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What is the ‘standard American accent’ and how did it come about?

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Talk American

What is the "Standard American Accent"? Where is it from? And what does it mean if you don't have it? Code Switch goes on a trip to the Midwest to find out.

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What is the "Standard American Accent"? Where is it from? And what does it mean if you don't have it? Code Switch goes on a trip to the Midwest to find out. Are you the creator of this podcast?

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We can raise an anti-racist generation. Talk to your children about racism early and often.

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Home

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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/separate-and-unequal/

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Watch full-length episodes of PBS documentary series FRONTLINE for free. Separate and Unequal - Sixty years after the Supreme Court declared separate schools for black and white children unconstitutional, school segregation is making a comeback.

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YouTube Documentary - OK Boomer: Desegregating NY City schools

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YouTube Documentary - OK Boomer: Desegregating NY City schools

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Less than 25 minutes long!

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OK Boomer: Desegregating New York City's Schools

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Three modern ed segregation documentaries--- with lots of student voices

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Watch Class Divide, the original HBO documentary online at HBO.com or stream on your own device.

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Bettina Love's newest book We Want to Do More Than Survive We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love (goodreads.com)

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Lawsuit Challenging N.Y.C. School Segregation Targets Gifted Programs

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Lawsuit Challenging N.Y.C. School Segregation Targets Gifted Programs

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The sweeping complaint accuses New York City of maintaining a segregated school system and seeks to establish the right to an anti-racist education.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has made some modest changes to admissions policies for elite public schools, but has left major questions about school integration to his successor. Credit... Pool photo by Jeenah Moon

A major new lawsuit filed Tuesday could force fundamental changes to how New York City's public school students are admitted into selective schools, and marked the latest front in a growing political, activist and now legal movement to confront inequality in the nation's largest school system.

Even if the suit, brought by civil rights attorneys and student plaintiffs in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, does not upend the city's admissions system, it will likely prompt scrutiny of New York's school system, considered among the most racially and socioeconomically segregated in the country.

The suit argues that the city's school system has replicated and worsened racial inequality by sorting children into different academic tracks as early as kindergarten, and has therefore denied many of its roughly one million students of their right to a sound, basic education. Defendants include Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the incoming schools chancellor, Meisha Porter.

If the plaintiffs are successful, the city could be compelled to restructure or even eliminate current admissions policies for hundreds of selective schools, including gifted and talented programs and academically selective middle and high schools.

The suit could also accelerate pressure on Ms. Porter to articulate a school integration plan. The outgoing chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, resigned from his post over disagreements with the mayor over how aggressively to pursue desegregation.

And the crowded field of Democrats vying to become the next mayor will likely have to contend with the lawsuit's claims about the school system. The primary election that will almost certainly determine the next mayor is less than four months away.

"This is the first case in the nation to seek a constitutional right to an anti-racist education," said Mark Rosenbaum, one of the lawyers suing the city and state.

Mr. Rosenbaum, the director of Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law, a Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm, is joined on the case by prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, along with the law firm Sidley Austin and IntegrateNYC, a youth-led integration group.

Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, defended the city's record on school desegregation. "This administration has taken bold, unprecedented steps to advance equity in our admissions policies," she said in a statement. "Our persistent work to drive equity for New York City families is ongoing, and we will review the suit."

Mr. Rosenbaum's group has sued several states and school systems in recent years, most prominently the Detroit public schools, for failing to provide students with a basic education guaranteed under the Constitution. The law firm also sued the state of California last year for failing to offer a sound, basic education via remote learning.

In the Detroit case, a federal court found last year that the district had been so negligent toward the educational needs of students that children had been "deprived of access to literacy." The court then declared that public school students had a constitutional right to an adequate education. The plaintiffs later reached a settlement with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to fund more literacy programs in the Detroit public schools.

The New York suit highlights the lack of nonwhite teachers relative to the student population, which is nearly 70 percent Black and Latino, and the disproportionately high suspension rates for nonwhite students compared with their white classmates.

But it focuses mainly on the issue that has thrust New York's divided school district into the national spotlight: the sorting of students as young as 4 years old for selective classes. New York is more reliant on academic prerequisites like test scores, grades and attendance to place students in public schools than any other school district in America.

The city's gifted and talented classes for elementary school students are about 75 percent white and Asian-American, and there are relatively few gifted programs located in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. White students, who make up just 15 percent of the overall district, are starkly overrepresented in selective middle and high schools.

About 40 percent of the city's middle schools use academic screens like grades and test scores to determine which students to admit, and many high schools, including elite schools like Stuyvesant High School, sort students by ability or require students to take a high-stakes admissions exam for entry.

In 2019, roughly three-quarters of Black and Latino students went to schools that had student populations that were less than 10 percent white, and over a third of white students attended schools with mostly white populations, according to data collected by the City Council.

While New York is unique among big-city school districts for its reliance on high-stakes admissions across grade levels, the suit could have relevance in other districts. Some systems, including those in San Francisco, Boston and Fairfax County, Va., have recently changed admissions processes for some of their selective high schools, but racial and socioeconomic segregation is still common in many school districts across the country.

The New York State Constitution guarantees all students a right to a sound, basic education, and other states have equivalent clauses, said Amanda Savage, a lawyer with Public Counsel, during a news conference on Tuesday.

"We absolutely think that all students across the country have a right to an anti-racist education," Ms. Savage said, noting that the extent of New York's segregation made it a "particularly powerful place" to bring the lawsuit.

Decades of research have shown that integration can improve academic outcomes for nonwhite students in particular because desegregation leads to money and other resources being distributed more evenly across schools.

"Nearly every facet of the New York City public education system operates not only to prop up, but also to affirmatively reproduce, the artificial racial hierarchies that have subordinated people of color for centuries in the United States," the complaint reads.

Mr. de Blasio has announced some changes to selective admissions in recent months, largely prompted by the pandemic. He has suspended competitive middle school admissions for one year, with a permanent decision to come before he leaves office.

The mayor has also created a temporary new admissions system for 4-year-olds vying for seats in gifted and talented classrooms. Rather than having those children sit for a much-criticized exam, they will be referred to gifted programs by their preschool teachers, or sit for an interview.

Integration activists have called that a stopgap measure that will do little to diversify schools. It is not yet clear how the city will admit students into gifted classes starting next year.

In 2018, the mayor tried and failed to push the State Legislature to eliminate the admissions exam for the city's so-called specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant High School. The entrance exam for those schools is largely controlled by Albany.

The plaintiff's request for relief includes the elimination of selective admissions processes for all grade levels, which would amount to the most dramatic change to the city's school system in decades.

"This would be the ugliest trial in New York history if the city and state insist on trying these practices," Mr. Rosenbaum said, adding that he hopes the city will quickly change its admissions policies.

Though a top-to-bottom restructuring of the city's selective admissions policies seems unlikely, a judge could require the city to alter some of its admissions protocols or find other ways to ensure that selective schools are more representative of the city's student population.

But even landmark education rulings do not always prompt clear change.

A New York judge ruled in 2001 that the state's system for funding public schools was deficient, and violated students' rights to a basic education. That ruling, delivered more than a decade after the suit was first filed, soon became a public awareness campaign about school funding issues. It is cited frequently by politicians and activists, but much of the money owed to schools has still not been distributed.

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Lawsuit Challenging N.Y.C. School Segregation Targets Gifted Programs

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The sweeping complaint accuses New York City of maintaining a segregated school system and seeks to establish the right to an anti-racist education. A major new lawsuit filed Tuesday could force fundamental changes to how New York City's public school students are admitted into selective schools, and marked the latest front in a growing political, activist and now legal movement to confront inequality in the nation's largest school system.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones | Modern Day Segregation | Talks at Google

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Nikole Hannah-Jones | Modern Day Segregation | Talks at Google

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Modern Day Segregation: How & Why Public Schools are (Still) Divided by Race. The Problem We All Live With.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones | Modern Day Segregation | Talks at Google

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Kindergartners are expected to be admitted to the San Francisco Unified School District under a new "zoned" student assignment system by the 2023-24 school year. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

School board approves major overhaul of student assignment system

Choices to be limited to 8 to 10 schools to encourage diversity, predictability, shorter commutes

San Francisco school officials on Tuesday approved a new elementary school assignment system that limits choice in a bid for better integration and predictability.

San Francisco Unified School District Board members voted to overhaul the district's notoriously complicated school assignment system. Details on the new zone-based assignment structure, planned since 2018, will be determined over the next 18 months, in a process expected to cost around $2.5 million.

"We believe that changing to a zone-based system is going to be a paradigm shift," said Orla O'Keeffe, SFUSD's chief of policy and operations. "Unfortunately, under our current system, there are schools that get very few requests and they are under-enrolled and, as a result, they're under resourced."

Incoming kindergartners and their families are expected to be admitted under the new system by the 2023-24 academic year. They will go from choosing from more than 100 schools citywide to eight to 10 sites in a designated zone.

Students would be assigned to schools within a yet-to-be-mapped zone that will include language and special education programs. Assignments would prioritize those with older siblings at the same school and those who live in federal public housing or historically under served communities, or who attended a pre-kindergarten program at the same school.

Limiting site selection would bring greater predictability for parents and, theoretically, less travel time. Officials hope it will also promote greater diversity in San Francisco schools, which have struggled to integrate since being legally ordered to in 1983.

The new system could also make the socioeconomic divide worse without diversity considerations, SFUSD staff warned. To counter that, students assignments will be made with an eye toward creating a student body reflecting the zone's characteristics on race, household income, language proficiency and special education needs.

Student bodies with at least 15 percent of students on free and reduced lunches are considered diverse. About 69 percent of San Francisco schools reached that threshold in the 2018-19 school year.

Should students be enrolled based on zone characteristics and other factors, an estimated 90 percent of schools would have that low-income population. Without those considerations, 64 percent of schools would.

But officials are not under the impression that the new system will solve school segregation along lines of race and class.

"Doing this isn't going to change how redlining is, that's a bigger issue than San Francisco Unified School District," said Board President Mark Sanchez, referring to historic racial segregation between neighborhoods. "But it will disrupt the hyper segregation...and make our schools more diverse than they are right now."

What the zones look like and which schools students have to choose from are not yet determined. Over the next 18 months, SFUSD will hire analysts to draw zones and tiebreakers, engage stakeholders and help them transition, as well as develop new software to manage the zones.

Part of the price tag includes $200,000 for a transportation analyst to create new routes and bell times based on zones.

Parent advisory groups, backed by board member Alison Collins, who was the sole vote against the proposal, sought to delay of a vote to allow for more time to rethink school enrollment, given the energy spent on distance learning and reopening.

"We asked very specifically to halt this process because we wanted to focus on what do quality schools look like and defining that," said Laticia Erving, program manager for the African American Parent Advisory Council last week.

Outgoing board member Rachel Norton, who led committee meetings on the proposed policy, assured parents that there is plenty of room to shape the new assignment system and recommended keeping the special committee going.

"This is a framework, this is not a whole system," Norton said. "There's going to be a lot of opportunity and a lot of decisions the future board is going to have to make. I don't want anybody to think this is done, this is just the beginning."

imojadad@sfexaminer.com

Bay Area News Coronavirus education san francisco news

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School board approves major overhaul of student assignment system - The San Francisco Examiner

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Kindergartners are expected to be admitted to the San Francisco Unified School District under a new "zoned" student assignment system by the 2023-24 school year. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner) Choices to be limited to 8 to 10 schools to encourage diversity, predictability, shorter commutes San Francisco school officials on Tuesday approved a new elementary school assignment system that limits choice in a bid for better integration and predictability.

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Proposed Changes to SFUSD Student Assignment Policy

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Proposed Changes to SFUSD Student Assignment Policy

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The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is currently revisiting our policy for how elementary school students are assigned to public schools. This won't affect families applying to schools for next fall but it may change things in future years.

This website will provide updates and share opportunities to provide feedback throughout the process. Also be sure to sign up for our newsletter to receive updates throughout the process.

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Proposed Changes to Student Assignment Policy

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The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is currently revisiting our policy for how elementary school students are assigned to public schools. This won't affect families applying to schools for next fall but it may change things in future years. This website will provide updates and share opportunities to provide feedback throughout the process.

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Zaretta Hammond "Culturally Responsive Teaching" at the San Francisco Public Library

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Zaretta Hammond "Culturally Responsive Teaching" at the San Francisco Public Library

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Zaretta Hammond "Culturally Responsive Teaching" at the San Francisco Public Library

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A project in the 1960's with multi generational effects

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Highlights

Program:

A high-quality preschool program for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Evaluation Methods:

A well-conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of 128 three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure.

Key Findings:

Large effects on educational attainment, income, criminal activity, and other important life outcomes, sustained well into adulthood.

