NYC, In Dire of Education Reform

By Pauline Francez Gordula

New York City is hailed as a melting pot: a city full of people from all walks of life congregate to visit its glory or to embark on a new journey. Despite being one of the most diverse cities in the United States, the Big Apple still falls prey to school segregation. Why is that?

In 1951, Linda Brown, a third grader from Topeka, Kansas, was denied admissions by an all-white elementary school due to racial segregation. She had to cross railroad tracks and take a bus to get to her school, despite living only blocks away. As a result, her father Oliver Brown brought this case to the Supreme Court, challenging the racial segregation that pervaded the education system. By 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation in public schools violated the fourteenth amendment, and is therefore unconstitutional. This case is famously known as Brown v. Board of Education.

The New York City Department of Education is the nation’s largest public school system. It is home to more than 1,800 schools and 1 million students.  According to The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools report titled Separate and Unequal: A Comparison of Student Outcomes in New York City’s Most and Least Diverse Schools, only 100 of those schools are categorized as most diverse while almost 850 schools are the least diverse. The same study reports, “Over 200 of the city’s least diverse schools were in Brooklyn, 68 were in Queens, 164 were in Manhattan, 332 in the Bronx, and 51 were in Staten Island. Queens had the highest number of the most diverse schools (55), followed by Brooklyn (24).” If Brown v. Board deemed school segregation as illegal, then why are most NYC public schools labeled as least diverse?

New York City neighborhoods are segregated. White families are no stranger to the “white flight”, a process of moving away from diversifying neighborhoods. Some bankers also practice “redlining” wherein bankers deny loans and mortgages to minority families who live in at-risk neighborhoods. Since schools are funded by property taxes, students who live in low-income neighborhoods will be jeopardized. 

Prior to coming to the United States, I was under the impression that the American school system is the sole definition of perfection. Two months before I started freshman year, I was zoned to my current school. I wish I was able to choose what school I wanted to go to, but seats were very limited at that time. A few months into my freshman year, I got accepted into a college preparatory program. My program debunked my presumption: the American school system, specifically the New York City public school system, is far from perfect. Minorities have to work twice as hard as their white peers to get into a good school. The achievement gap is still as pronounced as ever.

The pandemic adversely impacted the fate of New York City public schools. Schools have experienced budget cuts, leading to loss of classes and opportunities for students. Given the fact that the New York City education system still has a long way to go, how will the future look like for students learning virtually, especially the ones from low-income backgrounds?

 

Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brown-v-board/bios.html#davis
https://archiveglobal.org/context-learning-new-york-citys-educational-disparity/
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/reports/doe-data-at-a-glance 



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