It jumped out to me that NHJ has high praise in her piece for the principal at her daughter's middle school, who shares her "anti-racist" worldview. And that principal does sound like a thoughtful, caring and dedicated administrator. But the school didn't assign any homework "because studies show that it does not have much impact on academic achievement"? Her daughter got As in algebra and was told she was excelling even though she "had huge gaps in many of the building blocks of math that she should have learned in elementary school, like mastery of long division and fractions"?
Yes, the structural factors that create separate and unequal schools are a real problem. I don't think NHJ is wrong about that. But so are the counterproductive, radical chic ideas that have taken root with many activists, and that she championed for the last decade plus. Ideas that led to the lowering of standards, the elimination of accountability, and the restriction of options and choices. (To be fair to NHJ, she gestures at this in her piece with the one statement from the principal that in lowering standards they may have practiced "racism under the guise of antiracism.")
For me, the tell here is the maddening truth that black and brown enrollments in NYC's elite high schools used to be much greater, back in the '70s and '80s when racial tensions in NYC were much higher and overtly discriminatory beliefs more widespread in American cities. But then in the name of detracking anti-racist activists demanded that g&t programs in the elementary and middle schools in NYC's poor and minority be dismantled, and as a result the number of kids passing the entry exams to schools like Stuyvesant plunged, and have remained abysmally low ever since. That's not the fault of structural racism, however real, that's an own goal.
A lot of minority students go to high-performing private schools through "Prep for Prep", too, which drives down black/Hispanic enrollment in the specialized schools, at least.
Right on target.
It jumped out to me that NHJ has high praise in her piece for the principal at her daughter's middle school, who shares her "anti-racist" worldview. And that principal does sound like a thoughtful, caring and dedicated administrator. But the school didn't assign any homework "because studies show that it does not have much impact on academic achievement"? Her daughter got As in algebra and was told she was excelling even though she "had huge gaps in many of the building blocks of math that she should have learned in elementary school, like mastery of long division and fractions"?
Yes, the structural factors that create separate and unequal schools are a real problem. I don't think NHJ is wrong about that. But so are the counterproductive, radical chic ideas that have taken root with many activists, and that she championed for the last decade plus. Ideas that led to the lowering of standards, the elimination of accountability, and the restriction of options and choices. (To be fair to NHJ, she gestures at this in her piece with the one statement from the principal that in lowering standards they may have practiced "racism under the guise of antiracism.")
For me, the tell here is the maddening truth that black and brown enrollments in NYC's elite high schools used to be much greater, back in the '70s and '80s when racial tensions in NYC were much higher and overtly discriminatory beliefs more widespread in American cities. But then in the name of detracking anti-racist activists demanded that g&t programs in the elementary and middle schools in NYC's poor and minority be dismantled, and as a result the number of kids passing the entry exams to schools like Stuyvesant plunged, and have remained abysmally low ever since. That's not the fault of structural racism, however real, that's an own goal.
A lot of minority students go to high-performing private schools through "Prep for Prep", too, which drives down black/Hispanic enrollment in the specialized schools, at least.