Other:

This was a relatively small study launched in the 1960s, and it included a few modest departures from random assignment that may reduce confidence in the findings. Replication of these findings in a second trial would be desirable to confirm the initial results and establish that they generalize to present-day settings.

The Perry Preschool Project, carried out from 1962 to 1967, provided high-quality preschool education to three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure. About 75 percent of the children participated for two school years (at ages 3 and 4); the remainder participated for one year (at age 4). The preschool was provided each weekday morning in 2.5-hour sessions taught by certified public school teachers with at least a bachelor's degree. The average child-teacher ratio was 6:1. The curriculum emphasized active learning, in which the children engaged in activities that (i) involved decision making and problem solving, and (ii) were planned, carried out, and reviewed by the children themselves, with support from adults. The teachers also provided a weekly 1.5-hour home visit to each mother and child, designed to involve the mother in the educational process and help implement the preschool curriculum at home. The program's cost was approximately $13,780 per child per school year (in 2017 dollars).
Click here to go to the Perry Preschool Study's web page.

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Perry Preschool Project - Social Preschool Programs that Work

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A high-quality preschool program for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. A well-conducted randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of 128 three- and four-year-old African-American children living in poverty and assessed to be at high risk of school failure. Large effects on educational attainment, income, criminal activity, and other important life outcomes, sustained well into adulthood.

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What happens when of a group of public school students in the Bronx goes to visit an elite private school three miles away.

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Starr King Elementary, segregation and wealth: The politics of liberal San Francisco’s ‘separate but equal’

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Starr King Elementary, segregation and wealth: The politics of liberal San Francisco’s ‘separate but equal’

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This is the article I mentioned that discusses the start difference between the immersion and English language programs at Starr King.

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At Starr King Elementary School, General Education (GE) and Mandarin Immersion (MI) children sit in class lines on the asphalt playground before school begins. The lines are separated by grade and academic program but are also segregated by race and social class. Faces were blurred to protect identities, though these children are not faceless and deserve a voice. - Photo: Copyright 2019, used with permission

by A.M. Hennessey
The actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural. - Ibram X. Kendi

A recent New York Times article about the segregation of schools across the district of San Francisco ( San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse) cites president of the SF Board of Education, Stevon Cook, stating that the problem arose inadvertently. It discusses issues of wide-scale busing needs and school zoning as contributing factors to the city's segregation. That article pertains to segregation between schools, not within schools, and Starr King Elementary, the city's single most segregated school, is not even mentioned.

If you look closely at what is happening at Starr King, and in particular at the power and funding structures that have developed there since a Chinese Mandarin Immersion program was added in 2006, the idea that the segregation could be inadvertent becomes less plausible. There are no issues of wide-scale busing or school zoning to blame for the school's segregation. Low-income people of color who live a stone's throw away from the school do not need a bus or different school zone to go there.

Historically, Starr King was a school in Potrero Hill that primarily served low-income people of color, especially African American, which came from the Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex housing development located directly across the street from the school. Terrace-Annex is the city's largest and oldest housing project in San Francisco.

The student body of the school shifted significantly when the Chinese program was added over a decade ago, however. Since then, Starr King has been deeply segregated, with a more affluent white and Asian population making up the majority of the highly sought-after Chinese language program, known as "MI" (Mandarin Immersion), while low-income minorities, predominantly African American, Latino and Pacific Islander, attend the poor performing General Education program (GE).

There is some small crossover of these demographics, but anyone who visits the school will quickly note the de facto segregation when looking at classroom lines in the morning or lunch tables at noon. Black and Brown bodies are separate from white and Asian ones, giving the school an appearance of something out of a new Jim Crow era.

The achievement gap between students in the two programs is searing and, by some accounts, the worst gap within a single school in the entire district. In a November 2018 meeting of Starr King's School Site Council (SSC) devoted to discussion of the Title I funding the school received for 2018-2019 ($58,942 - used across the school and not exclusively for Title I students), the principal stated that the 2017-2018 proficiency rate for third-fifth grade Title I African American students at Starr King was at 17.6 percent.

This percentage does not take into consideration the lack of scores from students who were absent for test-taking, and the school has a high rate of absenteeism. While families from all over San Francisco compete to get their children into the MI program, the GE track has been one of the city's least desirable programs of all.

Even in light of the divide at the school, Starr King is on the surface San Francisco's most racially and socioeconomically diverse public school, a point touted in the SF Chronicle, the school's own website and elsewhere as a model school for diversity. Just two weeks ago, the city's mayor, London Breed, as well as Assemblymember David Chiu and Superintendent Vincent Matthews, celebrated the first day of the 2019 school year on Starr King's playground. According to SFUSD's website, "integration" at Starr King was one of the areas highlighted at the event. During the visit, Breed also announced that the city will fund a new$10 million pilot program over the next two years to recruit and retain experienced teachers at the district's most under-resourced schools, a topic addressed here later.

In this partial view of Potrero Terrace-Annex, San Francisco's largest and oldest public housing project, Starr King Elementary is the large red building seen behind the project. - Aerial photo: Ken Fisher, Copyright 2018, all rights reserved, published with permission

"To the outsider, the school model shines as a beacon of integration. But to the insider, the Starr King campus is quite literally a 'school within a school,'" says Leah Grass, a mother of a former MI student who left last year. Grass notes that it was disheartening for her to observe the divide in educational strands at Starr King: "While opportunities for cross cultural activities have increased over the years, the student body remains segregated and therefore lacks the 'one community' vision the school claims to value so highly," she says.

This article examines current events at Starr King to describe how the school's Parent Teacher Association (PTA), which is run by affluent and middle class parents from the Chinese MI program, has an inordinate amount of power at the school and has been able to direct significant public funds and resources towards that program while the dire needs of students in the GE program remain unmet. Concerned parents and community members have made the district aware of these activities, especially as relates to financial inequity and segregation, but they have for the most part been rebuffed.

In today's climate of marginalizing low-income people across the United States, and in particular low-income people of color, situations such as these point to how segregation does not have to happen through the actions of the far-right. Instead, segregation happens when people in power, many of whom identify as liberal, diminish the opportunities of those most in need through the redirection of resources. As we know from the recent case in the Sausalito Marin School District, there are instances where segregation in schools may appear inadvertent even though it is not.

Inequity in funding: A PTA vote to put money exclusively into the Chinese Mandarin Program (MI)

On a cool San Francisco evening in May 2018, Dr. Amos Brown, president of SF's NAACP, walked across the empty grey playground at Starr King Elementary School. A group of parents concerned that a major funding decision to be made that night would negatively impact the school's low-income minority population had invited Dr. Brown to the school, and he was walking towards the school's monthly PTA meeting, which was already underway in the cafeteria. On a typical evening, the PTA meetings at the school draw the same fifteen to twenty parents, most of whom have children in the MI program. On this particular evening, however, the room was packed, primarily with affluent and middle-class white and Asian parents who had children in MI.

The parents were there for the purpose of a PTA vote on the use of roughly $80,000 of money held in a San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) financial account described as "the PTA bucket of the site account" to purchase a new teacher for their children in the school's MI program for the 2018-2019 school year. These parents no longer wanted to use the teacher rotation system that the district had put in place for the fourth and fifth grade MI classes over the past few years. They desired an extra teacher instead.

The access to this money was problematic for a few reasons. First, the PTA wanted to direct all of it towards the MI program and no similar funds were allotted for anything related to the school's GE program, which serves the majority of the school's Title I students and has deep needs - needs, some argued, which were more pressing than the extra teacher for MI. Second, the PTA said that the money was theirs but that it was in a public school site account (the questionable nature of the account will be discussed shortly).

During the 2017-2018 school year, parents of children in both GE and MI had repeatedly expressed their concerns to the School Site Council (SSC), the administration and the PTA about the need for quality classroom support in the GE program. Some had also asked for a much better social emotional program at the school.

Incidents on the playground indicating major problems with the school's social emotional support system had in fact occurred the very same week as the PTA meeting on the $80K vote. Those events were so bad that police and Child Protective Services (CPS) had to come to the school. Events such as these have a negative impact on all of the school's children, as well as on the overall school environment.

Furthermore, the children of the PTA president, the PTA past-president, PTA executive committee members, as well as children of other parents close to the PTA leadership, were in the cohort of the upper grades of the MI program that would benefit from the proposed teacher. The principal, assistant principal, and a table full of teachers from both MI and GE strands had come in support of the PTA leadership.

Teachers rarely come to PTA meetings and the appropriateness of school employees weighing in on the matter of how parents should vote on the direction of a large sum of money towards one group of the school's children is questionable.

Only three weeks later, the principal held an important all-school meeting to discuss the poor achievement of the school's low-income African American population. This time, not a single teacher attended. The large majority of MI parents who had attended the PTA meeting was also not present at this meeting.

These absences indicate that beyond all the talk at Starr King about a communal interest in fixing the school's large achievement gap, a lack of interest exists - of teachers, PTA members and administrators - in the systemic poor achievement of the low-income African American children who attend.

Lajuana Tucker, an African American mother who resided in Potrero Terrace-Annex for years and whose daughter graduated in 2019 from the school's GE program, was present at the May 2018 PTA meeting on the $80K. She believes that one thing the school really needs to invest in is professionally trained staff for the low-income children who are struggling with their studies: "The children want to learn, but they need the right mentors and quality mental healthcare staff. That is something that the school really needs. Learning is connected to how a child is supported in the school."

Another African American mother with a child currently enrolled in the upper grades of Starr King's GE program did not want to be identified in this article but wanted her statement heard. She explains, "Children in the GE program are just being passed through and are not properly attended to by teachers and staff in the classroom and school."

Leah Grass, quoted earlier, details a similar point. Noticing that resources and volunteers appeared scarce in the GE program, she chose to become a literacy volunteer with the GE population during the four years that her child was enrolled at the school, "Year after year, I watched as kids were passed to the next grade level lacking the basic building blocks necessary for student success.

"Efforts to address the issue were disconnected and, simply put, acted as a band-aid for students being 'left behind' in their scholastic pursuits. If by the third grade a student still isn't recognizing all the letters in the alphabet (let alone reading at grade level), then we have failed that child." Grass, who has spent the majority of her professional career working with marginalized populations in both the nonprofit and governmental sectors, stood in opposition to the direction of the PTA's $80K vote.

Amos Brown came alone to the PTA meeting. Speaking briefly, he discussed the problem of privatization in San Francisco and then explained in broad brushstrokes how if one child in the city loses, we all lose. His main focus was on the need for unity in supporting our youth.

Lajuana Tucker explains that to her, Brown's words were uplifting, "He was talking about unity and the need for us to come together, to be whole and not divided. He wasn't speaking against anyone, he was trying to unite us and let us know that we all have a right, regardless of race, class or creed, and to support all of our children."

Even in light of Brown's speech and the speeches of a few others, it was no surprise the night of the meeting that the $80K vote passed by a large majority in favor of the PTA leadership. There were few parents from GE there, and many of the MI parents who had voted cheered and some even high-fived, visibly exalted and apparently without any shame at having beaten out those who had spoken up about the needs of the school's low-income students. Amos Brown sat quietly at a table when the vote was over.

The PTA has since then assigned the $80K as a line item on its budget so that every year this chunk, allegedly now from its own account and not from that of the school site account, will go towards the Mandarin program. No more votes will be needed on the matter other than the cursory budget approval.

Quietly, the school also arranged for another room at Starr King to be used exclusively for the children of the MI program. This was the old science room, which had previously been used by the entire student population. This appropriation of space led to a chain reaction through which the new science room took over the space of the Wellness Room, a large and bright space that had previously served the social emotional needs primarily of the school's Title I students.

As such, the Wellness Room moved to a much smaller, bleaker, windowless room. Thus, the PTA leadership not only successfully appropriated money and resources for its children in MI, but it appropriated physical space as well, taking away the primary room used by low-income students in GE for their mental health and social services.

Sandy Wan, a Taiwanese mother of two children who were in the school's MI program, volunteered extensively with the school and the PTA for seven years and became saddened at what she saw as classism taking over the school and organization. "The PTA leadership at Starr King is an exclusive group with a small number of parents directing large amounts of money where they want it to go.

"This has an impact on all of the students, and the school is no longer an inclusive place for the children." Wan was present at the meeting and opposed the PTA's $80K vote. She also questions the way the organization runs its finances.

It is worth mentioning that administrators and staff members at Starr King have received large gifts from the PTA. In one case, an administrator privately received a $500 spa gift from the PTA president and a small group of PTA executive committee members only one month after supporting the PTA's vote on the $80K.

