MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
How New York’s Elite Public Schools Lost Their Black and Hispanic Students
By artappraiser on Tue, 06/04/2019 - 2:48am |By Eliza Shapiro & K.K. Rebecca Lai @ NYTimes.com, June 3 (long form interactive piece with lots of graphs and other illustrations)
[....] Black and Hispanic enrollment in the specialized schools has plummeted over the last 40 years [....]
White enrollment has also fallen while Asian enrollment has ballooned. Among the most drastic shifts: Brooklyn Technical High School’s black population dropped to 6 percent in 2016 from 51 percent in 1982.
The city has designated five additional test-in specialized high schools since 2002, bringing the total to eight, in an attempt to integrate the elite schools. But even those schools have seen a decline in black and Hispanic enrollment over the last decade, which undercuts the idea that simply adding more elite schools will shift demographics. Black and Hispanic students currently represent 70 percent of the school system, but make up just 10 percent of the enrollment in the specialized schools. [....]
URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/03/nyregion/nyc-public-schools-black-hispanic-students.html
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Comments
AA, I'm curious about your position on this. It's a topic of heated debate at my kitchen table. As the product of a public high school and one of those prestigious liberal arts colleges celebrated by USN&WP, I find myself increasingly opposed to the isolation of high-achieving students at "elite" schools. The separation seems bad for the disadvantaged students (who don't get exposed to academically-driven peers), bad for the privileged students (caught up in a hyper-competitive rat-race), and bad for an increasingly class-divided society.
More specifically, one of the advantages of De Blasio's proposal that few people talk about is the effect on middle and elementary schools. Middle school competition is nearly as intense as high school competition because certain middle schools are seen as feeder schools for the specialized high schools. There's a conveyor belt from top elementary schools to top middle schools to top high schools, so the isolation and competition goes all the way down to Pre-K. But if the specialized schools accept 5 percent from all the middle schools, you break that chain. There would no advantage to attending Middle Lab. In fact, there would be a disadvantage because of the competition for the 5 percent slots. As a result, you'd get far more class and race diversity at the middle schools as well as down the line at the elementary schools.
by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 10:18am
I'd read recently about a Mensa guy who was bullied pretty extensively until put in a group of his peers, and both he and another smart guy in another article had the problem that all the material was focused on the less gifted, so the smart ones were bored, either became trouble makers or just checkd out. Oh yeah, one corrected his teacher not to be a smartass, but just because she was wrong, which didn't endear him to her.
In short, think the issues are more complex and more permutations to deal with.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 12:42pm
I actually have no position because everything seems to have gone to hell on a handbasket, and I have no kids. I am just into reading more nuanced studies like this about what happened.
As far as personally, the whole preppy world and its desires and goals, it was absolutely foreign to my upbringing, it is basically foreign to the whole Midwest. I really had to learn all about it when I moved to NYC from Milwaukee. We just didn't have those class divisions. If you went to college, people thought that was grandiose enough.
I am the daughter of the first guy to go to college (on the GI bill, natch) in a white trash family. I am the oldest of 5 (mother with high school education) wanted to get the hell out of the swamp at 17 and had zero delusions about going anywhere else but in-state. Because there was zero money to do anything else. And I hadn't a clue how to get anywhere else and neither did my parents--I doubt the overworked high school employee charged with such things had a clue either. (Dad scraped up cash somehow for us to go to parochial school, but this was boomer parochial school with 40 kids per class and nun teachers still getting their teaching creds.) Went to a massive mediocre public high school focused on sports and pep rallies. Us hippie freaks interested in other things were the shunned.
So I didn't even try to apply anywhere else! Just so happens that UW-Madison was a top ten. I cared more about seeing some other freaks than that. Within two years, what I learned was the preppy-frat side of a big 10 school, it has lost it's appeal and I was back home to Milwaukee "big city" activities on weekends to learn STREET SMARTS at the same time I was going to college with all those immature cloistered kids in Madison.
When time rolled around to go to graduate school, I could have stayed @ Madison, but I instead chose to go to Milwaukee where the students were a mix of all ages, not just drunken/drug kids on extended ivory tower holiday from life, living under in loco parentis Again: looking back now, what I was attracted to was learning STREET SMARTS from real people and grownups, not being with a bunch of spoiled babied rich kids from around the country able to pay out-of-state-tuition. Again,the situation was that there was no money to go anywhere else, so it wasn't in my realm of possibilities. I had two choices: Madison & Milwaukee at the time was a big city commuter school with an equal number of students but not as competitive for entrance. I chose Milwaukee for grad school because I wanted to be with and learn from grownups with real life experience.
