Thanks to leading progressive education writer Dana Goldstein (worth following!), I learned today that Vox.com published this long, thoughtful and for me, really eye-opening, piece by Amy Simone Pellier, an Assistant Principal at a progressive NYC public school. She lovingly demonstrates through stats, analysis and most of all, her on-the-ground experience, how segregation really works in New York City’s schools in the present day. It’s a long piece addressing financing, social dynamics, educational strategies, parent and community engagement, testing, and a number of other issues that anyone who cares about improving education in America would benefit from reading.
In response, I’ll just add this: we have to flip the script for parents and for society about what is “better” education. As long as parents perceive that a “better” education is by sending their kids to less integrated, more status-seeking, less compassionate, more homogenous schools, these patterns will continue. Until multiculturalism, diversity, social justice, and developing the capacity to be effective in an information-age global, technological economy is fundamental to what we mean by “better”, segregated schools like Ms. Pellier’s, despite the best of intentions, will be the norm.
There is an American political and social fight to be won here, transforming our view of good education, and it’s really important. In India, China, Brazil, Europe, Russia, much of the world, it’s normal to learn two or more additional languages beyond your local language while in school. It’s normal to participate in global culture, and follow the output not just of your local film, TV, and social media but from around the world. It’s normal to expect you will have to compete with people from around the world for the best jobs and sought-after careers in STEM and growth industries. And it’s normal to view lack of diversity in one’s local environment as a serious detriment to one’s education — to seek out diverse experiences, relationships, and connections. None of this is especially true in America, and our society, economy and future suffers.
In America, we’ve become proud and fixated on our monoculturalism, and it’s powerfully expressed in many ways, but especially in the regressive tendency toward school segregation, as this piece shows, even in America’s most diverse world city, New York.