In another, the PTA gave a $10,000 check to a secretary who consistently expresses her support for PTA executive committee decisions, including support for their direction of the $80K. This type of gift giving is problematic, especially in the context of a public school.

Questionable origins: Money called 'PTA funds' came from a public school site account

It is worth unpacking the murky nature of the financial account from which the $80K came from to begin with. PTA literature sent by the PTA president prior to the vote on the money states that the account actually belongs to "the site" (which means the school, a public school) and not to the PTA, but that it is "held aside in a PTA bucket, and dispersed according to the established PTA funding priorities" because it supposedly stemmed from previous money that the PTA gave to the school several years ago.

However, when two parents inquired into the PTA's past financial records in the fall of 2018, they were told by the PTA president, treasurer and secretary (after weeks of delay, the withholding of information and dozens of email correspondences), that there were no financial transaction records available to them from before July 2017. There was also no record in recent years, nor in any of the PTA meeting minutes found, of $80,000 having gone to the school site account from the PTA for the purpose of purchasing an extra teacher.

When the parents mentioned that not retaining records for at least seven years was a violation of the IRS, the PTA leaders quickly became defensive, explaining that they were hardworking volunteers who just weren't organized with their records. Their fundraising efforts, however, including a large annual gala, had been raising approximately $400K+ per year over the past few years and were highly organized.

When the parents tracking down the origins of the $80K could get little information from either the PTA or the school administration, they turned to the district. But answers were not forthcoming there either.

In a series of emails written in the fall of 2018 to the assistant superintendent, the director of principal support, a Board of Education member and ultimately the superintendent himself, it became clear that the parents' request for oversight and transparency at the school was not going to be met. After avoiding a question about the account from which the $80K for the new MI teacher had come, stating that she would prefer to talk about it over the phone, the assistant superintendent ultimately stated after numerous emails that the money had come from the PTA. But the PTA had explicitly said that the money was from the site - both in its literature disbursed to the community and verbally in several PTA meetings, including its budget meeting in the fall of 2018.

One parent made an anonymous phone call to SFUSD's director in the Division of Curriculum and Instruction, the person in charge of the district's Title I funding programs. The parent did not identify the school in question nor herself but asked about the PTA's voting practices. Over the phone, the director firmly stated that under no circumstances should a PTA be voting on any money in a site account, even if the group says that the money stems from previous donations.

He further stated that decisions made by a PTA on its own funds need to be carefully monitored, especially at Title I schools. However, this director curiously recanted in an email to the parent shortly after the parent sent him a follow-up fax that indicated which school and PTA were under question.

Censorship and control: PTA takes over school communication and lists its leaders as school staff

The influence and power of the school's PTA parent leaders should not be underestimated. Shortly following the vote on the $80K, they took complete control of the school's group email system, which used to run through Google.

Voices of dissent had appeared on the system and, although there were only a few of those voices, the PTA leadership had no ability to censor them. In response, the PTA closed the school's Google group and now uses a system called ParentSquare, which is the main form of communication at the school.

Major public school announcements are sometimes made only through this system. The PTA leaders are in charge of the system and have made it such that only they and other people they choose are authorized to send out emails to the entire community. Other parents and even teachers and staff do not have authority to do this and are unable to send anything to the community as they could in the past.

How this is allowed in a public school is unknown. Under the same system, and this fact is in itself a red flag as to how the school is being privatized from within by the PTA, the PTA leadership has listed five of its members as "Starr King Elementary Staff" in the school directory on ParentSquare. None of the parents, all of whom are Asian American or white and have children in MI, has a background in education or works with children. They even list themselves prominently, directly beneath the principal's name and above that of the assistant principal.

A broken system for General Education (GE) students: Questionable hiring practices, teaching and social services

The PTA was also integral in the hiring of an employee central to the supervision of children on the playground, as well as in the Wellness Room, the primary space for social emotional support of the school's Title I students. On their annual budget, the PTA lists this employee's salary as the group's main contribution to the school's social and emotional needs.

And yet the employee had no previous background in education or working with children, nor even a high school diploma when he started working at the school. The staff member's $70K salary range is well above the salaries of other employees at the school, including teachers who in some cases have earned master's degrees and worked in education for years.

From a distance, it may look as if the choice to hire the man was one meant to bridge the community of the school with that of the project since he is African American and used to live there. But this staff member is a loud disciplinarian with the school's low-income minorities and not with the children in the MI program.

Catrina McKneely, an African American mother and resident of Terrace-Annex, states that the school is tokenizing the few African American staff members it has, as well as a few African American parents who have recently started working with the PTA: "They are tokenizing people there. The people in charge of the kids on the playground are really there to control Black children. Our children deserve more."

Privatization from within: Mandarin Immersion (MI) parents of the PTA leadership are listed as "Starr King Elementary Staff" on the school's main communication platform. - May 2019 screenshot

McKneely, who was a very involved parent at the school during the time that her child was there, removed her child from Starr King after the 2017-2018 school year. "There are unhealthy things happening at the school. Some of the staff, and one administrator in particular, are interrogating African American children in ways they should not."

Another African American mother of a boy who went to Starr King and asks to be identified as Mrs. Bernard states, "I would not put any kids in Starr King. Children should not go to that school." A resident of Terrace-Annex, she states that she felt unsupported by teachers and staff on numerous occasions at the school.

In one instance, she was not notified by staff when a person not on her emergency contact list was allowed to take her son, and this event created a major trauma in her life. Currently pregnant, she explains that none of her other children will ever go to the school.

Also, as stated earlier, the police responded to reports of incidents on the school playground the same week as the PTA meeting in May 2018, and both of those events involved this staff member. In one case, the police were called because he had been involved in a loud verbal altercation on the playground with a parent and this altercation had come dangerously close to a full-on physical event.

In the second incident, which happened the same week, young children from GE, most from a lower grade, were unsupervised during recess and engaging in sexual activity on the playground. Their genitals were exposed, and according to a Terrace-Annex parent whose child was involved, they were pretending to have oral sex.

This parent, who chooses not to be named here, removed her child from the school the next day and states that the incident was highly traumatic for her and her child. Unsupported by staff at the school, she explains that she had previously told her child's teacher that her child had been touched inappropriately in the classroom by some children, and yet her child was left unprotected.

This student's teacher was present at the May 2018 PTA meeting on the $80K vote, which occurred only three days after the incident. In an odd moment, she stood up and spoke about how she thought that the money should go towards the MI program. This same teacher also did not attend the meeting held three weeks later devoted to discussing Starr King's large achievement gap between its low-income African American students and other students at the school.

A mother of two children currently in MI and who asked to be identified as "Theresa" remarks that she spoke to an administrator last spring specifically about this teacher, "My children have brown skin. She has yelled at one of them and yells at children with black and brown skin. At Starr King, this mainly means children from GE."

Theresa states that the administrator with whom she spoke responded by saying that the teacher in question is one of the best teachers - not only in the GE program but in the whole school. Strongly supported by Starr King administrators, the teacher is now the Site Leader of a new literacy program that sprang up at the school in the wake of the $80K funding decision and is supposedly in place to support low performing students.

This is just one egregious example at the school. Returning to Mayor London Breed's announcement last week that the city will fund a $10 million pilot program to recruit and retain experienced teachers at under-resourced schools, the question for Breed and others is: How is the quality of teachers like those at Starr King determined and who is determining it?

These cases underline how funding for both proper social-emotional care and teacher education are deeply needed at Starr King. The PTA's $80K for the MI teacher and $70K for the employee with questionable qualifications who staffs key social-emotional programs add up to $150K per year of funding that in theory could at least be partially directed towards teacher training and quality social services at the school.

Contemporary racism and classism: Financial inequity and the repackaging of segregation

In the wake of the various meetings, expressions of concern and formal complaints filed by Starr King parents with SFUSD between 2017-2019, or perhaps in response to them, SFUSD awarded Starr King an " innovation award " for the 2019-2020 school year. Not surprisingly, the PTA leaders - the very same people who had been at the helm of the vote on the $80K and subsequent allocation of $80K per year exclusively for the MI program - were intimately involved in the application process for the award.

In the meantime, the school administration has over the past year painted the GE program in a positive light, talking about the empowerment of its students. But careful attention should be paid to the allocation of funding at the school, as well as to the teaching and social services provided to the school's low-income students.

As discussed here, the current infrastructure of the GE program is broken and in need of deep repair if the program is ever to flourish. Without this repair, any talk about the GE program as a good program is effectively repackaging segregation: keeping the two programs separate by using words to puff up the one that is struggling, making it out to be equal to MI, the more resourced program.

As has historically been the case, a promotion of a " separate but equal " policy usually results in inequity and inequality. GE students will be empowered when their program has equity in funding, quality teachers, and proper mental healthcare and other social services.

SFUSD also ignores a basic problem that has existed since the inception of the MI program at Starr King: There has been little outreach at Terrace-Annex (apparently none from the district) to truly integrate the school, which would happen by encouraging low-income people of color to join the MI program.

As such, many low-income families either do not know about the program or believe that their children do not qualify for it even though children need no knowledge at all of Chinese to enter MI at the kindergarten and first grade levels.

Rucker Johnson's research on the history of integration in the United States shows that low-income minorities have a better chance at flourishing if they are in integrated classrooms. That is where they receive equity in teaching and other resources. But there have been no moves from the school or district to integrate the programs at Starr King and teach Chinese to low-income students of color too. As such, GE is most often the default program for those children coming in.

At the end of director Ava DuVernay's 2016 award winning film, "13th," which traces the direct link between slavery, the 13th Amendment of the Constitution and mass incarceration in the United States, widely acclaimed public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson states: "People say all the time, 'I don't know how people could have tolerated slavery, how could they have made peace with that.

"'How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that? How did people make sense of this segregation, this white and colored only drinking? That's so crazy. If I was living at that time, I would have never tolerated anything like that.' And the truth is, we are living it this time, and we are tolerating it."

Stevenson is speaking about this acceptance of the mistreatment of humans, and in particular low-income people of color, in the context of mass incarceration. One need not look as far as the prison system. This acceptance starts much earlier, and it is revealed in the way that we as a society, often under the guidance of a more affluent set, are accepting, perpetuating and exacerbating the mistreatment of low-income children, and especially our low-income African American youth.

Often masked in today's world, financial segregation is integral to the contemporary mechanisms of racism and classism as a whole.
The author of this article is a parent of children who attended Starr King Elementary School's Mandarin Immersion program between 2015 and 2019. She served from 2017 to 2019 on Starr King's School Site Council and was a member of the PTA's short-lived "Inclusivity Group," as well as the school's new "Transformation Committee." While at the school, she and her children also volunteered in Potrero Hill Terrace and Annex for the Walking School Bus program. They are currently working with other families and community leaders in the creation of a local Birth Circle for low-income families. She may be reached at amhennessey@mac.com.

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Starr King Elementary, segregation and wealth: The politics of liberal San Francisco's 'separate but equal'

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by A.M. Hennessey The actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural. - Ibram X. Kendi A recent New York Times article about the segregation of schools across the district of San Francisco ( San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation.

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools before graduating from Hunter High School and published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still a student there. Of her poetic beginnings Lorde commented in Black Women Writers: "I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen."

Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. She also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experiences with teaching and pedagogy-as well as her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia-went on to inform her life and work. Indeed, Lorde's contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory intertwine her personal experiences with broader political aims. Lorde articulated early on the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House."

Lorde's early collections of poetry include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), included powerful poems of protest. "I have a duty," Lorde once stated, "to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde's later poems were often assembled from personal journals. Explaining the genesis of "Power," a poem about the police shooting of a ten-year-old black child, Lorde discussed her feelings when she learned that the officer involved had been acquitted: "A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem."

Her poetry, and "indeed all of her writing," according to contributor Joan Martin in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, "rings with passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Concerned with modern society's tendency to categorize groups of people, Lorde fought the marginalization of such categories as "lesbian" and "black woman." She was central to many liberation movements and activist circles, including second-wave feminism, civil rights and Black cultural movements, and struggles for LGBTQ equality. In particular, Lorde's poetry is known for the power of its call for social and racial justice, as well as its depictions of queer experience and sexuality. As she told interviewer Charles H. Rowell in Callaloo: "My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds... [White, arch-conservative senator] Jesse Helms's objection to my work is not about obscenity ... or even about sex. It is about revolution and change."

Lorde was a noted prose writer as well as poet. Her account of her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy, The Cancer Journals (1980), is regarded as a major work of illness narrative. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde confronts the possibility of death. Recounting this personal transformation led Lorde to address the silence surrounding cancer, illness, and the lived experience of women. For example, Lorde explained her decision not to wear a prosthesis after undergoing a mastectomy in the Journals: "Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of 'Nobody will know the difference.' But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other."

