Blaz’s new plan for ed. diversity
Mayor de Blasio announced a major new push to tackle segregation and improve opportunity for disadvantaged students in city public schools on Monday, though some say he hasn’t gone far enough.
The Department of Education will adopt 62 of 67 proposals recommended by a diversity advisory group, including the implementation of a “culturally responsive” curriculum and targeting schools with poor students for special attention.
The city will add diversity and integration information into school quality reports and require all schools to monitor how they discipline students and develop plans to reduce disparities in how kids are penalized, officials said.
The Education Department will also establish pilot programs for “diversity targets” for school admissions based on the makeup of each school community. The city will create a “General Assembly” with reps from every high school to develop a student agenda and vote on issues. And the city will look at how Title I – the largest federal aid program for schools – affects integration.
“Now is the time to tackle this challenge, not as a zerosum game where some communities win and others lose, but as a city united to right the wrongs of the past and give every student the education they deserve,” he wrote in a Daily News op-ed piece. Hizzoner also trumpeted plans for universal pre-K and preschool for 3-year-olds.
Nine school districts will get a portion of $2 million in funding to develop their own community-driven “diversity and integration plans,” starting with District 9 in the Bronx, Districts 13 and 16 in Brooklyn, District 28 in Queens and 31 on Staten Island. Districts 1, 3 and 15 are already creating their own plans.
“It’s been two years since the mayor announced his blueprint for school diversity and almost six months since release of his School Diversity Task Force’s long-delayed preliminary plan,” said CUNY Grad Center Education Prof. David Bloomfield. “Now, on the eve of that body’s final report, the mayor has announced substantial adoption of their preliminary recommendations. But he still refuses to use the word ‘segregation,’ and there is no discussion of muchneeded cross-district integration efforts or appointment of a citywide chief integration officer, as called for in the [task force’s] recommendations.”
Is this a serious step in the right direction or just political posturing? Time will tell but the now-presidential candidate’s time is about up and, if he now seems to be getting serious, why the long wait if, as he claims, this was his intention when entering office six long years ago?
“These pioneering districts will do the work from within, changing the future of their schools for generations,” de Blasio wrote in the opinion piece.
The city has already decided against creating a “chief integration officer” position and won’t analyze the impact of putting school safety agents under the supervision of the Education Department instead of the NYPD.
The advisory group released a preliminary report in February and a finalized plan will be unveiled in the coming weeks.
Tiffani Torres, a 16-year-old activist with Teens Take Charge, a group pushing for school integration, told The News that the recommendations “are steps in the right direction, but they do not match the scale and the urgency of the crisis of segregation in our schools.”
“None of the initial recommendations address segregated enrollment in the city’s 480 public high schools,” said Torres, a junior at Pace High School in Manhattan.
“The lack of action on high school admissions especially disappoints me as I think back to my own application process,” Torres told the News. “I had hoped that by this time and after 2 years of working on this issue, there would be more development than there currently is.”