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Brooklyn Arbor, which is the magnet school you seem to be referencing, is being held up as a model of integration?  “[T]he 75-student kindergarten class will have 55 children from outside the school’s zone, most of them white (including a number of new immigrants from Western Europe and Asia who are bilingual).”  At least 70% white, in a district that is 12% white and 84% black and hispanic.  The older grades are much more mixed, but in Brooklyn magnet/lottery schools, kindergarten is the predictor for future school composition.  I am hard pressed to see how a school with a 70% white kindergarden is to be congratulated as diverse, when it will probably be one of the whitest schools in “gentrifying” brooklyn in 3 years’ time.     

There’s a giant hole in the logic and reality of your premise: gentrification by definition leads to the displacement and dispossession of the poor, who tend to be people of color. You seem to be claiming that a process which is pushing the poor and people of color (which, according to the Census Bureau, is far advanced in Manhattan, Brooklyn and western Queens) out of the city is the same one that will deliver them from troubled schools. You claim charters offer the chance to integrate the schools, when in fact charters have arisen during a period of intensifying segregation, and have demonstrated no interest whatsoever in creating the integrated school environment you claim to want. Charters are about separating out the worthy from the unworthy poor, and making sure that the worthy poor “be nice and work hard,” to use a slogan that could almost appear in Dickens.

In many neighborhoods where gentrification is deeply entrenched – the Lower East Side, for example – a beleaguered and underfunded public housing system is the last refuge of the poor and working poor. And, needless to say, Mayor Bloomberg’s stop and frisk policies have created a virtual police state – five minutes from my school in Queens, project residents are under surveillance 24/7 by an NYPD panopticon tower identical to those used against OWS last fall -for many public housing residents, so that tourists and the “gentry” can happily consume without being disturbed by the presence of Unacceptable Persons. Yes, gentrification, which includes the city as a playground for the global 1% and social engineering laboratory for the Overclass, goes nowhere unless accompanied by nightsticks, handcuffs and jailers.

Yet, there may be consolations: perhaps the last poor person to leave the (increasingly likely to be privatized) projects in Manhattan a few years from now, on their way to the newly emerging slums in the inner ring suburbs (a growing potential market and opportunity for charter entrepreneurs!) will be able to pIck up their heads and proudly say they took one for “integration.”

Your perspective also seems to reveal a common trope among many charter supporters, namely, that well-intentioned whites (whose benign intentions, in the case of charter chain entrepreneurs, I would avidly dispute) ) are somehow the agents of redemption for the poor. Freedom Writers (TM) and all that. That’s a very patronizing attitude toward the people you claim to want to help, but is endemic among charter school supporters; Wendy Kopp, in fact, is an inexhaustible fount of condescending ed reform cliches and talking points.

Lastly, two points: first, thank you for making the explicit connection between charter schools and gentrification. Myself and others have on numerous occasions made the point that among other things, charters are about real estate, whether through expropriation of public facilities or through new development given incentives by tax credits, only to called conspiracy mongers. I”m glad that could be cleared up by a charter supporter.

Second, your use of the term and self-identification as part of the “gentry” – although as a labor guy and someone raised in pre-gentrification NYC, I prefer the term “lumpen bourgeoisie” – is very revealing in this context. After all, it was the English gentry that enclosed the village commons and other common lands in the lead-up to industrialization, throwing the overwhelming majority of British, Scots and Irish families into ever- deeper poverty, and disproportionally increasing their own wealth and power for many, many decades.

In a very real way, the privatization, cutbacks in services for the working and middle class, attacks on labor standards and accelerating income and power disparities of our own time are an updated re-enactment of the Enclosure Acts, and it’s fitting that the terms that describe the process and is participants echo that. Gentrification, in fact, is a global phenomenon, and a defining feature of the Neoliberal era.

By the way, the terminology leads to a question: if you and your purportedly meritocratic creative class peers are the Gentle Folk destined to inherit the city, what does that make the rest of us? Serfs and indentured servants? A rabble and vicious mob to be put down with an iron fist? Objects of charity and sermons on the sanctity of Choice and Free Markets?

You don’t have to define yourself by that term; given the baggage it carries, why would you want to?

 The difference in perspective between the NY Times and Stillman pieces may have to do with difference between Williamsburg and Harlem.  Harlem schools are so hopelessly segregated that white parents cannot imagine gradually integrating an existing public school.  It would be indeed preferable if DoE opened a charter school there with white people in mind.  Situation right now is outright bizzare, with Central Harlem being thoroughly genrified and not a single white child attending school there.  Not to mention that black residents wouldn’t mind a more relaxed, progressive charter among all the drill-academies being opened there.

