“Progressive education”, in NYC, is a phrase that markets middle-class
values.  Schools with a plurality of
white, middle-class families easily send that message to other white,
middle-class families.  “If all of those
parents like me are choosing that school, that school must be doing what I
value.” Conversely, “Schools without a lot of parents like me must not be doing
what I value.”  It is hard for schools to
change the message if the demographics haven’t also changed. New schools have
the advantage of telling their story the way they want to tell it, as yet
untainted by a demographic mix and what that might say.  If they tell it well, they will have a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Citizens of the World obviously has that advantage.
It is the blank slate aspect of new charter schools that makes it easier for
them to possibly attract a diverse group.  Most NYC charter schools have NOT used the
blank slate to try and attract a  diverse student body. This is where Tapestry is different.  This is where I see the potential.  Change is hard. So if diversity can be
achieved without the struggle, why not explore those options?

I can’t speak to the motivations of Tapestry.  They seem genuinely interested in the idea of
creating diverse schools, not schools just for white students, but I am not
them.  I think the breakdown in the
conversation starts to occur when people can’t really agree on what diversity
means.   In most parts of our country, if a school was
45% non-white, that would be considered extremely diverse, and a real victory
for integration advocates. In NYC, however, these numbers can signal cause for
alarm, because of city demographics, because of political struggles, because of
a complex racial history. Community Roots, for example, a charter school with roughly 30%
white enrollment, was labeled in the press last year as “a special school for
white children,” by a local pastor. A school with a 70% non-white student
population, to this pastor, is a white school. 
These widely varied perceptions of diversity complicate even talking
about the issues.

I would be happy to share more with you about Urban
Education Cooperatives. Feel free to contact me at jenniferstillman@gmail.com, and I
will share an excerpt from my book on that idea.  Though I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the
whole thing when it comes out in August so you can read about UECs within the
entire context of my findings.

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

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.  

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

The second issue you raise is one I
cannot adequately address and is something I struggle with. As a classroom educator, my
training left me convinced that progressive, student-centered methods are best.
And I know I want that for my own children. And I can’t help but think that
what I want for my own children is what I should want for all children. But
others have argued for the value of a more authoritarian style of pedagogy in certain
circumstances, most notably Lisa Delpit in “Other People’s Children.”  All kids learn differently, of course, but I’m not convinced that breaks down along race and class line. 

I think during a school’s integration process, all voices
should be heard, and what a school comes to look like should evolve through a
democratic process. Middle-class families tend to dominate this type of
discourse, because they are typically more heavily involved in their children’s schools, and that further complicates the issue, but I don’t know what the
alternative is.