or is there a problem with the validity of their tests?
6 Leo Casey
· Feb 28, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Michael:
I thought that was what I had done in this post. What would qualify as an “elite public high school” with an entrance exam if not Stuyvesant? Isn’t it common knowledge that the category includes Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech?
Leo