Lorde's 1982 novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, was described by its publishers as a "biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) collected Lorde's nonfiction prose and has become a canonical text in Black studies, women's studies, and queer theory. Another collection of essays, A Burst of Light (1988), won the National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997.

In 1981 Lorde and fellow writers Cherríe Moraga and Barbara Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was dedicated to furthering the writings of black feminists. Lorde would also become increasingly concerned over the plight of black women in South Africa under apartheid, creating Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and remaining an active voice on behalf of these women throughout the remainder of her life. Lorde addressed her concerns to not only the United States but the world, encouraging a celebration of the differences that society instead used as tools of isolation. As Allison Kimmich noted in Feminist Writers, "Throughout all of Audre Lorde's writing, both nonfiction and fiction, a single theme surfaces repeatedly. The black lesbian feminist poet activist reminds her readers that they ignore differences among people at their peril ... Instead, Lorde suggests, differences in race or class must serve as a 'reason for celebration and growth.'"

Lorde's honors and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. Warrior Poet (2006), by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde.

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools...

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools before graduating from Hunter High School and published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still a student there. Of her poetic beginnings Lorde commented in Black Women Writers: "I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn't find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that's what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen."

Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. She also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experiences with teaching and pedagogy-as well as her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia-went on to inform her life and work. Indeed, Lorde's contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory intertwine her personal experiences with broader political aims. Lorde articulated early on the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as "The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master's House."

Lorde's early collections of poetry include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), included powerful poems of protest. "I have a duty," Lorde once stated, "to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde's later poems were often assembled from personal journals. Explaining the genesis of "Power," a poem about the police shooting of a ten-year-old black child, Lorde discussed her feelings when she learned that the officer involved had been acquitted: "A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw. So I pulled over. I took out my journal just to air some of my fury, to get it out of my fingertips. Those expressed feelings are that poem."

Her poetry, and "indeed all of her writing," according to contributor Joan Martin in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, "rings with passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling." Concerned with modern society's tendency to categorize groups of people, Lorde fought the marginalization of such categories as "lesbian" and "black woman." She was central to many liberation movements and activist circles, including second-wave feminism, civil rights and Black cultural movements, and struggles for LGBTQ equality. In particular, Lorde's poetry is known for the power of its call for social and racial justice, as well as its depictions of queer experience and sexuality. As she told interviewer Charles H. Rowell in Callaloo: "My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds... [White, arch-conservative senator] Jesse Helms's objection to my work is not about obscenity ... or even about sex. It is about revolution and change."

Lorde was a noted prose writer as well as poet. Her account of her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy, The Cancer Journals (1980), is regarded as a major work of illness narrative. In The Cancer Journals, Lorde confronts the possibility of death. Recounting this personal transformation led Lorde to address the silence surrounding cancer, illness, and the lived experience of women. For example, Lorde explained her decision not to wear a prosthesis after undergoing a mastectomy in the Journals: "Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of 'Nobody will know the difference.' But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other."

Lorde's 1982 novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, was described by its publishers as a "biomythography, combining elements of history, biography and myth." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) collected Lorde's nonfiction prose and has become a canonical text in Black studies, women's studies, and queer theory. Another collection of essays, A Burst of Light (1988), won the National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde was published in 1997.

In 1981 Lorde and fellow writers Cherríe Moraga and Barbara Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was dedicated to furthering the writings of black feminists. Lorde would also become increasingly concerned over the plight of black women in South Africa under apartheid, creating Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and remaining an active voice on behalf of these women throughout the remainder of her life. Lorde addressed her concerns to not only the United States but the world, encouraging a celebration of the differences that society instead used as tools of isolation. As Allison Kimmich noted in Feminist Writers, "Throughout all of Audre Lorde's writing, both nonfiction and fiction, a single theme surfaces repeatedly. The black lesbian feminist poet activist reminds her readers that they ignore differences among people at their peril ... Instead, Lorde suggests, differences in race or class must serve as a 'reason for celebration and growth.'"

Lorde's honors and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. Warrior Poet (2006), by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde.

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A self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde was born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents. She attended Catholic schools...

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Nothing About Us canvas print by Ricardo Levins Morales. Bring your artwork to life with the texture and depth of a stretched canvas print. Your image gets printed onto one of our premium canvases and then stretched on a wooden frame of 1.5" x 1.5" stretcher bars (gallery wrap) or 5/8" x 5/8" stretcher bars (museum wrap). Your canvas print will be delivered to you "ready to hang" with pre-attached hanging wire, mounting hooks, and nails.

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A powerful reminder that no one can decide what is best for others.

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Nothing About Us Canvas Print / Canvas Art by Ricardo Levins Morales

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A Collection of Resources for Teaching Social Justice

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A Collection of Resources for Teaching Social Justice

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Ask teachers to describe the impact they hope to have on their students, and most will eventually say something along these lines: I want my students to grow into responsible citizens. I want my students to participate in society in an active, productive way.

And maybe: I want my students to change the world.

But how many of us know how to make that happen, really? Can we explicitly teach students how to change the world? If this question has been whispering in the back of your mind, the resources in this collection will help.

What is social justice, and how does it fit into the curriculum?

The National Association of Social Workers defines social justice as "the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities." To study social justice is to learn about the problems that dramatically impact quality of life for certain populations, and how people have worked to solve those problems.

If you teach social studies, you'll have no trouble finding direct curricular links to social justice. The National Curriculum Standards for the Social Studies includes Civic Ideals and Practices as one of its 10 Themes of Social Studies, and this includes an emphasis on learning how to get involved in influencing public policy. In history and social studies class, social justice teaching is a natural fit.

In other content areas, teachers disagree over whether social justice has a place. We put ourselves in a vulnerable position by exploring issues that are seen as more controversial than others (a topic I will get into in the next section), and some teachers prefer to completely steer clear of those kinds of complications. For others, social justice was a driving force in why they became teachers, and they weave it into whatever content they are teaching. If you choose to address some or all of these issues in your classroom, the next section offers some tips for doing it effectively.

Some Advice for Teaching Social Justice

As an undergraduate, I served as a student counselor for three years and a resident assistant (RA) for one. I regularly delivered workshops on social justice topics, and I learned a few important lessons along the way. Here are some things to keep in mind when studying social justice issues with your students:

Make getting to know students a key component of any social justice teaching. If you and your students don't spend time examining your own backgrounds, biases, and beliefs, you will be missing an essential component of any social justice curriculum. We all view every social justice issue through the lens of our own experience, and these different lenses can block our growth and learning if we aren't aware of them. If we fine-tune our self-awareness, our individual lenses can richly inform classroom conversations and help us understand issues on a much deeper level, directly from each other.

Know that not all students feel the same way about these issues. Most, if not all, of these resources have been created from a pretty liberal, progressive viewpoint. For example, one of the lessons in the Learning for Justice (formerly known as Teaching Tolerance) series described below is on Confronting Unjust Laws. The lesson uses California's Proposition 8 as an example of an unjust law. But not all of your students (or their families) will see a law like Prop 8 as unjust. In fact, some may strongly oppose same-sex marriage. That doesn't mean you can't talk about controversial issues; in fact, teaching students how to respectfully discuss an issue with people who don't see things the same way is a lesson that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

Familiarize yourself with the material before teaching. Sometimes we just skim materials before we teach. With social justice topics, this would be a mistake. Not knowing exactly what's in all of your teaching materials, including the texts or videos you and your students will be looking at, can leave you vulnerable to problems when unexpected content pops up.

Keep your administrator in the loop. As with any potentially controversial lesson, it is essential that you talk to your administrator about it ahead of time. Show the curricular connections between your planned lessons and the standards you're teaching. Talk about potential problems or objections that may come up and how you both plan to address them. That way, if your administrator gets a phone call from a concerned parent, she or he won't be blindsided.

Featured Resources

When I set out to find good resources for social justice teaching, I was looking for classroom-ready materials, lesson plans with supplementary texts or videos that would prompt students to learn about, think about, and talk about social justice issues. I also hoped to find some that would actually teach students about activism, about how a citizen zeroes in on a problem, formulates a solution, then does the grassroots work necessary to see that solution come to life.

Some of these resources fit the bill perfectly, especially the first one on the list. Others do not include lesson plans at all, but serve such an important and innovative role in social justice education, I thought they were essential to include here.

Learning for Justice

This award-winning organization (formerly known as Teaching Tolerance) comes up most often any time social justice teaching is discussed. There's lots to explore on their site, including the Classroom Resources section, which is loaded with lesson plans and other resources teachers can use for free in their classrooms. One of these lessons is Confronting Unjust Practices, where students learn about the anti-segregation actions taken by the Freedom Riders and the attack on one of these buses in Anniston, Alabama (pictured above).

Other lessons from this library include What is Ageism?, Unequal Unemployment, and What Makes a Family? Lessons are available for elementary, middle, and high school students.

DoSomething.org

No lesson plans here: DoSomething.org is an outstanding organization whose goal is to support the work of young people who want to make a difference in their world. Students browse through a big list of campaigns, public education and activism projects students can launch right in their own communities, and choose one or more that they'd like to participate in. Once they have finished a campaign, students submit a photo or video to prove they completed the required steps. This entry makes them eligible to win prizes, including scholarships. Currently, only U.S. students are eligible for these scholarships, but DoSomething.org is expanding into other countries as well.

Although this site will not help you do any direct instruction about social justice, it provides incredible opportunities for students to actively participate in social justice projects. Most campaigns are just right for high school students, and some would be appropriate for middle schoolers as well. Some topics may be considered risque, so review the content before introducing it to students.

On a related note, DoSomething.org is the organization where Katia Gomez, the college student who started her own school in Honduras (featured in the first Cult of Pedagogy documentary last year), got her start. One more bit of trivia that totally doesn't matter but might if you are a Melrose Place fan: DoSomething.org was co-founded by 90's heartthrob Andrew Shue. Squeee!!

The Global Oneness Project

The Global Oneness Project offers a beautiful collection of multicultural films, photo essays, and articles that "explore cultural, social, and environmental issues with a humanistic lens." Many of the featured stories are paired with a lesson plan for high school or college classrooms, aligned with Common Core and national standards.

One such pairing starts with the film Amar, which follows a young Indian boy living in a high-poverty neighborhood through a typical day that includes rising before dawn to do one of his two jobs and attending school. The accompanying lesson plan is called A Day in the Life, which has students examine the film and other resources related to the economic situation in India.

The films are truly stunning. This collection doesn't include explicit teachings in any kind of civics or grassroots activism, but it will provide students with a deep understanding of lives completely unlike their own. And that kind of empathy is one of the most important building blocks for any kind of social justice action.

Pushing the Edge: Social Justice Resources Collection

Educator Greg Curran's podcast covers a range of educational topics, but quite a few episodes circle around issues of social justice. Recently, he curated these resources into a Social Justice Resources Collection. These episodes will be mainly useful for teachers to educate themselves about social justice education: what complications and questions come up, helpful do's and don'ts, and why it's worth it. He interviews practicing teachers and administrators who are walking the walk with social justice teaching. Listening to them will give you a template from which to build your own practice.

Here's an example of one episode, where Curran interviews Nakisha Hobbs, principal of the Village Leadership Academy, a k-8 social justice school in Chicago.

GLSEN: Educator Resources

For teachers who want to include consideration of LGBT issues in their study of social justice, a great source for materials is GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. offers a nice collection of educator guides and lesson plans.

Here are a few examples: The ThinkB4YouSpeak Guide for Educators includes lesson plans, resources, and tips for teachers for addressing anti-LGBT language in the 6-12 classroom. Unheard Voices is a collection of audio interviews with "individuals who bore witness to or helped shape LGBT history in some way." And the Day of Silence Guide shows educators how to run a Day of Silence awareness campaign in their schools.

Educational Video Center

I love this idea: The Educational Video Center teaches students the skills of documentary filmmaking, telling important stories in the name of social justice. Although the EVC holds after-school workshops only for students in New York City, they do offer professional development for teachers anywhere who want to learn how to teach these skills to their own students.

Alumni of the EVC have created documentaries on everything from criminal justice to domestic violence to mental health. You can view a collection of trailers for student-created documentaries here.

The Two Dollar Challenge

The Two Dollar Challenge is a challenge issued to people who want to make an impact on poverty. The challenge is simple: For 5 days, live on just $2 per day, publicizing the complexities of global poverty and helping to raise funds for a partner organization.

What's most striking about this organization is their emphasis on cultivating a deep respect for people affected by poverty and raising participants' awareness of their own privilege. One look at the project's code of conduct shows just how serious they are about that mission: "At all times participants must respect those nearby who are truly in need. If at any time those taking the Challenge are using resources which are valuable for indigent residents in the area this action must be re-evaluated."

