ASID - NYC Alliance for School Integration & Desegregation

04/26/2023

If you're an NYC public school parent, don't forget to vote in this year's Community Education Council elections! The deadline is May 9 and the work of these Councils is incredibly important in shaping how (and if) school integration and desegregation happens at the district level. Find out more here and please share!

Elections 2023 Community and Citywide Education Councils

01/11/2023

Happy new year! If you're thinking of kicking off 2023 by running for membership on your local Community Education Council to make your voice heard on school integration and other issues, the application just opened on January 9 (https://www.schoolsaccount.nyc/) and will run until February 13. Learn more here and encourage others to apply as well!

"In order to run, parents must have a child currently enrolled in a city public school and an active New York City Schools Account (NYCSA). Parents can run for multiple councils, but only serve on one. Education department employees are not eligible to serve on councils while employed by the agency."

https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2023/1/9/23547438/nyc-cec-community-education-council-parent-school-board-election-2023

The elected bodies represent the best chance for most city public school parents to get directly involved in district and citywide education policy.

11/17/2022

Check out this new oped by Nyah Berg and Matt Gonzales about the new NYU Real Integration Hub and the importance of maintaining our focus on integration in NYC as we recover from the pandemic! The Hub's stats on who's actually been leaving the district are especially important given the rhetoric around the need to keep screens to keep families in local schools:

"We know real integration helps kids. In addition to reams of social science research stating so, we also have local examples like the District 15 Diversity Plan, which led not only to more diverse middle schools but also shifted the hearts and minds of students and parents on the overwhelming benefits of integration. And when the city followed suit in 2020 — eliminating middle-school screens citywide — 50 of the previously most sought-after and well-resourced middle-school programs saw increases in access for Black and Latino students, low-income students, students with disabilities and multilingual learners.

Additionally, as the NYU Metro Center’s newly launched Real Integration Hub has visualized, there are more than 200 Diversity in Admissions programs operating across the city. And as the research indicates, the claims and threats that large numbers of well-off families are fleeing the system because of admissions policy, or COVID protections, are false. In actuality, the most marginalized families are most of those making the tough choice to leave the system, and it does not appear this is because they are seeking more screened schools."

Late last month, conservative Supreme Court justices expressed their skepticism about the value of educational diversity, reviving conversations on how we, as a nation...

10/03/2022

Many of you have likely already heard about the DOE's recent decision to roll back many of the equity-focused changes to middle and high school admissions that have been made over the past few years (details can be found in the article below). Please be sure to actively participate in your local district's discussions of middle school screens, since those decisions are going to be made before October 26 and screening advocates are likely to be very involved even in districts outside their own!

https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/9/29/23378824/nyc-middle-high-school-admissions-changes

"This year, eighth graders at the top of their class last year — or in the top 15% citywide — must also have scored an average of at least 90 in their seventh grade core subjects to have priority to the selective high schools, according to the new admissions criteria.

Students will qualify for the top tier if they score in the top 15% of their individual school, or in the top 15% of all city eighth graders – whichever cutoff is lower. That means at some high-performing middle schools with lots of students with high grades, more than 15% of students will qualify...

Superintendents are expected to work with their communities to determine whether to use selective middle school admissions criteria. If they choose to do so, students would be ranked on their fourth grade scores. Still, city officials said they would limit the number of schools using academic screens."

Eighth graders with course grades in the top 15% of their class last year will have priority in scoring seats at some of NYC’s most selective high schools.

09/14/2022

New York Appleseed is looking for sign-ons from both individuals and organizations to their letter calling for the district not to bring back discriminatory middle school screens. Check out the letter below, fill out the sign-on form here https://bit.ly/DOEMSScreenLetter (preferably by Thursday Sept 15), and please share widely!

"A reinstatement of middle-school screens would result in direct harm to our most vulnerable students and families both academically and socio-emotionally, and would exacerbate segregation in one of the most segregated school systems in the country. We request that this administration act on over a decade of research and advocacy by organizations, students, parents, and educators and call for the permanent elimination of middle-school (MS) screens citywide."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CNcGes5k5vsvfvBxb2Dc56cUoCwC2A_tRS8Xvyl491A/edit

September 14, 2022 Chancellor David C. Banks New York City Department of Education Re: Call to Permanently End Middle-School Screens Dear Chancellor Banks, It is with great concern that we write to you on behalf of XX organizations and XX individual students, parents, and community members ...

08/31/2022

Please share this new Op-Ed from ASID allies about the need for the DOE to sustain the improvements that have been made to equitable high school and middle school admissions - the DOE is considering reversing their recent progress in this area and it's important for them to hear from people who support these changes!