If I had had kids, I would want the exact same for them. I've had enough "brilliant" interns and college student assistants in my life now to know what space cadets they can be! Not able to function at the simplest tasks of a job or just life!
So I guess you could say I am with you 100% on the "integrate the elite" thing! The problem is: I am also a product of parochial schools. Because I went to those schools, I was not a victim of the public grade schools of the time who had to serve everyone including lowest common denominator troublemakers. The parochial schools ejected the troublemakers to the public schools so that the rest, of all levels, could learn. So in today's world, if you come from a ghetto or similar culture, where learning is not prized or supported, that throws a wrench into the whole thing.
And the Asian "problem" in this particular article, that is the flip side. Those kids are coming from a culture that prizes learning.
So I guess it all depends upon what your definition of elite is! If elite means ready for school and interested in learning, I'm all for separating those out! And I am talking just as much about entitled rich kids as I am about ghetto brats. But I don't even buy into the whole world of prestige and prep offering a quality life. It doesn't, I learned that from 30 +years in NYC among all classes. The class and racial mixing is dandy, they all should come from a background that values education, though, or they drag their classmates down. The family doesn't need to be educated, actually it might be a plus if they are not--again, street smarts. But they have to value it, want it, desire it. I think that particular competition is good: how much do you want it?
by artappraiser on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 7:42pm
After writing the above, came to my mind, one major difference contributing to the current situation is helipcopter parenting. And what I have to say about that sort of counters some of my conclusions above. This is why I have no answers. Here's the story that came to mind.
I have a good boomer friend 5 yrs. older than me, also the oldest sibling, in a family with 4 kids. He is a caucasian WASP, specifically Episcopalian. His father was a famous classy NYC art gallery owner whose father and grandfather were NYC art dealers. Before that, medical doctors and inventors from Vienna, the other side of family well know German artists who like traveled American painting Indians, supposedly all elite people. His mother: English heritage, granddaughter of a lower class guy from England who built a patent medicine empire in the U.S. and basically founded a Westchester town, all kinds of relations invented other stuff we use today.
You are thinking legacy Yalie's and the like? NOPE, WRONG
Neither of my friend's parents went to college! They didn't have a clue what it was all about and didn't think college was all that necessary either. They had zero clue how to help their first born into college! Even though he went to a fancy Westchester private high school, just like me, he had no help applying to college and had to figure it all out on his own, how to apply, how to get there. (Unlike me, his parents had the money to pay for what he wanted to do, but they sure as hell weren't going to help him, they had other kids and business to worry about. When families were bigger, you didn't help the kids with every little thing, often you kicked them out when they reached 18 to make more room for the others.)
We forget how "college for everyone" was a new idea only a half century ago! Before that, it was just a private club for preparing certain upper classes to live their lives.
This is partly where the problem comes in. Everyone wants to be "elite" now, they think that's the answer. When that upper class is basically disappearing and billionaires are taking its place and most of them do not have an "elite" education. So again, what is elite? And why do we want it? Is it a phantom from a century ago?
by artappraiser on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 8:05pm
Part is the evolving American Dream - from GI Bill socialism to the booming factories/suburbs prosperity to the scared enclaves from the hollowing out years to the dot com everyone's an investor years - we went from 4.3 kids per family to 1.3 or whatever, so we've got our own 1-child policy, and we've all seen The Graduate - "plastics" - and Dynasty and The Godfather, so we know it's all about connections and getting a roommate who'll start the next Google or Facebook... that *is* the American Dream now - holding a regular job and ending up furloughed at 53 w/o healthcare andais ome VC raiding your retirement is the sucker's 2nd Place - it's Amway pyramid scheme combined with Wheel of Fortune - playing the lottery. That rubbing elbows with the Salt of the Earth to learn about real people went out of fashion - modern "teams" are a finely honed microcosm of "we don't want any problems" - can be multiculture as long as it's still relatively bland and non-threatening. And yeah, for a society where everything's an investment, those few kids we're having are an investment and our conspicuous consumption/status symbol of our hard work - where you vacation, what car you drive, where Tad goes to school or who plays soccer with.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/06/2019 - 1:58am
Thanks for the thoughtful, introspective reply! Sorry that I couldn't respond earlier, but I'll try to repay you in kind. I'm also from the Midwest and also the second generation to go to college. My dad's parents were poor immigrants who never attended high school.