I may be wrong, and I’d invite anyone with information to the contrary to send it my way, but I don’t get a sense that public schools are doing a great job of desegregation.   Especially since public education in NYC is already heavily choice-based past elementary school.  And of course “white flight” was always largely about school choice within, or between, public school systems.   It also seems perverse to assert that “gentrification” increases segregation.  ”Gentrification” does displace poorer families, but it can also make neighborhoods more diverse, whether you define diversity by race, ethnicity, income, or class.  In any event, I’m pretty sure that the absence of “gentrification” doesn’t reduce segregation.

On a side note, I have to agree with Fiorillo about the use of the word “gentry,” a term that drives me batty.  When I think of “gentry,” I think of the highest social classes in a time and place where class divisions were extraordinarily stark, the rare kind of people who owned land and didn’t have to work. Fiorillo finds the term damning.  I find it incongruous or even pompous.  We’re not talking about Downton Abbey here.  We’re talking about desperate white-collar workers who moved to Harlem or Boerum Hill because they couldn’t afford to live in Tribeca or Chelsea, and who are still struggling to make their rent or mortgages. 

“Lumpen bourgeoisie” is better, if only because it makes a strong point.  I prefer the “upper-middle class” that Paul Fussell wrote about, just because I think it’s accurate.  These are people with a kind of hyper-class consciousness that manifests itself in (1) disdain for the “middle class” mixed with anxiety approaching terror at being confused for one of them (hence the upper-middle classes’ intense interest in things like “design” and taste); and (2) a constant striving to enter the class of the gentry, which will never accept them.  So they read books and try to distinguish themselves by their intelligence and taste, and lament the injustice that their children will attend PS Anything rather than Chapin or Collegiate.

I appreciate your comments.  I realize the term “gentry” drives many people batty (almost everyone I interviewed shunned this label whole-heartedly), but I think it provides a clarity to what it is that I am trying to explore. Of course the modern use of “gentry” doesn’t match what the term also means in other contexts. You are correct that the 21st century gentry are moving into economically depressed areas because they are  (in many instances)desperate white-collar workers who moved where they did because they couldn’t afford to live where they really want to.   Yes, it is economics. But it is also a choice that requires a willingness to be a racial minority; a willingness to be immersed in a different culture; a willingness to be in a truly diverse (not just superficially diverse) environment.  That’s what makes the “gentry” different from other upper-middle class folks who choose to live elsewhere where they will not be minorities.   I purposely use the term gentry so that people know exactly what type of neighborhood I am talking about.  Gentrification has an accepted meaning, and I didn’t want there to be any doubt about who and what I am writing about.“Lumpen bourgeoisie” doesn’t seem better to me based on the people I met during my research.  My interviewees did not lack a collective self-awareness (as Wikipedia suggests the LB do).  Indeed, they were incredibly self-aware about the implications of their choices, and they struggled with right and wrong as they tried to determine how both segregation and gentrification are deemed evil.    In fact, I would argue that it is this self-awareness, and its accompanying internal conflict, that distinguishes the new millennium gentry as a group. 

Gentrification is controversial.  I am fully aware of the arguments both for and against, and what I try to do in my book is explore some of the gray area that exists in the debate.  I willingly (not proudly) adorn the label “gentry” because I want the debate about gentrification and how public policies should respond to what is happening in our city to be unambiguous.   Clearly there is baggage to being “gentry”.  But to research and write about “white, upper-middle class people moving into poor, non-white neighborhoods” is to write about gentrification.   People know what that means, even if they don’t agree about whether it is a positive or a negative, and I want to be clear that this is what I am exploring.   

In response to your gratitude for my connecting gentrification and charter schools, I can’t say, “You’re welcome.” I disagree that charters are about real estate.  That was not the point I was trying to make at all.  Anyone who has ever talked to a charter school founder will tell you that people who start schools really care about improving education for kids.   They think the current system isn’t good enough, and something has to change. Running schools is extremely hard work without a lot of pay (the high salary of Eva Moskowitz that charter opponents like to cite is not the norm).   Running a school takes up every waking minute of a school leader’s life.  Running a school is a labor of love, and the people who think they might be able to do it better than the existing neighborhood school, outside of the constraints of some bureaucratic rules, really believe in improving school. For kids.  My point is that charter schools are a policy tool that might be able to foster school diversity in gentrifying neighborhoods in a way that zone schools can’t easily do.

That said, I do agree that some charter chains come off as well-intentioned whites acting as agents of redemption for the poor by taking them out of their neighborhoods for longer school days and years, trying to remediate for a broken home life, instilling strictness and discipline that they think is lacking, methods they may not find appropriate for their own children. But patronizing as it may seem, the phrase “well-intentioned” is apt.  People of all colors are simply trying to make schools better.  It’s hard work; and even if the methods and approaches are open to debate, I think it is hard to actually debate motives.  People who do this work care about teaching kids first and foremost. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it.  We should debate pedagogy, of course, and debate whether charter schools subvert democratic institutions, and whether these schools are a good use of public money.  These are important questions. But it seems very unfair to malign intentions. 
 

