This racial divide from pre-k up the line through high school prevents minority children from getting into the specialized high schools. This is the cancer which will not be fixed by changing the test, the SSHAT. The systemic discrimination must be addressed head on, and all the politicians who ask us to read their lips are doing nothing about it but talking. Action is needed, without retaliation.
I'm not sure that the NYC Department of Education knows how to do this:
The Wide-spread Racial Disparities At the NYC Department of Education and Harlem Public Schools v Charter Schools
We have not seen either Carmen, Mike, or Bill doing anything to stop these disparities.
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| UFT President Mike Mulgrew, Chancellor Carmen Farina, and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio |
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials
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| At Little Star of Broome Street Early Childhood Center in Manhattan, which is operated by the Chinese-American Planning Council, 80 percent of the students are Asian, said Mary Cheng, the early childhood program director. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
SEPT. 20, 2016
From elementary through high school, New York City children tend
to go to school with others similar to themselves, in one of the country’s most
racially segregated systems.
Turns out that racial
segregation is an issue in prekindergarten, too.
A report by the Century Foundation, a public
policy research group, which will be released on Tuesday, found that in
2014-15, the first year of the major prekindergarten expansion pushed by Mayor Bill de
Blasio, a Democrat, prekindergarten classrooms tended to be more racially
homogeneous than even the city’s public kindergartens.
In half of all
prekindergarten classrooms, over 70 percent of students belonged to a single
racial or ethnic group, despite the fact that the overall program
was diverse, with no
racial or ethnic majority. In one out of every six pre-K classrooms, more than
90 percent of the students were of the same race or ethnicity. In kindergarten,
that is true in one out of every eight classrooms.
“As much as we struggle with
segregation in K-12 schools, early education is really behind,” said Halley
Potter, a fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of the report.
So how did this segregation come about? Ms. Potter found that
prekindergarten classrooms in charter
schools and regular
district schools had levels of diversity similar to that found in their
kindergartens.
But
60 percent of prekindergarten students that year were enrolled at
community-based organizations, and those classrooms tended to be more racially
homogeneous than public kindergartens.
Among community-based pre-K
centers, there are two main types. One is funded by the city’s Administration
for Children’s Services and typically serves students from low-income families.
Those sites also often provide child care beyond the universal prekindergarten
day, which lasts for six hour and 20 minutes.
Seats at other kinds of
community-based sites also tend to go to particular groups. Some organizations
give priority to children who were previously enrolled as 3-year-olds, in
programs their parents may have paid for, or who might have siblings enrolled
at the center. They may give priority to children who speak a particular
language, or to those whose families receive social services from the
organization. In many cases, they have established relationships within
particular communities.
Administration for Children’s
Services classrooms were more likely to have a majority of black or Hispanic
students, the report found. Prekindergarten programs in other community-based
organizations were more likely to have a heavily white or Asian student
population.
At Little Star of Broome
Street Early Childhood Center in
Manhattan, which is operated by the Chinese-American Planning Council, for
example, 80 percent of the students are Asian, said Mary Cheng, the early
childhood program director; parents tend to find out about the center by word
of mouth. She said a more diverse student body would be beneficial not just for
the children in her care, but also for their families.
“To be
accepting and tolerant of each other, you have to be a mixture,” Ms. Cheng
said. “To learn that there are things that are similar” across cultures, she
added, “that’s something really important for kids to learn, and for adults.”
Ms.
Potter says emphasis on racial diversity needs to be built into the application
process.
“What
we see here is a reflection of the research around school choice,” she said.
“That is, if it’s just choice, without diversity really built into the design
of the program, it tends to have the effect of increasing segregation in
schools and classrooms.”
“These
pre-K centers did not appear from scratch, most already existed,” she
continued, and they came with established enrollment patterns.
Josh
Wallack, deputy chancellor of strategy and policy at the city’s Education Department, said that during the
first year of universal pre-K expansion, there were different application
processes for district schools and community-based organizations. In subsequent
years, however — this is Year 3 — there was a single, unified application for
the whole system, which Mr. Wallack said might have an impact on classroom
diversity.
“Prior to that, early learning centers had
to do their own recruitment, and tended to reach out in their immediate
surroundings,” he said. The new system “put them on the same playing field as
district schools, part of a citywide application process.”
He
added that classroom diversity “ is a priority for the Department of Education and this administration, because we
believe children in diverse classrooms learn from each other, and learn
better.”
There
have been small-scale efforts in recent years to address the city’s
enormous segregation issue. For example, the Education Department has begun
allowing individual schools to mold admissions policies that would create a
more diverse student body, by doing things like setting aside seats for
students who are learning English. A couple of districts are also discussing
ways of creating more socioeconomically balanced schools in their areas. But
critics have called these efforts too incremental for such a far-reaching and
entrenched problem.
Despite
the challenges, Ms. Potter, the report’s author, said she was hopeful.
“You
have to keep in mind,” she said, “this was the first year of universal pre-K,
coming out of a system where most kids were either in private pay or
means-tested programs; there weren’t that many seats that were available to
kids of all backgrounds. Making that step to universal is huge.”
“I think you need to keep in mind that
that’s where we’re moving from,” she added. “Where I’d be disappointed would be
if we don’t see any shifting in these patterns.”
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