GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

This research seems to focus on only one point on the spectrum, the point when a school goes from a dominant poor population to one integrated with “gentry” parents. But later, how can the system retain the poor population as real estate prices push them out of the neighborhood? I wonder if Stillman’s research sheds any light on how NYC schools can maintain integration once middle class populations start moving in.

This is interesting. In DC where I currently live on the block with a newly diversified school in a gentrifying neighborhood (I am a single, childless, upper-middle class Black female mathematics educator), the gentrifying of the schools in my neighborhood and throughout the city was accomplished by the introduction of universal PreK at 3 years old. Because the school system requires certified early childhood teachers and is free, over early childhood centers that cost and often don’t have as highly qualified teachers, on top of being a new program with no real history, many families entered the schools through that program. Once they were there and part of the school community, more stayed. There is still a problem of “gentry” parents leaving after elementary school at the transition to middle schools, but it is an interesting regional difference. 

Aren’t there some unexamined assumptions here?
For Dr. Stillman’s interviewees the ideal principal is one who can “skillfully facilitate the integration of two disparate parenting and school philosophies under one roof.”
But are there are really just two possible philosophies? Maybe interviews with some non-middle class, non-white parents would have revealed a range of philosophies of parenting and schooling.

There are many neighborhoods in NYC that have maintained integration  once middle class populations moved in. I might add, this was done without resorting to hostile takeovers by charter schools.

 When you write, “a school that is in a neighborhood much further along in the
gentrification process has a surrounding community much more accepting
of school change, which gives the principal political room to adjust the
school’s culture to better match the preferences of the gentry,”  what I hear is that in a gentrifying school, it is the gentry’s children that get served first and best. Why is it imperative that a principal adjust the school to meet the preferences of the dominant white, middle/upper-middle class culture? What happens to poor children and children of color who are not served well by the gentry’s preferences?   Might they, in fact, be better served by a school that “feels too traditional, too authoritarian in tone” for the gentry?  I can accept your assumption that integrated schools benefit all students, but do they benefit them all equally? When and how do the preferences of the families and community originally served by the school get heard in this change process?

A)    Thanks for your questions Stephen:
A) sA) The schools I studied were not already “quite diverse,” they were segregated school that, prior
to the entry of the gentry parents, had few to zero white, middle-class
students.  Numerous other education
researchers have established the benefits of integration, my goal was to figure
out how the integration process actually unfolds in gentrifying neighborhoods.                                                                          
       B) I learned that school leaders play a pivotal
role in creating the type of school environment where both types of parents feel like
they have a voice. It was a talent that not all principals possessed. 

I applaud public options for parents who would otherwise
leave the city, and charter schools are public schools.  Most white, middle-class parents won’t choose the poor, segregated
schools, for reasons I detail in my book . They will simply opt out.  And it isn’t just the white, middle-class parents who would  benefit from diverse charter schools. It is the non-white, poor children in our city who
are hurt the most by the persistence of mostly segregated public school options.  Diverse charter schools will not be white
schools. They will be diverse. 

I also found that Pre-K was an important entry point for many of the parents I interviewed. But not to the extent that you describe. This is very interesting, and I plan to dig and learn more about the program you describe. Thanks.  

I find it curious that you don’t mention magnet grants.  The UCLA Civil Rights project believes that magnet grants are a more sustainable and equitable model than charter schools, particularly when it comes to diversity.

I also think that you should investigate Tapestry Project a little further before you describe them as a potential for integration.  Tapestry has been pushing two charter school proposals that have been thoroughly rejected by both the white middle class and latino community (ironic, for your arguments that we have diversity in our fight against charter schools supposedly designed to address diversity). Not sure exactly where you would put Williamsburg in your phases of diversity/integration, but a lot of what you discussed is certainly echoed in the recent history of many of our public schools in the gentrified areas.