The issue of choice is incredibly complicated, but the existing research actually suggests that without choice, urban schools would be even more segregated. Forcing students into their zone school has had the effect of the more privileged families simply choosing to opt out of the system entirely.  Schneider et. al.(2000), in Choosing Schools, answer the question of whether  choice increases segregation and stratification with a fairly confident, “We think not”(222).  Their argument is worth repeating: “If, for example, 80 percent of the population attending alternative schools is white, which schools would these children have attended before school choice was implemented? In many school districts, especially in central cities, we suspect the answer would be either private schools or a small number of neighborhood schools.  In this case, the neighborhood schools are highly segregated and the absence of alternative schools does not produce more integrated schools. Indeed, if many of the white students in alternative schools had chosen private schools, the entire school system would be more segregated”(205).  

In response to your assertion that the parents fleeing their zone schools are motivated by racism and classism, my interviews with parents reveals a much more complex dynamic.  They are motivated by wanting the best education for their child, and unfortunately, segregated non-white schools often bear the stigma of not being known for providing an outstanding education (in part because of the dynamic you describe where the poorest children are taught how to walk in straight lines).    When parents have the ability to choose something other than their zone school, and their zone school is not diverse (i.e. zero white children), and their zone school seems very authoritarian, they exercise their ability to go elsewhere. Everyone I interviewed was willing to make some compromises, but only to a point.  And they definitely never congratulated themselves for being pioneers, as you suggest. They were extremely conflicted, not self-congratulatory.   And they actually did think their children would benefit from being with children from all backgrounds.  But when “a lot of them” is a school where 90% of the children live in poverty, it is difficult to make that choice, based on what these highly educated parents know about the research on high poverty schools.  It wasn’t about only wanting “one or two,” it was about not wanting to be the only “one or two” white, non-poor families.    I hope you’ll read my book where these choice motivators are described in much more detail with supporting evidence.   My book tries to move the debate from “these people are racist” and into the more complex world where these parents struggle with what is right. 

A final point to consider is whether poor, non-white families actually prefer strict, disciplined environments over the progressive “play” schools.  Research suggests they do (my book reviews the literature on this question in detail).  So even though you denounce the strict charter schools arising from school choice, these schools are oversubscribed.  Many parents want this for their children, even if you don’t want it for your child, or I don’t want it for my child. So school choice can definitely lead to a self-segregating in many ways.  Families choose schools that matches their parenting styles and value systems.  This might be problematic from the perspective of building diverse, democratic communities. But maybe everyone will simply get the kind of education they want for their children.  I struggle with this question. What appeals to me about charter schools where the GOAL is diversity is that they will market themselves in a way that makes the school more likely to be genuinely mixed.  Whether these efforts will be successful or not is hard to say, it depends in part on how people define diversity. 

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for your posting your research and insights. I’m a Harlem native and I have also become really interested in the impact gentrification has on schooling for gentry’s and poor families. Charter schools that can promote integration, which will benefit both gentry’s, who are often white middle-class, and long-time residents of these communities, who are often people of color, take on an interesting twist to what some may believe are the social and educational benefits of charter schools.

While reading about the potential merits of charter schools in gentrifying neighborhoods, I became more intrigued by the lifespan of this integration. I think it’s crucial that we’ve considered that gentrification affects and limits school choice for gentry’s- this is where charter schools may become the start to integration.

So when, and for long will a charter school be the start to integration? And how long will gentrified, economically and racially diverse communities last?

I imagine that integration will only initially benefit both the gentry and locals. These schools may at first, benefit the poor just as well as gentry’s, but they ultimately benefit gentry’s more. It has been shown that low-income migration to even cheaper neighborhoods in suburbs as a result of gentrification. Now we have poor neighborhoods, poor schools, and now moved in- poor families. It’s no secret that poverty digs poor families into limited time and finances to ship their kids far out to “better schools” (which include quality education, diversity, resources, etc.). Such limitations will lead low-income families to send their children to the closest schools. As a result, most of these children attend local and often racially homogenous schools. Such a temporary process indicates that a predominantly middle-classed charter school possesses greater possibilities for starting and maintaining school integration. However, this school dynamic doesn’t seem to trickle across classed lines.

That said, I was curious if you’d considered the temporality of this integration? Do the limitations of poverty for low-income families of color hinder this integration? And if so, do any recommendations that to address this?

 Fascinating and thought-provoking piece.

Sincerely,
Dali Ferreira