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-a-scarcity-mindset-prohibits-progress-in-nyc-high-school-admissions-20220830-44aybqxo3fh6rcxficsvnzvz7a-story.html

"This limited and racialized, social construction of good schools often leads families to believe that NYC only offers five or six “suitable” high schools for their children to attend and to only rank these schools on their applications.

A recent New York City experiment and analysis of applications demonstrates that, as compared to Latino and Black students, white and Asian students are overall less willing to attend a majority of NYC public schools and schools with relatively high percentages of Black and Brown students. Furthermore, white and Asian students and students from more advantaged neighborhoods are more likely to rank the same high schools as their middle school classmates and apply to schools with low rates of admissions.

The solution to reducing the number of unmatched students is not to revert to outdated, discriminatory screening policies. Instead, the chancellor has an exciting opportunity to bolster equitable progress made over the past two years by sustaining and building upon policies that eliminate discriminatory screening methods such as the elimination of middle school screens and attendance and state test scores at the high school level, expanding and equalizing resources across all school communities, and better supporting students and families struggling through the challenges posed by the high school application process. With that, we can showcase the abundance of choices available to students and families and move them away from a scarcity mindset."

Some parent leaders who have an audience with the chancellor of New York City public schools are crying foul due to recently released data on high school admissions.

07/25/2022

If you haven't read it already, check out this article on the current state of integration in NYC, with quotes from Faraji and our other fellow advocates!

"“The call to action should be a Black mayor and a Black chancellor doing something historic and making sure our schools are desegregated,” Faraji Hannah-Jones said. “Right now it doesn’t seem like they want that approach and it’s a disservice.”

Seeing few ways to make inroads on citywide changes, some are turning their focus back to local districts, individual schools, and other pockets of the city where there are willing partners. Those are the same tactics that advocates took at the beginning of de Blasio’s administration, when individual principals and groups of parents took up the mantle for more diverse schools.

“This has to happen school by school, district by district, and it’s always going to be harder for the administration to shoot down authentically community-driven solutions,” Gonzales said. “It requires doing some base-building and momentum at the grassroots level, and not expecting that the city leadership is going to do the right thing.”

Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Eric Adams say they’ll support school integration efforts, but are focused on building more high-quality schools. 

06/17/2022

The high school admissions data is out, and as expected the numbers of Black and Latino students receiving offers to exam schools is still shamefully low - they made up only 9% of offers despite being 47% of test-takers, and only 11 black applicants were offered admission to Stuyvesant out of over 750 offers. There was some slight improvement in diversity in admissions to other screened schools like Millennium in Brooklyn - even with an increase in the proportion of students citywide getting either their first choice or one of their top three choices - but there's still far to go!

Overall, NYC high school applications are down amid declining enrollment, but more students are getting accepted into top-choice schools.

06/13/2022

Concerned about how the budget cuts for NYC schools will impact equity and integration? Click on the link below to contact your elected representatives and come to a rally at 5:30 tonight (June 13) at City Hall to call on our local leaders to stop the cuts!

Join me in fighting for . Don't let the city cut NYC's education and housing budgets!

05/23/2022

Halley Potter and the Century Foundation team along with national experts on school segregation recently came out with a sobering study and database of national school segregation patterns that found the schools in the NYC metro area remain some of the most segregated in the country. An important reminder of why our work remains urgent and essential!

"The School Segregation Data Dashboard allows users to look up the ranking of any metro area, out of the 403 total metro areas, for each measure of segregation that is included.

The Milwaukee metro area and New York metro area have especially segregated schools across many student groups.
Twelve metro areas appear on at least two of these most-segregated lists, and the Milwaukee metro area and New York metro area stand out as appearing on four out of the six lists."

https://tcf.org/content/report/school-segregation-in-u-s-metro-areas/

About the Project This interactive data dashboard allows researchers to quantify school segregation and its contributing factors to inform policy

05/18/2022

The NYC DOE will be holding virtual town halls in every district starting tomorrow (May 19) to interview candidates for superintendent - check out the list of dates and times for each district here and register to make your voice heard on the importance of real integration in schools across the city!

Welcome to the Superintendent Candidate Town Hall registration portal Attend the community town hall to meet final candidates for superintendent of your district. If you do not know which town hall to attend for your child’s school, please see this list to find your school and respective town hall...

04/26/2022

The DOE quietly released the demographic stats for this year's admissions to the SHSAT high schools, and they're still cause for deep concern. Of the over 23,000 students who took the SHSAT for 2021-22 admission, 41.3% were Black or Hispanic, but only 9% of admitted students were Black or Hispanic. At Stuyvesant HS, only 8 Black students and 20 Hispanic students were admitted to a freshman class of 749 students. Given the DOE's stated commitment to expand the number of these screened schools vs reconsidering their impact on equity, these are troubling numbers.