Citizens of the World, the charter schools they propose, are coming to the gentrified areas for precisely the reasons you describe.  However, they are grossly manipulating our data to claim that they are necessary. They are using the diversity statistics of our district as a whole (55% white), comparing them to our school-wide statistics (8%white) and claiming the that we need to create schools that are 55% white.  The district wide statistics ignore some VERY important factors: a substantial Hassidic Jewish population that don’t make use of our public schools, white people who do not have children, and the fact that we have a district with wide swaths of un-gentrified areas that suffer from racial and socio-economic isolation.  Creating these two schools will serve, not to diversity our public schools, but to desegregate them.  

You can read our critique of these schools here:  http://www.scribd.com/gemnyc/d/94382088-WAGPOPS-Letter-to-Suny-Opposing-Citizens-of-the-World-Charter-Schools

I appreciate your comments, and found your critique of the Citizens
of the World charter proposal very well argued. 
I don’t think there are any easy ways to create more integrated schools
in our city, and my hope that the
Tapestry Project has potential does
not mean that I think they are some sort of silver bullet.  Obviously any path to increasing school diversity
will face hurdles. I use the word “potential” quite intentionally, because I
have no idea what will happen when Tapestry actually tries to recruit a diverse
group of families to its lotteries.  If, as
you say, both the white and Latino community are rejecting these schools, then
they clearly won’t succeed.  But I don’t
think this needs to be a zero sum game.  Middle-class
parents will continue to send their children to the neighborhood schools you
describe if they are happy, and new schools won’t necessarily take those
families, but will attract other families who may have moved to the suburbs
instead of trying out one of the existing neighborhood schools.  

While conducting research, I found many
different types of “gentry parents,” and they all had different thresholds for
what was good enough.  It sounds like
some of the schools in your neighborhood are thriving with the “Innovators”
and “Early Adopters” (as I call them), but these schools may not yet have become progressive enough for the “Early and Late Majority,” and
they may or may not. Every school is different.   With more neighborhood options, more families
may opt in.  This would create additional
middle-class families to fill spots at all of the competing schools,
and wouldn’t necessarily take some from one school to fill another.  But, these dynamics aren’t always known until
things play out.  It may lead, in the aggregate, to greater segregation, as you
fear, or greater integration.  I don’t
know what will happen.  I just have hopes that it will be the latter based on my
research.
   

Charter schools are not my first policy recommendation, however,
because I share your belief that there is a lot of integration possibility in
under-enrolled neighborhood public schools. I propose something I call Urban
Education Cooperatives (UECs), which would serve the need you describe in your critique:
bringing families interested in diversity to under-enrolled neighborhood schools.   Zone lines
can make it hard for critical mass to form in any one school, as can the fact
that most elementary schools have many sections of each grade. UECs would  guarantee families who participate in the UEC
process (discussions around what is important in a school, meetings with
various principals and parent leaders, etc.),  that they will be guaranteed to be in the same
classroom with other UEC member families. 
This would give interested parents the same guarantee they get when they choose
G&T programs without instilling a blatant hierarchy in the school.  

Notably, the charter schools that Tapestry promotes are not more progressive than the neighboring public schools. Citizens of the World hijacked a lot of the language of progressive education in their marketing, but their schools are actually more traditional and conservative than our neighborhood schools with less opportunities for genuine parent engagement. One of the biggest ironies of Tapestry is that Eric Grannis is a founder of Girls Prep, a  school that progressive educators find anathema to their ideals of progressive education, however varied.  Tapestry just wants to open charter schools in North Brooklyn – any type of charter schools – and as many as they possibly can. 

NO school can be genuinely progressive under the current administration (city, state, and federal). Unpacking what is meant by “progressive” would be very helpful. 

Our hood has been gentrifying for more than a decade and both elementary schools in the area were led by principals who were openly hostile to the newer families. Many families (ours included) felt unwelcome, and most were in effect driven out by the principals who intensified distrust among parents of different social classes. Interestingly, both principals were eventually replaced by leaders who worked hard to get beyond this conflict, and earn trust from parents.  Gentrification is rough on neighborhood schools, and it takes principals who work hard to build cooperation among parents and are careful to listen to a variety of points of view while maintaining a strong philosophy about education to make those schools work for everyone.