But I think my experience was different from yours. In Iowa City, where I grew up, there were two public high schools and private a Catholic school. Westsiders went to West High; Eastsiders went the City High. It didn't really matter where you went because they were all excellent. In retrospect, it seems very idyllic to me. There were plenty of smart students and challenging honors classes, yet students from diverse backgrounds were inevitably thrown together—in classrooms, locker rooms, school buses, and cafeterias. Few of my fellow wrestlers attended my honors classes, but we practiced together every afternoon and traveled to meets all over the state. Deb Widiss, the valedictorian daughter of a law professor, had a locker next to Rocky Whitmore, who raised his fists and hollered, “I made it!” when he received his diploma.
That said, I was very college-oriented. Not because I aspired to be wealthy or elite. My parents often waxed nostalgic for their time at SUNY Binghamton, where they met, and I dreamed of a formative experience of my own. The Fiske Guide to Colleges made Williams College out to be a kind of paradise--beautiful, rustic, intellectual, chock-full of hallowed halls, manicured quadrangles, and magnificent vistas. The devoted alumni who loved, loved, loved their college experience proved how wonderful it must be. For me, it was a disappointment. I received a great education, but the prep-school culture annoyed me, and the slavish devotion to Williams seemed like a permanent pep rally. Above all, I felt claustrophobic--trapped in an isolated, insular, homogenous community.
My dream for American education looks much more like my high school experience than it does my college experience. But how does one replicate it? It worked well in Iowa City, a middle-class college town with no other school districts for miles. But in a big city riven by economic inequality, academically-oriented parents vote for school districts with their feet, or else send their kids to private schools if there are no good public ones. Part of the reason NYC established those specialized schools was to keep good students in the city's public system, as opposed to private schools or suburbia. Self-segregation is the bane of the education the system, but how do you counter it?
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 06/06/2019 - 10:44pm
For sure your high school was different, the opposite of diversity is what we had. Suffice it to say mine was in the white lower middle class ghetto. (Shocked how small Iowa City was, with only 3 high schools?!)
I'm with you a 100%, though, because, if you've read any of my comments here you know I think: tribalism sucks! Even back then I would shudder about the complacency of relatively smart girls I went to school with who were on track to have a life just like their parents, same kind of wedding, and live a couple blocks from mom while raising family and kids. It would actually make me shudder. Just like it makes me shudder when I read about Buckley and Buffy going to school and college with their own kind and staying with their own kind their whole life.
It's a tough problem precisely because of the whole Tiger Mom syndrome in more than one Asian culture. With so many kids that are
pushedtortured to compete and excel from day one, often ruthlessly. As much as I value it, carrying valuing education too far, uber alles. Which leaves little room for anyone else.And the irony is: most of them are wise enough to know they don't just want to be with their own kind, they value diversity too! It's: let's have diversity but I'll be the exception to the rule.A tribal life is a very small life. Rich in family, whoop-te-do. If you can't tell, I am not one for the "family is everything, heritage is everything" argument. I don't see how anyone who has read any modern literature (or watched a Jerry Springer show or Judge Judy) believes that. Hanging only with your own kind your whole life: pretty much the same thing unless your kind is globe-trotting travel writers or similar.
by artappraiser on Fri, 06/07/2019 - 1:17am
Excellent students can adapt. Excellent students in underachieving schools find ways to access other learning materials to keep them from being board. Public libraries remain an important resource. Having other students who share your ethnicity is important because you are not the only POC in the room. If the student has a love for learning, most will thrive.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 06/06/2019 - 9:52am
Sounds like a reasonable solution:
by artappraiser on Thu, 06/06/2019 - 2:07pm
Getting that funded by the legislature will be difficult. The state would be involved in funding new building.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/09/17/nyc-schools-with-high-share-of-low-income-students-lag-in-funding/
The state has been slow in paying its portion of the school budget
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 06/06/2019 - 2:16pm