Anti-Defamation League

The ADL's collection of lesson plans explore topics in categories like gender issues, sexism, ableism, religious bigotry, and racism. For example, What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?, a lesson for high school students, has students study and discuss the impact of zero-tolerance policies in schools, statistics on the connection between school suspensions and the juvenile justice system, and their own school discipline policy. The end of the lesson offers students a choice of next steps for taking action on this issue. Lessons are available for preschool through high school.

Update: Since publishing this post, a few readers have pointed out that some of ADL's other website content (separate from this curriculum) takes a strong stance on issues relating to Israel and may offend some users. I still feel that this curriculum contains incredibly valuable lessons on very recent events that you won't find anywhere else, but this reinforces my second and third points above: Know your audience, and read through the materials carefully. For more details on this issue, please read the comments below. This article may also shed some light on the topic.

Further Reading

Stirring Up Justice
Laurel Schmidt, Education Leadership, May 2009
Explores the value and process of teaching students about activism. Offers a template for how to engage students in authentic conversations about difficult issues, ask themselves what they can do about social justice issues, consider ways they have already acted in the past, study how other kids and young adults have successfully solved problems, and participate in their own social justice projects.

Turning Current Events Into Social Justice Teaching
Jinnie Spiegler, Edutopia, January 6, 2016
Spiegler, the curriculum director for the Anti-Defamation League (the first resource in this post) offers advice on teaching social justice topics in a way that's both sensitive and productive.

Educolor Resources
Educolor, an organization dedicated to an equitable, just education for everyone, maintains this list of books, movies, articles, and websites that will educate teachers and students on issues of social justice, especially as it pertains to educational equity.

The Best Teacher Resources Sites for Social Justice
Larry Ferlazzo, Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day, July 1, 2008
A big list of resources related to social justice education.
What Are Your Favorite Social Justice Resources?
This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have a resource you like to use for teaching about social justice, please share it in the comments below. ♦

Keep in touch.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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A Collection of Resources for Teaching Social Justice

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Want your students to actively engage in addressing inequality? Explore this annotated bibliography of resources for teaching students about social justice.

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San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse.

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San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse.

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Rooftop Elementary School in San Francisco. The city allows parents to apply to any school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning in an effort to desegregate its classrooms Credit Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Like many parents in San Francisco, Melvin Canas and Delfina Ramirez described applying to public kindergarten as a part-time job. They researched schools all over the city for their daughter, Cinthya; took unpaid hours off their jobs as cooks to tour over a dozen; and ultimately ranked 15 of them on her application.

San Francisco allows parents to apply to any elementary school in the district, having done away with traditional school zoning 18 years ago in an effort to desegregate its classrooms. Give parents more choices, the thinking was, and low-income and working-class students of color like Cinthya would fill more seats at the city's most coveted schools.

But last month, Cinthya's parents, who are Hispanic, found out she had been admitted to their second-to-last choice, a school where less than a third of students met standards on state reading and math tests last year. Only 3 percent were white.

Results like these have soured many on the city's school enrollment plan, which is known here as "the lottery" and was once considered a national model.

"Our current system is broken," said Stevon Cook, president of the district Board of Education, which, late last year, passed a resolution to overhaul the process. "We've inadvertently made the schools more segregated."

For decades, the education mantra from presidential campaign trails to local school board elections has been the same: Your ZIP code should not determine the quality of your school. Few cities have gone further in trying to make that ideal a reality than San Francisco.

But as education leaders from New York to Dallas to San Antonio vow to integrate schools, and as presidential candidates like Joseph R. Biden Jr. are being asked to answer for their records on school segregation, San Francisco's ambitious plan offers a cautionary tale.

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Melvin Canas, with his daughter, Cinthya, described applying to public-school kindergarten as a part-time job. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Parental choice has not been the leveler of educational opportunity it was made out to be. Affluent parents are able to take advantage of the system in ways low-income parents cannot, or they opt out of public schools altogether. What happened in San Francisco suggests that without remedies like wide-scale busing, or school zones drawn deliberately to integrate, school desegregation will remain out of reach.

After families submit their kindergarten applications, ranking as many school choices as they like across the city, a computer algorithm makes assignments. Those from neighborhoods where students have scored low on state tests get first dibs at their top-ranked programs. Each child gets an address-based priority at one school, but it is considered only after those with test-score priority are offered seats.

The district had previously used busing to try to desegregate schools, under a 1983 agreement with the N.A.A.C.P. But a group of Chinese-American families sued in the 1990s, saying their children were being denied seats at elite campuses. The city settled the case by devising a choice-based enrollment process meant to be race-neutral but still achieve integration.

Research shows that desegregation can drive learning gains for students of all races. And on paper, San Francisco's system showed promise. In recent years, it succeeded in breaking up racial concentrations at a handful of schools.

But over all, many parents and city leaders consider it a disappointment. The district's schools were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in 1990, even though the city's neighborhoods have become more integrated, research shows. That pattern holds true in many of the nation's largest cities, according to an analysis by Ryan W. Coughlan, an assistant professor of sociology at Guttman Community College in New York.

Segregation looks different in San Francisco than in other parts of the country. The district is one of the most diverse in the nation: 35 percent of students are Asian, 27 percent are Hispanic, 15 percent are white and 7 percent are African-American. Schools here are not racially monolithic. But over the past several decades, white, Asian and Hispanic students, on average, have been clustered in schools with more children of their own races.

While black children were slightly less racially isolated in 2015 than in 1990, that was largely a result of their lower enrollment in the district, Professor Coughlan said - a change driven by astronomical housing costs.

At a tour of Rooftop Elementary, Sofia and Jonathan Perel said they had visited 18 schools. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Even the school district has acknowledged that a system of geographically zoned schools would most likely create more racial integration than the current, choice-driven approach.

There are several reasons the system has not worked as intended. One is a lack of transportation. Fewer than 4,000 of the district's 54,000 students ride a bus to school. The city's busing program was reduced in 2010, during the last recession, and has not been restored.

Shurrin Zeng, vice chairwoman of the district's English Learners Advisory Committee, said location had been the No. 1 factor in her decision to enroll her 10-year-old daughter in the school closest to their home, which is overwhelmingly Hispanic and Asian, and largely low-income. She is not completely happy with the school, but choice, she said, was not meaningful without "more convenient transportation" to ensure access.

And some parents may not have heard about better, far-flung schools. Not everyone has the time to navigate the complex process of researching, touring and ranking campuses. Families who want a different school from the one they are given can try their luck in three more lottery rounds, filing paperwork and managing waiting lists even past the start of the school year, in some cases.

School tours typically take place between 8 and 10 a.m. - prime commuting and work hours - and some of the most desired schools require parents to sign up weeks in advance.

At Rooftop Elementary in the Twin Peaks neighborhood - Mr. Canas and Ms. Ramirez's first choice for Cinthya - a tour in December was dominated by professional-class parents with flexible schedules. They took in breathtaking views of the San Francisco Bay and strolled past a climbing wall and gardening plots. Jonathan and Sofia Perel, an IT director and a consultant to nonprofits, said they had visited 18 schools.

In contrast, Kenika Eison, a medical assistant, had to show up at schools unannounced during off hours, hoping a principal would come out to talk to her. She ended up enrolling her son Aaden in a charter school close to the clinic where she works, partly because of the school's good reputation, but also because she would not need to arrange child care in the mornings.

Kenika Eison picked up her son Aaden from his preschool program. For kindergarten, Ms. Eison enrolled Aaden in a charter school close to her work. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Since the district uses neighborhood test scores to determine admissions preferences, some students from low-income and working-class families in San Francisco, like Cinthya, do not get an advantage, while a handful of wealthier students, whose parents happen to live in areas with historically lower test scores, do.

The system benefits gentrifiers, in a city where public housing can be tucked beneath hills studded with multimillion-dollar Victorians.

Anne Zimmerman, a stay-at-home parent and writer, had what others call, sometimes derisively, the "golden ticket." She and her husband, who works in advertising, moved into their two-bedroom rental in the Potrero Hill neighborhood a decade ago, without realizing their address granted them priority in the school lottery.

This year, their daughter, Vera, was offered admission to their first-choice kindergarten, one of the most requested in the city. The school is 37 percent white and 21 percent low-income. Districtwide, 15 percent of students are white and 55 percent are low-income.

"I feel so very conflicted" about getting an advantage, Ms. Zimmerman said. Both she and her husband are white. "The system was developed to equalize the playing field, and I don't think it really has done it."

Those who defend the current system point out that 79 percent of black parents, 79 percent of Filipino parents and 61 percent of Hispanic parents received their first-choice kindergarten for next fall, compared with 48 percent of white parents.

Rionda Batiste is a member of the district's African-American Parent Advisory Council and a resident of the Bayview, a neighborhood with test-score priority in the lottery. She has been thrilled with the system, which allowed her to enroll two of her children in a school of her choice outside the neighborhood.

While San Francisco's school enrollment system was intended to desegregate the district, research shows that schools have become more segregated. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

"Until our schools are being made to have the same resources and quality as the other schools in the other areas, I'm not going to disadvantage her," Ms. Batiste said of her daughter, Victoria.

But the voices of parents who feel hurt by the lottery hold powerful political sway here. One family of two doctors whose child - like 12 percent of kindergarten applicants - was not admitted to any of the 15 schools they listed, said they would not send their child to the school they were ultimately assigned, which is across the city from their home. The school has struggled with underenrollment and low test scores, and is predominantly black and low-income.

The parents, who are Hispanic and asked not to be named, ended up putting down a deposit for a private school.

About a quarter of the city's children are enrolled in private school, a higher percentage than in some other major cities, like New York, where it is around 20 percent. The lottery system is thought to be a major reason wealthy parents here opt out of public schools, further worsening segregation.

At the request of the Board of Education, the district is considering how expanded busing could help integrate schools. It is also looking at models in Berkeley, Calif., and Boston, where parents can rank choices from a small group of schools determined by address. San Francisco has already limited choices at the middle-school level, with some success.

Stevon Cook, the board president, said one of the biggest problems with the lottery was "the implicit message that we send" to low-income parents: that schools in their own communities are "inadequate," and that they should seek to escape them. "We should pour more into those schools to make them attractive," he said.

The strengths of predominantly black schools, in particular, were often overlooked, said Rachel Norton, a longtime member of the board.

"I don't want to suggest that every school is of equal quality across the district, but they are closer in quality to each other than people think," she said.

Mr. Canas, the chef, spoke to teachers at the school where his daughter was admitted, and heard some things he liked about it. But he still hoped Cinthya would be chosen off a waiting list to attend one of the higher-ranked schools on her application, and was bracing for more rounds in the lottery.

Even if the chances of a dream placement remained low, Mr. Canas said, he would exhaust all options. "I can't really put a price on my daughter's education."

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San Francisco Had an Ambitious Plan to Tackle School Segregation. It Made It Worse.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Like many parents in San Francisco, Melvin Canas and Delfina Ramirez described applying to public kindergarten as a part-time job. They researched schools all over the city for their daughter, Cinthya; took unpaid hours off their jobs as cooks to tour over a dozen; and ultimately ranked 15 of them on her application.

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You can't get rid of Nice White Parents- article

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You can't get rid of Nice White Parents- article

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I don't think I'll be forgetting the first episode of Nice White Parents anytime soon.

Late in the episode, we're brought to a swanky gala in upper Manhattan, ostensibly organized to raise funds for a new dual-language French program at a public school all the way out in Brooklyn. Few people at the gala are actually attached to the school. Most were convened for the sake of their wealth.

But it's what got us to this party that's damning. The dual-language program is controversial, pushed into the school PTA's priorities out of the blue by some enterprising white parents. It was pitched as being valuable to the whole student body - white kids, Black kids, brown kids, poor kids, rich kids - but of course, that's not really how these things have ever gone. One thing leads to another, and suddenly, you're whisked out of a Brooklyn public school and into this extravagant building, where a bunch of wealthy people are socializing to support a program that will likely be unequally distributed, and will almost certainly be useless to those in the school who actually need the most support.

It's a bone-wearying predicament, steeped in the disorienting class surrealism that should be familiar to anyone who has ever lived in a dense, rich, and unequal city, where the very wealthy and the very-not are layered in the same spaces.

Host Chana Joffe-Walt, a veteran of This American Life and, as she points out, a white parent within the New York City public school system herself, places this story at the top of the series to set the tone for what's to come. In Nice White Parents, Serial Productions' first new podcast since being acquired by the New York Times, Joffe-Walt lays out an examination of how white parents - even the well-meaning ones - stand as the primary force holding back progress toward school integration and a more equitable distribution of resources. This is true even when they're not around - their physical absence from a district can impede improvements to a school. She presents all this as something of a minor revelation, positioning white, liberal-leaning parents as a bloc whose influence has been largely overlooked or underemphasized; the popular imagination tends to picture the stereotypical, overtly racist segregationist as the problem, not white-collar professionals who shop at Whole Foods.

