Brooklyn is De-segregating the Public Schools… Again

Sixty-two years after Brown v. Board of Education, New York City still has one of the most ethnically segregated school systems in the nation. Inflexible public school zones drawn across a diverse city of immigrants ensure that rich and poor, black and white, are kept apart.

One Brooklyn district is looking to integrate their schools by rezoning. New lines will be drawn, mandating a more diverse mix of residents into the public schools. But will affluent families willingly send their kids to poor and minority schools? Or will they opt out of the public system, by sending their kids to a private school or by moving to a different district?

In Brownstone Brooklyn's Racial Divide, Reason TV took a close look at how one community is struggling to reverse the rampant ethnic and class segregation in their public schools.

Comments

[AlmightyJB]

"But will affluent families willingly send their kids to poor and minority schools?"

No, they'll leave and take their money with them putting further financial strains on the shit show they leave behind. Deja Vu.. Christ!

[AlmightyJB]

Of course then after they make everything a fucking ghetto, and the busing stops because at that point your just moving poor minorities around for no reason, the property values will be shit and they can start the whole gentrification process over. Then later they can start busing again. It's like fucking Planet of the Fucking Idiots.

[DevilDocNowCiv]

Al,

Their choice to flee a bad situation is their right, surely. And this in itself puts no financial strain on the system. One has to consider the reserves, assets, obligations and outlays of that system, and public school systems in Dem political machine towns are almost universally dominated by "spend more on everything ethic" and very generous pension and benefit plans for many.

Much of the budget is usually taken up with that. Given whatever the current situation is, we have a democracy to address these issues. Your answer is to demand an exit tax? Force a modern kind of serfdom, where they need permission to move out of the school zone?

[AlmightyJB]

So when all the wealthiest people in an area move out of that area, that has no financial impact? How are those local income taxes replaced? Exit tax? No, I'm against the forced busing to begin with. If anything, the city should help to pay for them to move out since their the ones fucking the whole thing up to start with. Don't think the minorities are not going to be hurt by that exit of cash from the general area as well.

[wareagle]

let's go back to the real question here: WHY are those wealthy people moving out? Are they inherently racist, don't their kids mingling with black students, or do they fear the quality of education is going to drop as namby-pamby school officials allow each classroom to be held hostage to the most belligerent knucklehead and a couple of his followers?

[AlmightyJB]

"WHY are those wealthy people moving out?"

Because they're not horrible parents who would ship their kid to a worse school in a higher crime neighborhood to sacrifice them on the alter of fascist progressivism and it's idiotic social experimentation. The black parents in the video certainly understood that the liberals don't have their best interest in mind.

[Limpee Wiltstock]

Why would anybody with the means to easily do otherwise send their spawns to the government schools? It's hard enough to grasp how folks who lack the means to easily enrol their andungar in private school are able to send their children to government school. And I used to say this decades ago, when the schools were orders of magnitude more tolerable. If I had young children now I'd pretty much pursue any path to avoid sending them to the government schools. Maybe the system isn't intentional, but it's very clearly designed for the purpose of converting human beings into slaves, where possible, and destroying them where not. It's a huge fucking exercise in intellectual poverty and moral degradation and subservience. Look at how much effort goes into destroying belief in free will, into inculcating mansuetude, into accustoming the youth to restriction of bad thought and positive law so thoroughly they don't stop in shock and abatement and stand back and question the legitimacy of arbitrary prohibition of any random class of thoughts or actions which are currently disfavoured by our overfucklings.

[JellyRev]

in the midwest this isn't an issue its called suburbs and commuter towns.
I feel for the coastal children.

[Cloudbuster]

People send their kids to government schools as long as they perceive them to be a good deal. When people who have the means to do otherwise see the deal going sour, they either decamp for a public school district that's a better deal, or they send their kids to private schools.

There is absolutely no way to stop that behavior in a free country.

Yet the totalitarian utopianists seem to think they can force people to behave against their self-interest. They long for the power to force people to do so.

Todays integrationists are particularly retarded. The lessons of the last round of forced integration are less than 50 years old. That shouldn't be so long ago that it is outside our collective memory. Unfortunately, our collective memory seems to have dwindled to be unable to recall anything more distant than last week's trending hashtag.

[pkay225]

I have two kids, one in the NYC public schools, one we homeschooled and then sent to a private school. The public school my kid attends is a good one b/c of where we live. I went to (good) NYC public schools and my parents went to some that were good, some not so good - depends on neighborhood.

The only viable way to pull these poor kids out of the cycle is good schools, and only charters are up to the challenge. Of course the usual suspects will obstruct this. It is well and truly a damn shame that our current mayor and school chancellor are on the wrong side of this, b/c whoops, there goes (yet) another generation of NYC schoolchildren.

[AlmightyJB]

Yeah, charters are the way to go. As Levey was saying, people do like diversity, and want their children to have that experience. But a safe environment where they are going to get a quality education comes first. The liberals who put diversity and multiculturalism as public schools number one goal (while they send their kids to private schools) are too stupid to understand how incentives work.

[DevilDocNowCiv]

Al,

They aren't stupid, just typical elites in their their thinking. "Multi - Culti for thee, not for me."

