Integrate New York City Schools!
For Free, Equal, Quality Secular Public Education for All!
By Class Struggle Education Workers/UFT
No to Private Schools and Charter Schools – Turn Them Into Public Schools
Abolish Competitive Admissions for Specialized High Schools
Replace “Gifted and Talented” Schools and Programs with Advance Placement and Quality Academic Programs in All Schools
Abolish Mayoral Control – For Teacher-Student-Parent-Worker Control of the Schools
In recent weeks this vital issue has flared up again as figures were released in March showing that the numbers of African American and Hispanic students in these elite schools is tiny – less than 10%, even though they make up nearly 70% of public school students. At Stuyvesant High School, less than 1% of students are black (compared to 10% in 1971). And despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to diversify the specialized high schools, the numbers are falling. At Stuyvesant, out of 895 slots in the incoming freshman class, only 7 were offered to black students, down from 10 last year and 13 the year before. This is nothing less than institutionalized racism.
Moreover, this rigidly segregated school system is presided over by liberal Democrats. When Democratic mayor de Blasio proposed last June to scrap the discriminatory specialized high school entrance exam, there was a firestorm of opposition, and thundering silence from Democratic officials, who headed for the door. Everyone from “centrist” governor Andrew Cuomo, who has long supported privatized charter schools, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America, has tried to duck the issue. Liberal Jumaane Williams, recently elected as NYC public advocate and a graduate of Brooklyn Tech, outright opposed scrapping the test and state assembly speaker Carl Heastie has refused to take up the issue.
De Blasio, as usual, quickly backed off and effectively dropped the issue, just as he earlier abandoned any pretense of reining in the charter schools that have spearheaded privatization of the public schools. But while the mayor, his NYC Department of Education and schools chancellor Richard Carranza have done next to nothing about integrating the schools, parents and educators in Districts 15 (Park Slope/Sunset Park) and District 3 in Upper Manhattan have taken the initiative to design programs that would significantly increase the number of poor, African American and Hispanic students in high-scoring, largely middle-class schools, as well as increasing the number of white students in low-scoring schools with low-income students (“Parents’ Plan Hits Goal of Integrating Schools,” New York Times, 16 April).
Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers has not come out against the “de facto” segregation embodied in the specialized high schools as well as “gifted and talented” schools and programs. And as mayoral control of the schools is up for renewal the UFT supports this dictatorial regime which has produced an outrageously segregated school system. Class Struggle Education Workers calls to abolish mayoral control and for teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools. We also point out in response to complaints that increasing the number of black and Latino students would cut the number of slots in the selective schools for Asian students, that only a few thousand of the more than 50,000 Asian high school students in New York are able to attend these elite schools.
Many liberals such as Ocasio-Cortez (whose father went to Brooklyn Tech, and whose parents moved out of the Bronx so she could attend a suburban school) try to skirt the issue of segregation by saying that all public schools should be high-caliber like the elite schools. But how is this to be achieved when public education is under bipartisan capitalist attack, with Democrats in the forefront of those pushing union-busting “education reform” and privatizing charters? Class Struggle Education Workers calls to support any effective measure to integrate the schools, including busing (which de Blasio opposes), and to abolish the competitive exams for the specialized schools, as part of a fight for free, equal, quality secular public education for all. This will require a break with the Democrats and all capitalist parties, and building a class-struggle workers party.
We reprint below excerpts from articles in Marxism & Education, the journal of Class Struggle Education Workers.