To some extent, this assessment doesn't seem all that novel; for anyone who has lived in or near a predominately white, liberal enclave, the notion feels obvious. But through her reporting, Joffe-Walt substantiates your gut feeling with vivid documentation, giving flesh to what was previously skeletal suspicion. Nice White Parents operates most effectively as an illustrative project, drawing attention to how exactly an unequal system is preserved by groups who benefit most from the status quo, even when they mean well and think they're acting in the name of progress.

Joffe-Walt does this by focusing the scope on the historical experiences of a single building: the aforementioned Brooklyn public school, I.S. 293. The school has gone by many other names throughout its existence, and has even housed multiple institutions within its walls - and yet the same story has played out over and over again. Through the decades, various groups of white parents, allegedly trying to do good, would band together in an effort to usher in better integration, equality, diversity, or equity (take your pick) - only to end up replicating or preserving preexisting inequalities. In some cases, they even worsen the disparities, creating new miniaturized forms of segregation within the school itself.

The reason for such failures is relatively straightforward: Almost always, those white parents will internally come to an understanding that meaningful change is simply too hard. They ultimately discover that to truly achieve their societal ambitions would rub against their individual self-interests. So they abandon the desegregation project, often midway through the effort, leaving behind a half-formed world. Or, just as often, they refashion the effort to meet their needs more specifically.

For most of the series, you're left with the sense that the problem of American public education is an intractable one, forged by decades of right-wing funding and abetted by white parents, nice and otherwise. As long as public-education resources are scarce, the structurally advantaged will always win out in getting the lion's share. In the third episode, Joffe-Walt tries to point toward a possible path forward. School systems are maniacally loyal to white parents, so white parents should reckon with the reality that they need to voluntarily relinquish some of that power for the greater good. It's an appeal to personal sacrifice by the powerful, and that's ... well, that's really hard to believe in. It almost never happens.

But then: It happens. Or at least, it seems to. In the fifth and final episode, which Joffe-Walt herself mentions is an entry she didn't expect to make, we learn that the school district we've been following throughout the series put forward an actual, substantive plan to genuinely integrate schools throughout the district. The entire episode is dedicated to laying out just what happened, and according to Joffe-Walt, it came out of a campaign led, in large part, by a group of well-meaning white parents who did, indeed, identify the fact that they possessed disproportionate power - and took steps to execute an advocacy campaign that leveraged, and then ultimately conceded, that very power.

Nice White Parents, then, wraps up as a story about activism and effective political mobilization. It's a somewhat hopeful ending, but its optimism remains smartly measured, threaded with healthy skepticism. Despite the fact that we're presented with what seems to be a genuine breakthrough, there are still numerous caveats to be offered. Just how replicable is this? Will it last? There is, also, a broader grappling with the truths of the politics of it all. As Joffe-Walt maintains in the episode, a key way to read what happened here isn't to see it as the sum of all white parents giving up their power and working against their specific self-interests for the greater good. Part of what made the activism work is a rigorous reshaping of the narrative ... by white people themselves.

Your mileage with this ending may vary depending on where you sit in the food chain, which more often than not means the color of your skin. As a nonwhite person, I can see how this conclusion can be read as hopeful. Still, I remain uneasy about the implication that it's up to the better angels of white people to fix a system that screws over just about everyone else. There's a secondary and long-standing truth tucked in the layers of this story: that activism led by nonwhite people will never be as effective as activism led by white people.

All of which is to say that Nice White Parents is two kinds of shows: one for the very nice white parents it covers, and one for everyone else. For what it's worth, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. If it's able to actively change some nice white minds for the good fight, great. And don't get me wrong: Nice White Parents is, without a doubt, one of the most excellently made and endlessly interesting podcasts you'll hear this year. On a meta level, the show does exactly what you'd want it to do: It drives conversation, it sparks emotion, it makes you want to scream.

There are questions that can be asked of the show, though. The biggest hang-up, for me anyway, is the manner in which it mostly tells the story along racial lines, with relatively little grappling of how class complicates and deepens the narrative. Also, speaking as an Asian person, I did find the near-complete absence of Asian Americans in this story about New York City's public education system somewhat conspicuous. Asians, after all, make up one of the biggest anomalies in the discourse around New York's public education system, and I can't help but feel that their invisibility in these discussions - either grouped in with whites (unfairly), or ignored altogether - is itself an expression of how class, as a rubric to process inequality, gets underemphasized in these kinds of stories. Not a deal-breaker, but still, I felt it.

In any case, that's not the biggest question mark I have about the podcast. What I really want to know - and this really isn't a negative critique of the show or anything - is how the post-pandemic world will reframe the findings, hopes, and ideas contained in the podcast. Between the formation of private education pods and budget shortfalls, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that we'll see a fundamentally reshaped public education system at the other end of this pandemic. Joffe-Walt draws some attention to this, believing that the world of public education will resume someday, and that's when the fight can continue. But perhaps this moment of chaos is the most ripe for efforts to reframe narratives and realign incentives. Perhaps this is the moment where nice white parents can really prove their worth.

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I don't think I'll be forgetting the first episode of Nice White Parents anytime soon. Late in the episode, we're brought to a swanky gala in upper Manhattan, ostensibly organized to raise funds for a new dual-language French program at a public school all the way out in Brooklyn.

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Antiracist Baby Picture Book by Ibram X. Kendi: 9780593110508 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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A #1 New York Times Bestseller! From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist comes a new full-sized picture book that empowers parents and children...

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Teaching Young Children About Bias, Diversity, and Social Justice

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Teaching Young Children About Bias, Diversity, and Social Justice

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Checking my systems for equity

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My dear white friends, I'm about to lay some hardcore truth on you right now. Many of you are the problem. Yes, you read that right. Many of you are the reason why these riots are happening. Many of you are the reason why it has come to this. This is especially true if you've ever, and especially in the last weeks, said any of the following:
1. "It's awful but..."
No. No buts. In the English language, the word "but" is often used to deflect or to justify behavior. Police murdering black people in the street is awful. Period. End. of. discussion.
2. "I support the movement but not these disruptive protests..."
No, you don't. Right now the movement is taking the form of disruptive protests. They're the same thing. You either want police to stop murdering black people in the street, or you don't. If you do, then support the protests - even if you find them disruptive and frustrating - because that's black people fighting for their lives.
3. "All lives / White lives matter too..."
No one said they didn't. The conversation is specifically about black lives right now because police are murdering them in the street. Until police stop doing that, and White people stop dismissing it, it's not "All lives Matter", it's "MOST lives matter." It's not "ALL Lives" until Black Lives Matter too. Stay focused.
4. "There are good cops..."
This isn't about the actions of individuals. It's about systemic, state-sanctioned violence against black people and other people of color. In fact, racism - historically and currently - is so embedded in policing that even if there weren't any bad cops, racism and racist police practices would still exist. Police forces are there to protect and advance the status quo. Period. The same so-called "good cops" who are sharing BLM hashtags and are kneeling with you now, won't think twice about kneeling on your neck at a later time. And if you think you're a good cop, but are silent when confronted with human rights abuses, then how good are you?
5. "I don't support the looting and destruction..."
No one says you have to, but please stop acting like looting nullifies the entire protest. And definitely stop acting like looting is "just as bad." That's like comparing someone stealing your car to someone murdering your child. They're not equally bad. Stop pretending they are. Police murdering black people in the street is definitely worse than robbing a Target.
6. "Just because I'm white doesn't mean my life has been easy..."
Of course not. Everyone struggles. But being white has never been one of those struggles. Being poor is a struggle. Being handicapped is a struggle. Being a woman is a struggle. Being gay is a struggle. Being an immigrant is a struggle. But being white has never been a struggle. The same can't be said for people of color. I could go on and on about white privilege but it would be so much easier if you educated yourself instead. This isn't about how you, a white, cisgender, straight man or woman has suffered in your life. This is about police murdering black people in the street. Stop trying to make it about you.
7. "I really wish they would protest peacefully..."
Of course you do. They're easier to ignore that way. And what you really want is for them to die more quietly. People of color have been peacefully protesting for hundreds of years. It hasn't been all that successful. The reason riots and violent demonstrations work is because it makes people - especially white people - uncomfortable. You can't ignore them when they're waving torches in your faces. It scares you. It puts you on edge. Which is exactly where you need to be. People only pay attention to the extreme. If you have trouble recalling a single one of the hundreds of peaceful protests that BLM held across North America last year, but you can still recall, with crystal clarity, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, then you've just proven my point.
8. "I don't see color..."
Congratulations! You're lying to yourself. Of course you see color. And that's good! Black people want you to see their color. Their colors are beautiful and the very foundation of who they are. If you don't see their color, then you also don't see their culture. If you don't see color then you erase their very identity. If you don't see their color, then you also can't see the pattern of violence they're confronted with every day. If you don't see color, then you're blind to more than just racial injustice. You're blind to the world.
9. "They shouldn't have committed a crime..."
This one is a big one for me. Consider me triggered. A boy who steals a can of pop from a 7-11 does not deserve to be shot in the back - three times. A man illegally selling CD's on a street corner doesn't deserve to be shot to death in front of a record store. A man selling cigarettes on the street does not deserve to be strangled on the streets of Staten Island. A man who runs a red light does not deserve to be shot while reaching for his registration. This isn't about their crimes, this is about racialized policing. Stay on topic.
10. "Black people kill white people too..."
Yes, murderers exist in every race and walk of life. But, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking police brutality, and the reality is, black officers are not murdering unarmed white men in the street. That seems to be almost exclusively white officer behavior. Stop gaslighting.

If any of you are guilty of saying any of the above, then I have unsettling news for you. You are the reason it has come to this. You are the reason peaceful protests haven't worked. They haven't worked because you haven't been listening. You haven't been learning. These riots are happening because you have left black people no other choice.

These riots are happening because no matter how black people have said it: taking a knee, marching the streets, bumper stickers, banners, signs, or chants, you still don't get it. That doesn't mean you're bad people. That doesn't mean you're racist. It only means you're white. And that's not a crime, any more than being black is. The difference is, police aren't going to shoot you in the street for it.

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Dear White People: If you have ever said any of these things then you are part of the problem | The Milwaukee Independent

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My dear white friends, I'm about to lay some hardcore truth on you right now. Many of you are the problem. Yes, you read that right. Many of you are the reason why these riots are happening. Many of you are the reason why it has come to this.

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A 30 day challenge - To #DoTheWork one must be intentional in breaking down the systems that continue to oppress and disenfranchise the Black community with Black women being the most effected

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A 30 day challenge - To #DoTheWork one must be intentional in breaking down the systems that continue to oppress and disenfranchise the Black community with Black women being the most effected

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must be intentional in breaking down the systems that continue to oppress and disenfranchise the Black community with Black women being the most effected. Going through these daily prompts you will be called to think critically and act tangibly in solidarity.

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This companion guide invites families, students and educators to have a conversation about the goals of public education in America ... and the relationship between race, social class and a quality education.

The podcast "Nice White Parents" largely focuses on the story of one Brooklyn middle school that opened in 1968 - and how white parents have influenced the trajectory of this school over and over, even when their children didn't attend it. But the issues the podcast raises via this one case study make it a meaningful opportunity to explore the complicated realities of race, privilege and power across all American schools.

Whether you are a group of parents, a family or an educator with students, we hope you use this discussion guide to investigate how race and racism, sometimes overtly and sometimes very quietly, play a powerful role in our educational system - and to thoughtfully consider: What should we be doing to make sure our schools provide a quality education for all children?

Reflect on these three big-idea questions before you listen to the podcast. Then revisit them after you finish the series. Notice if any of your responses change.

1. What should be the goal of public education, and why?

2. What does it mean for schools to be truly integrated? Who benefits from integration, and in what ways?

3. Why do you think every child in the United States does not have access to a quality education? What can we do to change that inequality?

Before listening, reflect on your own identity and experiences as you enter this discussion.

If you're a parent, caregiver or teacher ... Think about your own experiences in school: How did your experiences in school influence what you believe about education? What are your goals and hopes for your child's or student's education? How did your identity, including your racial identity, affect your experience in school?

If you're a student ... Where do you attend school? What has your educational experience been so far? How do you think your racial identity affects your experience in school? Do you know what your family believes about education? Have you ever spoken with your family about their beliefs on education? Do you have questions about those beliefs? Do you share those beliefs?

