Karen Mondol teaches fifth graders at P.S. 165 in Manhattan. The mostly Latino school draws few white students from its neighborhood. Photo: Karsten Moran/New York Times
Parents who have a choice tend to choose high-scoring schools! And those schools usually have lots of affluent and middle-class white and Asian-American students and few low-income blacks and Latinos.
Liberal parents say they value diversity but choose majority white schools for their children, reports Katie Taylor in the New York Times.
A look at the history of District 3, which stretches along the West Side of Manhattan from 59th to 122nd Street, shows how administrators’ decisions, combined with the choices of parents and the forces of gentrification, have shaped the current state of its schools, which, in one of the most politically liberal parts of a liberal city, remain sharply divided by race and income, and just as sharply divergent in their levels of academic achievement.
Patrick Wall also writes in The Atlantic about New York City neighborhoods where educated, affluent white parents “spurn integration.”
Among Upper West Side parents fighting a school integration plan last year was comedian and former Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones, who’s married to comedian Samantha Bee, reported Slate. “To portray any opposition as classist or racist is as bad as it can get,” Jones told WNYC. P.S. 159, which primarily enrolls affluent whites and Asian-Americans, will move to a larger site next to large housing projects.