Culture plays a big part too. In NYC, Asian (a big broad category) are the lowest income group, english as a second language, and yet outperform all other groups by a lot and consistently.

Which country in Europe? I completely agree that the lottery system wont work if parents have other options. FWIW, I live in a city with 70-80-% Latin population and public schools are exactly that - majority Latin. Some of the schools are very good and challenging, and the Latin kids are no better or worse than the (few) white kids here. It’s all about parents expectations and funding.

I think private is cost prohibitive for many of the parents in NYC who send to public

This might prompt some people to consider opening their own, more cost effective schools (charter schools come to mind, or private schools without the bells and whistles).

@a nonymous Some left SA more often than not is that the kids or family don't like the disciplinery or restrict attention rule. The thing about learning is, if you can't enforce rules and disciplines in class, learning would be ineffective.

@a nonymous What if we didn't allow the schools to get rid of the challenging students? Obviously Success type education won't work for everyone, but there is the need and demand for it. The biggest complaints about BHS have been about lack of discipline. It's a great school but if you have incoming 6th and 9th graders who never learned to listen and respect the teachers, it's hard to teach.

@Anon I mean, if charter schools had to educate all comers, you could at least make an accurate comparison between them and public schools. I'm not sure how you'd enforce that though, since the tactics they use to cherry pick kids are disguised as parent "choice", as @SMAC says above. They harass and suspend kids they want out, until the parents "choose" to leave because they're miserable.

I understand the dilemma. As an individual parent, school choice naturally appeals to me--I want the best school for my kid. We're evolutionarily wired to want the best for our kids. But as a society, treating education as a consumer product rather than a public good that should be high quality for all, is a problem.

@Anon Further proof, as it one needed it, that even the do-good-iest, liberal-est parents will NOT sacrifice their own kids' education for moral principle. I think we can nibble at the edges of integration in small pockets where the interests of White Parents and POC happen to coincide (like D15 middle schools), but solving the school segregation problem city-wide may be impossible.

@anonymous Solving segregation--as in having all schools have a mix of black, white and LatinX kids--may not be possible, but solving the disparity in school quality absolutely is. And according to the podcast, that is the most pressing issue for BIPOC parents in NYC. They don't care so much whether their kids are in school with little white Susie; but they want (and deserve) their kids' school to have quality facilities and resources and teachers like Susie's school.

@a nonymous But the focus is always on segregation, and blaming the white parents for hoarding resources.

I read an article that if magically the 15% white kids were spread out the city, you would have maybe 4 kids per class. Count the Asian kids that Carranza seems to ignore or hate depending on the day, and that gives you another 15% to spread around. Its all playing statistics to make things appear a certain way - no real change. Bottom line is what is to be done to improve education for our neediest students, down to root cause? The Renewal schools concept was good, but it failed with a high $ cost.

Yes!

She scratches the surface there, but even she has no answer - how do you make ALL schools good, without necessarily diversifying them (since that's impossible in NYC)? And what to do with elementary schools? By the time MS arrives, some kids are way behind their peers. so they can try to remove screens in MS and HS, but the problems will persist if we do not solve ES education.

Do you agree with her suggestion with regards to the motivation of the D15 parents?

@AnonymousQ Good question. I think the motivation of the moms she interviewed were pretty clear--they were inspired to do something about the problem b/c it affected their own kids. But I really empathize with that group of parents (some of whom I know personally) who were really trying to investigate the issue of whether or not diverse families wanted an integration plan. As a white middle class parent, I personally find it really hard to engender meaningful discussions about diversity within a school community that actually move things forward in a way that make things more equal. I was still left wondering what to do. I thought the line about being an "activist instead of a customer" was a good one, but I'm also not quite sure what to do with that. I'd rather amplify the voices of black people but literally no black people have EVER run for PTA or SLT in either of my kids schools (and middle school is quite diverse due to the plan). A few Latina women have run, but everyone involved in parent leadership (and even the diversity discussion group) seem like middle and upper middle class people.

@BKmom I think the motivation of the moms she interviewed were pretty clear--they were inspired to do something about the problem b/c it affected their own kids.

It's worth noting that the mom who is portrayed as the hero of the D15 movement - Miriam something - immediately snatched up waitlist seats for her own children in a coveted middle school when she was offered them, and wasn't personally affected by the new system she had a hand in creating.

I'm sure it was easy for her to pound the table for change and say "I WOULD have been happy with a lottery system"...but again, it wasn't actually affecting her kids.