For all listeners ... Do you think public education is working in your community? In what ways, and for whom? What about in your larger region or metropolitan area? How do you know? What do you think could be improved or changed? And, what does "nice white parents" mean to you? What are your associations with the title?

Use any of the following questions, some adapted from our weekly Film Club series, to promote discussion and reflection about the podcast and how its themes relate to your own family and community. The first set of questions may be used to react to any episode. The second set is specific to each episode. We imagine that discussion groups will pick and choose the most appropriate, relevant and interesting questions from this list to foster productive conversations.

1. What moments in this episode stood out for you? Why?

2. Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know, or thought you knew?

3. What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this episode? Why?

4. What questions do you still have?

5. What connections can you make between this episode and your own life or experience?

The first episode looks at what happens when a group of white parents who are new members of a school community assert their power and agenda in a school whose student body is predominately Black, Latino and Middle Eastern.

School Admissions: Episode One begins with school tours. Have you ever seen - or participated in - a school tour? What do you notice about these tours? What do you know about how your school does admissions? Students: What questions do you have about where you go to school compared with where other people in your community go to school?

Race: In discussing school tours in her Brooklyn district, Chana Joffe-Walt, the host, states, "The whole thing was made so much more awkward by the fact that nobody on those tours ever acknowledged the obvious racial difference." Does your community do a good job discussing disparities or inequalities involving race? What kinds of conversations, if any, are had? Why do you think issues of race so often go unspoken?

School Choice: New York City public schools offer parents choice. Rather than requiring students to attend their local elementary, middle or high school, families typically can choose from a number of options. In fact, students participating in the high school admissions process are given a phone-book-size directory listing over 500 schools. Do you think this kind of choice empowers families and children and strengthens the public school system as a whole? Or does it perpetuate inequality and segregation? Why?

"Diversity": Close your eyes. In your mind, what does a diverse school look like? What does an integrated school look like? Do they look the same? Is any racial group a majority, in your vision of diversity and integration? Do you think other people of different backgrounds share your vision - or do you think their vision might look different?

P.T.A.: Much of Episode One focuses on the school's P.T.A. and the new white parents' efforts to raise money for a dual-language French program. On its surface, how can there be anything wrong with raising tens of thousands of dollars for a school? About holding a fancy fund-raising gala? But as we listen, there are moments of awkwardness, resentment and anger. Why? What went wrong? How do these moments of tension relate to the larger issues of race and social class? Was this disconnect between the new families and the existing families inevitable?

Value: In describing the experience of a sixth grader named Maya at the school, the host states, "There was money for a French program, which meant that at SIS, French had value. Arabic didn't. Spanish didn't. That's something Maya is learning at school, along with her French script." Do you agree with the host that SIS was communicating to students what was valued, or not valued, at the school based on its curriculum and programming? What do you think has value in your school? Are they the same things that you value?

Power: By the end of Episode One, white, Black and brown children are attending the same school. The parents are in the same room. But as the podcast describes, everyone didn't feel equal. Race, social class and power got in the way. Does that ever happen in your school or district? How?

Back to Nice White Parents

transcript

Listen to Episode Two.

Reported by Chana Joffe-Walt; produced by Julie Snyder; edited by Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by Eve L. Ewing and Rachel Lissy; and sound mix by Stowe Nelson

White parents in the 1960s fought to be part of a new, racially integrated school in Brooklyn. So why did their children never attend?

"Nice White Parents" is brought to you by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

chana joffe-walt

The New York City Board of Education has an archive of all of its records. Everything that goes into making thousands of schools run for years and years is sitting in boxes in the municipal building. I love the B.O.E. archive.

chana joffe-walt

First of all, to look through it, you have to go to a century-old municipal building downtown. Arched doorways, lots of marble, an echo, vaulted ceilings really makes a person feel like she's up to something important. You sit at a table, and then a librarian rolls your boxes up to you on a cart. Inside the boxes are all the dramas of a school system. Big ones, tiny ones, bureaucratic, personal, it's all in there. There's a union contract and then a zoning plan and special reports on teacher credentialing, a weird personal note from a bureaucrat to his assistant, a three-page single-spaced plea from Cindy's grandmother, who would please like for her not to be held back in the second grade. An historian friend once pulled a folder out of the archive and a note fell out, something a teacher clearly made a kid write in the 1950s, that read, quote, "I am a lazy boy. Miss Fitzgerald says, when I go in the army, I will be expendable. Expendable means that the country doesn't care whether I get killed or not. I do not like to be expendable. I'm going to do my work and improve."

[music]

chana joffe-walt

This is Carol Netzer. Most of the letter writers were not that hard to find.

chana joffe-walt

She didn't like the suburbs. So they moved to Brooklyn and wrote that letter, which I showed her, her 37-year-old self writing about her hopes for her young children, the choices she made back then.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I went through this box of letters and called as many parents as I could. Most of them didn't remember writing these letters, which isn't surprising, more than 50 years ago and all. What I did find surprising is that, by the time 293 opened, five years later, none of them, not a one, actually sent their kids to I.S. 293.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

A teacher addresses her classroom, filled with children of all races and ethnicities.

chana joffe-walt

The camera cuts to a white boy, maybe 9 or 10.

chana joffe-walt

Then a Black girl, around the same age.

chana joffe-walt

This keeps going, kid to kid.

chana joffe-walt

New York City was the biggest city in America, with the largest Black population in America, and it was saying in films, press releases, public speeches, Brown v Board, we agree. Separate but equal has no place in the field of public education. No problem here. It was also saying, you know who does have a problem? The South. New York City loved comparing itself to the backward South. There are plenty of examples of this in the Board archives, New Yorkers bragging about their superiority to places like Georgia or Virginia or Louisiana. This was the story the Board of Ed was telling. The South was ignorant and racist. New York City was enlightened and integrated. But here is what it was actually like to walk into a New York City school in a Black neighborhood at this time.

chana joffe-walt

This is an archival recording of a woman named Mae Mallory. In the 1950s, Mallory's two Black children were students in Harlem. And when Mallory walked into their school, she did not see children building brotherhood in interracial classrooms. She saw an all-Black and Puerto Rican school with terrible facilities, in disrepair.

chana joffe-walt

Mae Mallory says the school had two bathrooms for 1,600 children. Mallory's family fled racial violence in the South, like millions of other Black Americans, who headed to places like New York City, where everyone was supposed to be equal. Instead of welcoming these new students and spreading them out, creating interracial classrooms, the Board of Education kept Black and Puerto Rican students segregated in what were sometimes referred to as ghetto schools, schools that were often just blocks away from white schools. White schools in New York City had toilets that flushed. White children had classrooms with experienced teachers and principals, people who lived in their communities and looked like them. In Black and Puerto Rican schools, half the teachers were not certified to teach by the Board of Education. The buildings were in disrepair, and packed, sometimes more than 1,000 kids in a single hallway. The overcrowding got so bad the Board of Education decided to send kids to school in shifts. And mind you, this was not in the middle of a global pandemic. This was normal, non-crisis school for Black and Puerto Rican kids. One group of children would go to school in the morning until noon. The next group of kids would come in at noon, and stay until 3:00. The Board was literally giving Black kids half an education. In some schools in Harlem, they had triple shifts. This made it harder to learn elementary skills. Reading, for instance. Black parents complained that the schools were not teaching their kids basic literacy, that their white teachers didn't care, that the summer reading programs were only in white communities, that their children were two years behind white children in reading. This at exactly the same time the Board of Education was making a film promoting the virtues of integration. It was effectively running a dual, segregated and unequal school system.

[music]

For many Black families, the Board of Education was not to be trusted. It did not care for Black children, and it didn't respect the voices and concerns of Black parents. Mae Mallory says she visited her kids' school that day because they'd come home the day before and told her a child had died at school. He was playing in the street at recess. Mallory hardly believed it, but she says when she visited the school, she learned, yes, indeed, this child was playing the street because the schoolyard was closed. He was hit by a beer truck. And she learned the schoolyard was closed because pieces of steel from the side of the building had fallen into the yard.

chana joffe-walt

It was 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregation by law unconstitutional. New York City didn't have Jim Crow laws on the books, but Mae Mallory would ask, the schools are segregated. What's the difference? She didn't care whether that segregation was codified by law or by convention. The harm was just as dire. And she wanted it addressed.

chana joffe-walt

Integration, Mae Mallory would say, was about, quote, demanding a fair share of the pie. She said, our children want to learn, and they certainly have the ability to learn. What they need is the opportunity. The Board of Education had defined integration as a multiracial choir. It was a virtue in and of itself. Mae Mallory saw integration as a remedy, a way to get the same stuff everyone else had - functioning toilets, books, certified teachers, a full school day. Integration was a means to an end.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I heard a live call-in show on WNYC, the public radio station. A young integration advocate, an 11th grader named Tiffani Torres, asked the mayor, how much longer until you do something?

chana joffe-walt

Mayor de Blasio likes to point out that this was a problem created by people long before him, which is exactly what people long before him said, too.

[music]

In the late 1950s, when Black parents and civil rights activists also asked the Board of Ed, why is it taking so long, board members complained about the, quote, extremists who wanted instant integration. Superintendent Jansen said, "some people want us to build Rome in one day." While the Board of Education was building Rome in 1956, '57, '59, and in 1960, 1962, '63, Black parents found each other on PTAs, in civil rights organizations, pro-integration groups. They formed new groups, organized sit-ins, boycotts, demanded the Board provide a timetable for citywide integration. They joined forces with Puerto Rican parents, and their numbers grew. These were volunteers, mothers mostly, who left their jobs at the end of a workday and headed directly to a meeting about how to get the Board to give their kids the education white children were already receiving. Finally, in 1964, 10 years after Brown versus Board, Black and Puerto Rican parents said, enough. They were sick of waiting, sick of lawsuits, sick of asking for a remedy, sick of being ignored. So they went big, spectacularly big. They shut down the schools. They organized a civil rights demonstration that was the largest in US history, larger than the March on Washington. It was called Freedom Day, a massive school boycott.

chana joffe-walt

On February 3rd, 1964, parents headed out to schools in the morning before sunrise to spread the word about the boycott. It was freezing cold that day. There's a brief TV news clip of a group of mothers picketing outside their kids' school at the start of the school day. They're holding up signs that say, "we demand a real integration timetable now," and "integration means better schools for all." They're handing out leaflets to other parents about Freedom Day, looking spirited and cold. A white NBC news reporter in a fedora walks up to one of the women.

chana joffe-walt

There were maps and charts and instructions with picket times and picket captains for hundreds of schools. There were volunteer shifts to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, to hand out thousands of leaflets and stencil posters. The boycott wasn't just effective - it was extraordinarily effective. Half a million kids stayed home from school that day. Half a million, close to half the school system. But the press barely covered it. After searching every major TV network, I found only one kid who was interviewed, a teenage boy, maybe around 16, on the street with some friends, protesting. A white ABC News reporter doesn't ask him why he's there. The only thing he asks him about is violence. The kid responds.

chana joffe-walt

He gestures to the police on horseback.

chana joffe-walt

That was it. Every once in a while, I'll hear a politician or friend or school administrator say, yeah, integration was a good idea, but there was no political will to make it happen. 460,000 kids, half the school system. The will was there. The majority wanted integration.

[music]

After Freedom Day, the Board of Education introduced some small-scale integration plans, and white parents protested. [CHILDREN SINGING] We love our children. Oh, yes, we do. We will not transfer -

chana joffe-walt

With their own marches, they put on their own school boycott. The flipside of freedom day, a white boycott. The white parents were far fewer in number. But as far as I can tell, they got a thousand times more press coverage.

chana joffe-walt

This protest worked. The Board of Ed backed off. And in the decades since, the Board of Education has never proposed a city-wide integration plan. The schools have never been integrated. I think the fact of white moms in Queens in the 1960s yelling about zoning changes and busing, it's not surprising they played a role in killing school integration efforts. But there was another group of white parents who played a quieter, but I'd argue more forceful, role in killing integration. The white parents who said they supported it, parents like the ones who wrote letters asking for an integrated I.S. 293. How did their vocal support for integration turn lethal? That's after the break. In the American South, schools were desegregated with court orders. Cities and counties mandated desegregation, and the schools desegregated. By the early 1970s, the South was the most integrated region in the country. But New York City did not want to do it that way. No mandates. The New York City Board of Education wanted to appeal to hearts and minds. They wanted to sell white people on the virtues of integration. Have it all happen, quote, "naturally." Some white people were sold. The white parents who wrote letters about I.S. 293. They believed in integration. So I made a lot of calls to ask, why'd you bail? They had a lot of different reasons. One couple got divorced, and moved. Another guy told me he had political ambitions that pulled him out of the city.

chana joffe-walt

So he sold the house and moved the family to the suburbs, where he thought he'd have a better chance running against Republicans. Many white people moved to the suburbs for jobs, for newly paved roads and subsidized mortgages, leaving Brooklyn behind. I understood what happened there. But some explanations made less sense. Like one guy I called, he did stay in Brooklyn. On the phone, he was telling me why he believed it was important that I.S. 293 be integrated. But then he said his own kids went to Brooklyn Friends, a Quaker private school. I said, oh, they didn't go to I.S. 293.

chana joffe-walt

But you were a Quaker when you wrote this letter, asking for an integrated 293.

chana joffe-walt

You weren't planning to send your kid there?

chana joffe-walt

What to make of that? When you get what you say you want and then, given the opportunity, don't take it. Maybe you never really wanted it in the first place. Then I spoke to Elaine Hencke. Of all the people I spoke with, everything about Elaine indicated someone who did believe in integration, someone who would send her kids to 293. And yet, she didn't. Elaine was a public school teacher. She taught in an integrated elementary school, until she had her own kids. She was looking forward to sending them to an integrated 293. When her daughter was old enough for junior high school, Elaine visited the school. She was the only letter writer I spoke with who actually went into the building. If this was going to work with anyone, it was going to be Elaine.

chana joffe-walt

Elaine and I talked for a long time I pushed her - not to make her feel bad, but to get to what felt like a more real answer. At the time that you are visiting, was it majority Black and Hispanic kids?

chana joffe-walt

And did that have anything to do with the way that you saw the classroom as disruptive and chaotic?

elaine hencke

I would hope not.