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From “Free Market Racism: Segregated Schools, Gentrified Neighborhoods,” Marxism & Education No. 5, Summer 2018
Battle Over
School Integration in New York City
In New York, many of the
children of the upper petty bourgeoisie attend the eight specialized high
schools, which are overwhelmingly white and Asian. Fully 60% of their students
come from just 45 middle schools, many of them “gifted and talented schools” or
with G&T programs. But only 0.2% of students in these elite high schools
come from 124 overwhelmingly black and Latino schools. This is educational apartheid
with a vengeance within the public school system.[1]As revolutionary Marxists we fight for free, equal, high quality, secular public education for all. Despite the screening of applicants for high school (as well as middle schools, grade schools and even kindergarten) by exams and interviews, along with the undermining of public education through charter schools and capitalist opposition to educational equality in general, even so working-class students are determined to get an education…. This is a key issue for public education in New York City where 40% of the population is foreign-born, over half speak languages other than English at home and 53% of students are from immigrant families.
A key factor behind the attack on public education is raw racism, as it has been ever since the white backlash to Brown v. Board of Education over six decades ago. But not just from Southern white Republicans. From the first battle over charter schools in 2009, Class Struggle Education Workers denounced the “educational colonialism” of the invasion of black Harlem by charter schools, labeling the installation of Success Academy II in the building of PS 123 “educational apartheid.” We noted how the United Federation of Teachers dodged the fight against charters. The CSEW called to “mobilize the full power of the UFT” together with the students, parents and working people of Harlem “in the effort to stop the encroachment of charter schools.” In subsequent years, the CSEW also repeatedly denounced the racism behind Mayor Bloomberg’s closure of almost 200 schools, overwhelmingly in black neighborhoods or with heavily African American and Latino students. But while opposing some of the school closings, the UFT leadership didn’t point to their racist character, nor did the reformist opposition in the union.
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From “A MarxistProgram to Fight for Integrated Quality Public Education,” Marxism & Education, No. 5, Summer 2018
On the educational dimensions of the fight against pervasive race and class segregation we are for the unionization and expropriation of all private schools as well as semi-privatized charter schools and their inclusion in the public school system. This includes replacing religious schools with secular public schools: Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other religious groups are free to impart religious instruction on their own. The absence of private schools would go a long way toward integrating the schools. Successful private schools such as the Chicago Lab school could be reorganized as public schools with non-selective admissions.
In New York City fully one-third of all high schools are selective, requiring entrance exams, essays and interviews, using opaque algorithms and other mechanisms to screen applicants. We advocate the abolition of competitive admissions for specialized high schools and the replacement of “gifted and talented” schools and programs with advanced placement and other quality academic programs in all schools. Selective mechanisms necessarily discriminate against oppressed social groups (particularly African Americans, Latinos and immigrants), they foster a poisonous culture of elitism, and they are not necessary to realize the potential of the brightest students. Well-funded unitary suburban high schools are just as able to produce winners of science prizes or achieve high scores on PISA exams and NAEP assessments as a Bronx Science, Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High, the Queens Baccalaureate School or Brooklyn Tech.
We reject the mantra of “school choice.” This capitalist criteria treats education as a commodity, to be regulated by a market, rather than a fundamental social right. In a system with a vast difference in the quality of schools, “choice” is guaranteed to produce “winners,” which will always be those with the most economic and social resources, and “losers,” which will necessarily be the most oppressed. “Choice” also undercuts local schools which can be and often are the organizing centers for social life in poor areas. We are for unitary schools at all levels, with the option of thematically specialized high schools and programs (performing arts, music, automotive, aviation, harbor, science, technology, etc.) on a non-discriminatory basis….
Above all, Marxists oppose the authoritarian capitalist forms of school governance, whether mayoral control or boards of education, calling instead for teacher-student-parent-worker control of the schools through elected assemblies, with educators in the lead. This democratic principle is vital to achieving genuine social integration. It can greatly stimulate involvement by all when decisions are collectively made and carried out rather than imposed from outside. This allows for a great variety of experimental school programs, curricula and evaluation.
[1] New School
Center for New York City Affairs, Urban Matters, 22 June 2016.
Class
Struggle Education Workers (CSEW) is part of the fight for a
revitalization and transformation of the labor movement into an
instrument for the emancipation of the working class and the oppressed. See the CSEW program here.