[AlmightyJB]

There too caught up in their real goal which is to pretend to be better than everyone else. They will fuck over as many people as necessary to do so.

[pkay225]

I know a coupla families for whom the Success Academies were basically lifesavers. NYC politics are never boring. Making fun of people's hypocrisy on this (and other issues of local concern) would be amusing for me except that the stakes are so high.

[Robert]

Stupidity doesn't self-sustain for long. I think behind this all is the thought, "If we don't play this game, they'll riot again."

[Migrant Log Chipper]

well said, these fucking retards that run the schools are clueless. Responsible parents will do whatever it takes to get their kids away from that shitshow.

Yet the powers that be will deny a disadvantaged kid access to a better school...isn't that kinda, sorta racist. Hmmm..

[Cloudbuster]

The only viable way to pull these poor kids out of the cycle is good schools,

This is a nice sentiment, but it's wrong.

Decade after decade of real-world experience argues against it.

It's not bad schools, it's bad kids.

It's not as if there is something special in the air in a "good school." There is no apparent correlation to teacher compensation, per student spending, teacher to student ratio or any other popular metric that makes up a "good school."

The "bad schools" follow the bad kids, from bad homes.

Most of them are not salvageable. A Utopian refusal to believe that most of them are no salvageable is what drives these perpetual, doomed attempts to manipulate the system.

[Cloudbuster]

The only viable way to pull these poor kids out of the cycle is good schools,

This is a nice sentiment, but it's wrong.

Decade after decade of real-world experience argues against it.

It's not bad schools, it's bad kids.

It's not as if there is something special in the air in a "good school." There is no apparent correlation to teacher compensation, per student spending, teacher to student ratio or any other popular metric that makes up a "good school."

The "bad schools" follow the bad kids, from bad homes.

Most of them are not salvageable. A Utopian refusal to believe that most of them are no salvageable is what drives these perpetual, doomed attempts to manipulate the system.

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Star Wars collectible.

[AlmightyJB]

I sort of recognize two of those people

[Mint Berry Crunch]

I recognize Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball, and Morena Baccarin.

[Francisco d'Anconia]

May the force cause you to prosper, gorramit!

[AlmightyJB]

As far as the ladies go. would. would. would. would.

[68Whiskey]

"Inflexible public school zones drawn across a diverse city of immigrants ensure that rich and poor, black and white, are kept apart."

And?

[Brochettaward]

The poor kids will get smarter through osmosis being in school with the rich white people. What about this don't libertarians understand?

[GILMORE?]

""will affluent families willingly send their kids to poor and minority schools?""

[Mint Berry Crunch]

Why is that funny?

Palin's Buttplug always reminds us that "affluent = liberal," and we know that liberals care about diversity. So, unless they're total hypocrites, OF COURSE the affluent will accept any plan to give their children a more racially diverse education.

[Brochettaward]

Which set of kids do you think will suffer the most abuse through this scheme? I mean, the white kids shifted into predominantly minority schools or the minorities in the white schools? I guess the white kids have it coming given white supremacy and all.

[Mint Berry Crunch]

There won't be any suffering, because racial diversity benefits everybody. Progressives told me so.

[DevilDocNowCiv]

You can see some of the animosity the affluent whites are going to run into at a community meeting, where black parents are angrily complaining about whites coming in and taking stuff "that people who were here, had."

One woman is holding a toddler, and says something like "my daughter will get revenge for the wrong you're doing" I rephrase it more clearly. It was not a polite, curious welcoming of "the other."

[GILMORE?]

"we know that liberals care about diversity when its far far away from their kids"

[JellyRev]

give most millenials a break. they were not there when white flight happened. They think every inner city is san fran. property prices? sanders will pay for that

[GILMORE?]

public school spending by state

[Crusty Juggler]

A friend of mine is the principal of a school in New York State that has less than 400 students, and he makes $125,000.

[GILMORE?]

my buddy is the principal of one of NYC's more successful charter schools and he makes sigificantly less. He's young and talented, but they scale pay on years served, not merit.

[GILMORE?]

*caveat - sorry, its not technically a charter. its a public school that is designated an "experimental" program or something, so has a lot of similar features as charter schools, but is technically still part of the regular system.

[Careless]

So he's the manager of about 20 teachers and maybe 12 administrators/janitors/librarians/etc (and I'm probably underestimating that), and making $125k in a high cost state with a job that requires at least a master's degree (the principles in this town all have PhDs)?

That doesn't seem unreasonable

[Careless]

"als"

[Jerryskids]

Oddly enough, CNN is right now running a special report on the issue. Very little mention of is our children learning - a great deal of diversity in and of itself is such an obvious good thing that whether or not the little brats learn to read and write is of secondary import.

[Jerryskids]

I guess it's my middle-class middle-age straight white male privilege that makes me think teaching kids to read and write is an important part of judging whether or not a school is a good school. I must be humble enough to admit that if somebody from a different groupal identification schools me in the validity of multicultural modes of clarifying non-outcome-based differentials I must take it on faith that everybody's a winner and all must have prizes. Even "judging" whether one school is "better" or "worse" than another is just one way of looking at things, and it's the wrong way even if right and wrong are just social constructs designed to perpetuate the patriarchy. Everybody's opinion is equally valuable - except mine, mine are just evil.

[Ken Shultz]

"But will affluent families willingly send their kids to poor and minority schools? Or will they opt out of the public system, by sending their kids to a private school or by moving to a different district?"

The government's solution never seems to be giving the poor more choices, and the solution always seems to involve restricting the choices of the affluent--as if affluence were a problem.

In Anthro 101, they used to teach us that the less sophisticated a society is, the less social stratification there is. It looks like they still teach it that way:

"Generally, the greater the social complexity of a society, the more social strata exist, by way of social differentiation.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Social_stratification

Explaining to people that using force isn't an appropriate way to get what you want is something you should have to tell lost tribes or four year-old children.

The correct answer to the question: "How can New York City stop wealthy people from sending their children to private schools?" is, "Progressives are primitive in the technical sense".

http://www.oxforddictionaries....../primitive

[Notorious UGCC]

"Hmmm...it looks like us adults haven't been able to resolve our racial problems...let's force the kids to deal with the stuff we couldn't handle!"

[Brian]

This just goes to the arbitrariness of democracy by partitioning voters into geographic districts.

Take the poor people and spread them out all over? Guess what? They don't have a representative.

Put them all in the same district? Great: now they have a representative. They're also trying to serve the poor with the money of poor people, and they enjoy a cultural identity of poverty.

The state doesn't fix it. The state just enables it, and helps freeze it in time and space, making change more difficult.

[Migrant Log Chipper]

exactly

[Cloudbuster]

You know what happens when you spread poor people all over? You despoil the neighborhoods that they move into. I've watched Section 8 housing ruin neighborhoods.

We just lost a good tenant in one of our rentals because the gawdawful filthy Mexicans living next door 15 to a house next finally became too much for him.

It used to be a nice working-class neighborhood 20 years ago. We lived in the neighborhood ourselves in the 80s and early 90s, but more and more Section 8 housing opened up and those places, like all low-income housing, are a blight on a good neighborhood.

Poverty and crime isn't independent of the people. People talk about "high crime neighborhoods" as if it's the neighborhood itself that is committing the crime, but it's the people, and if you move them to another neighborhood, they're still filthy criminals.

It's always the working-class border neighborhoods that get hurt worst. Neighborhoods like North Linden in Columbus or Ferguson in Missouri, because they're the one with the most affordable Section 8 places. Really wealthy neighborhoods don't get hit as bad, because they have the money and power to more effectively manipulate the system.

[Notorious UGCC]

If you have a school with goals and values to which most of the parents are committed, then we can get people together in a good way - even across our self-made racial lines.

But if you just have a mediocre school with staff phoning it in and throw some kids in together from different backgrounds, what do they have in common to inspire them and get them thinking they're all on the same team? I doubt it will inspire anything useful.

[Ken Shultz]

Maybe white parents don't want to send their kids to schools with minorities because they don't want their children to be tempted by cultural appropriation.

[lap83]

Nice

[Jerryskids]

If you have a school with goals and values to which most of the parents are committed then you've got a big problem. The problem is parents passing their same mistaken goals and values onto their offspring and perpetuating the social problems this diversity of thought creates. If we're going to create the New Soviet Society, we must first create the New Soviet Man, and that's where the parents need to butt out and let the educrats take over educating their children in the proper goals and values most beneficial to society.

You're likely to be the sort of parent who thinks our children are "your" children and you have some right to impose your values of literacy and numeracy on them. Who's to say reading and writing and arithmetic are all that? Perhaps our children can better serve the needs of society by remaining unreflective and incapable of abstract thought. But in any case it's not up to you to decide - where's your Ph. Ed?

[Robert]

What's that guy doing on the steps at 0:47-48?

[Suthenboy]

Kneeling in front of the little Aqua Budda shrine on his steps?

[Robert]

I thought NYC officially adopted a public school choice plan ~20 yrs. ago. Is the problem that in-district students have a right of 1st refusal, so effectively the only schools left to choose are the bad ones?

[Rhywun]

Lots of big cities have choice of a sort - at least at the secondary level. I got to choose my HS decades ago. But if you're not a motivated parent your kids will get stuck with an assigned neighborhood school which will probably be a bad one.

[frankania]

The solution is simple; VOUCHERS. Every child over 6 gets one reflecting the current per/pupil amount of $$ (or a little less?) and then the parents choose the school, public OR private that they think is best. Competition always works best!

[Cloudbuster]

You know the leftists will get outraged that the private schools will simply turn out the bad kids on day one when they start acting up: "Here's your voucher money. Thanks for playing. Find another school."

They'll manage it one way or another, no matter how the law is structured. If they're still allowed to be selective, then they'll simply say "No, thanks" to the voucher up front.

If they're no longer allowed to be selective, most will be ruined. If they're still allowed to expel kids, then some might stave it off by calculating what percentage of each entering class will be incorrigible, over-enrolling to that extend, and then kicking out the troublemakers at the first possible opportunity.