I'm not - I'm not sure how well educated they were, or - you know, I don't know. I don't know why I'm going into this.

chana joffe-walt

Well, did you have reason to think that they weren't well educated?

chana joffe-walt

I'm just - when you say chaos and disruptive, I'm trusting that what you saw was chaotic and disruptive. But I also know that those are words white people use - we use to express our racial fears, to express real racial fears. Do you think that's what was happening with you?

chana joffe-walt

Elaine told me when she wrote that letter to the Board of Education, she pictured her children becoming friends with Black kids, learning side-by-side, learning that all children are equal. That's what motivated her to write that letter. She wanted the picture of integration the Board of Ed was promoting - the picture of harmonious integration. But when she visited I.S. 293, that didn't seem possible. The reading levels were low. The kids were not entering the school on equal grounds. Her white children had received years of high quality teaching at well-resourced schools. The kids coming from segregated elementary schools had not had that experience.

chana joffe-walt

But part of the - part of the vocal complaints of black parents at this period of time was that their kids were not learning how to read because schools were segregated, and their kids were kept in schools that were inferior. And that was part of the argument for integration.

chana joffe-walt

That their kids were not going to get the resources, and quality teaching, and good facilities unless they were in the same buildings with kids like yours.

elaine hencke

Right.

I don't know what to say to that. I just - I guess I just began to feel that things were really difficult for these kids. Schools were not made for them. If the schools were made for them, with their background, what would they be like?

I think there was - and that's another whole thing. I don't know about it. I think there was sort of anger in the black community at the white community. A lot of the teachers were white. There were more white teachers, I suppose. People said that that was racism. And of course, it was racism. But maybe the kids were a little angry at the school. I wouldn't - I couldn't fault them for that. But on the other hand, then they don't get as much from the school. I don't know. I thought the problems were kind of enormous. And I guess I just, at one point, I just decided that my kids should go - went to Brooklyn Friends. And we could afford to pay for it. It wasn't easy, you know. It was - [LAUGHS] but -

chana joffe-walt

Did your feelings about integration change? Did you believe in it less?

elaine hencke

Maybe.

I think I would have said no, theoretically. But maybe they did. I guess I saw it as a more difficult project then. I sort of did back off from it. I just -

chana joffe-walt

Yeah. It felt when you guys wrote these letters like, this is - integration is this exciting ideal, and we can be part of it, and it's going to be a meaningful project that's also going to be kind of easy.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

I think what Elaine actually meant was not that she was innocent, but that she was naive. She was naive about the reality of segregation, the harm of it. And naive about what it would take to undo it. She did not know. And I think she didn't want to know. When Elaine said the word innocent, I felt a jolt of recognition. I felt like Elaine had walked me right up to the truth about her, and about me.

When my own kids were old enough, I sent them to our zoned public school. It was racially mixed and economically mixed. I was excited about that. And it was nice walking to school with neighbors, people I likely never would have gotten to know otherwise. My kid's first day of school was another boy's first week in the country. He'd just moved from China, and his mom asked the neighbor where the school was. When she said goodbye that first morning, I think he thought I was a teacher, and he crawled into my lap. We had no words in common, so I just held him while he screamed and cried. By the holiday show three months later, I watched that same boy belt out "This Pretty Planet" on a stage with his classmates. He was the star. He nailed the hand motions. Every other kid up on stage was just following his lead, just trying to keep up. It was such a sweet picture, all of them up there - Black kids, and Mexican kids, and Colombian, and Asian and white kids. And all of us adults supporting all of them. It's moving, to me, this picture of integration. It is also, I'm realizing right now, writing these words down, the very same picture the Board of Education put forth in 1954 - a multiracial choir singing together, building brotherhood. And it's dangerous, I think, this picture of integration. It seems perfectly designed to preserve my innocence, to make me comfortable, not to remedy inequality, but a way to bypass it entirely. I can sit in that assembly and feel good about the gauzy display of integration without ever being asked to think about the fact that much of the time, white kids in the school building are having a different educational experience than kids of color. A large share of the white students at the school are clustered in a gifted program. They have separate classrooms and separate teachers. We all blithely call these white children gifted and talented, G&T, starting at four years old. White children are performing better at the school than black children and Latino children. White families are the loudest and most powerful voices in the building. The advantages white kids had back in the 1950s, they're still in place. When Elaine said she was innocent, I thought about the things we say, nice, white parents, to each other about why we won't send our kids to segregated schools - because they're too strict, or too chaotic, or too disruptive. Because the test scores are bad, because we want more play. We want fewer worksheets. Because we don't want to ride a bus. We don't want uniforms. We don't want tests. We want innocence. We need it, to protect us from the reality that we are the ones creating the segregation, and we're not sure we're ready to give it up.

[music]

Elaine was not for segregation. But in the end, she wasn't really for integration, either. All of the choices she made, choices she had the luxury of making, were meant to advantage her own kids. And I understand that. That's what parents do.

chana joffe-walt

You regretted what?

chana joffe-walt

Elaine's friend Joan, another white mom who did send her kids to I.S. 293. Elaine still feels bad about her choice. But not everyone felt bad.

chana joffe-walt

Carol is the woman who wrote the letter about how she'd come to New York City from the suburbs for integration. I had a hard time reconciling her lack of piety with her letter, which I read back to her, about wanting her kids to mix freely with children of other classes and races. [READING] - which we were not able to provide for them when we lived in the Westchester suburb.

chana joffe-walt

You remember feeling that way?

chana joffe-walt

As a parent, did you - do you remember feeling like, I hope my kid has experiences outside of just people like them?

chana joffe-walt

I'm not going to tell you a lot about St. Anne's, except to say this - it's one of the most prominent private schools in Brooklyn. Upscale neighborhood, prime real estate, lots of heavy-hitters send their kids to St. Anne's. I had heard of it. What I didn't know is that St. Anne's opened at the very same time that Black parents were waging their strongest fight for integration in New York City, in 1965. Right when a lot of the letter writers would have been looking for schools. And it wasn't just St. Anne's. New progressive private schools were opening and expanding all over the city. Brooklyn Friends School expanded into a new building, and would double its enrollment. They were opening private schools in the South, too. But down there, it was all very explicit. They became known as quote, unquote, "segregation academies," schools for white people who were wholeheartedly committed to avoiding integration. In the North, private schools opened as if they were completely disconnected from everything else that was happening at that very moment. St. Anne's marketed itself as a pioneer, a community of like-minded, gifted kids, no grades. Lots of talk about progressive, child-centered education, the whole child. At one point in my conversation with Carol Netzer I was talking about how integration was happening around his time. And she surprised me by saying, no, not at that time.

chana joffe-walt

No, they were integrating the schools in the '60s, though.

chana joffe-walt

That's how easy it was to walk away from integration in New York City. You could do it without even knowing you'd thrown a bomb over your shoulder on the way out.

[music]

Here is what I think happened over those five years between the writing of the letters in 1963 and not sending their kids to the school in 1968. Those five years were a battle between the Board of Education's definition of integration and the actual integration that black parents wanted. For black parents, integration was about safe schools for their children, with qualified teachers and functioning toilets, a full day of school. For them, integration was a remedy for injustice. The Board of Ed, though, took that definition and retooled it. Integration wasn't a means to an end. It was about racial harmony and diversity. The Board spun integration into a virtue that white parents could feel good about. And their side triumphed. That's the definition of integration that stuck, that's still with us today. It's the version of integration that was being celebrated 50 years later, at the French Cultural Services Building at the Gala for SAS.

In some of my calls with the white letter writers, a few people mentioned that yes, they wanted integration. But also, they wanted the school closer to them. They weren't comfortable sending their kids over to the other side of the neighborhood. Which brings me to one final letter from the other side of the neighborhood. One I haven't told you about, from the I.S. 293 folder in the archives. It's one of the only letters, as far as I can tell, that is not from a white parent. It's from the Tenants Association for the Gowanus Houses, a housing project, home to mostly Black and Puerto Rican families. They also wanted a school closer to them. The letter from the Tenants Association is formal and straightforward. It says, please build the school on the original site you proposed, right next to the projects. That way, they explained, our kids won't have to cross many streets. We'll get recreational facilities, which we desperately need. And it'll be close to the people who will actually use it. The letter says they represent over 1,000 families. The white families, they numbered a couple dozen. Still, in the name of integration, the white letter writers got what they wanted - a new building close to where they lived, that they did not attend. Note the Black and Puerto Rican families we're not asking to share a school with white people. They were not seeking integration. That's not what their letter was about. They were asking for a school, period. The school they got was three blocks further than they wanted. And from the moment it opened, I.S. 293 was de facto segregated - an overwhelmingly Black and Puerto Rican school. What were those years like, once the white parents pushing their priorities went away? Once there were no more efforts at feel-good integration, and the community was finally left alone? Was that better? That's next time, on "Nice White Parents."

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Julie Snyder and me, with editing on this episode from Sarah Koenig, Nancy Updike and Ira Glass. Neil Drumming is our Managing Editor. Eve Ewing and Rachel Lissy are our editorial consultants. Fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan, with additional research from Lilly Sullivan. Archival research by Rebecca Kent. Music supervision and mixing by Stowe Nelson. Our Director of Operations is Seth Lind. Julie Whitaker is our Digital Manager. Finance management by Cassie Howley and production management by Frances Swanson. The original music for Nice White Parents is by The Bad Plus, with additional music written and performed by Matt McGinley. A thank you to all the people and organizations who helped provide archival sound for this episode, including the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Andy Lanset at WNYC, Ruta Abolins and the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia and David Ment, Dwight Johnson and all the other people at the Board of Education archives. Special thanks to Francine Almash, Jeanne Theoharis, Matt Delmont, Paula Marie Seniors, Ashley Farmer, Sherrilyn Ifill, Monifa Edwards, Charles Isaacs, Noliwe Rooks, Jerald Podair and Judith Kafka.

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

A focus of Episode Two is the history of segregation in New York City public schools and conflicting efforts made to advance integration and preserve the status quo.

De Facto Segregation: While New York does not have de jure segregation (mandated by law, as was the case in the Jim Crow South), the city does have a long history of de facto segregation - in which the school system remains segregated even though there are no laws telling students they must attend a segregated school. Are these two types of segregation the same thing, just with different names? Do they have the same negative effects on children and communities? Or are de jure and de facto segregation fundamentally different? Why?

Separate and Unequal: In speaking about New York City public schools in the 1950s, the host states, "This at exactly the same time the Board of Education was making a film promoting the virtues of integration. It was effectively running a dual, segregated and unequal school system." Are cities and districts like New York still running dual, segregated and unequal school systems today, in which wealthier white students have smaller class sizes with more experienced teachers and better resources than Black and brown children? What evidence do you have to support your answer?

Integration: Mae Mallory was a civil rights activist and mother who fought for school desegregation in New York City in the 1950s and '60s. The host states: "The Board of Education had defined integration as a multiracial choir. It was a virtue in and of itself. Mae Mallory saw integration as a remedy, a way to get the same stuff everyone else had - functioning toilets, books, certified teachers, a full school day. Integration was a means to an end." How do you see integration? Is it a "multiracial choir," a means to an end, or something else? Do you think having integrated schools is important for the common good? Why? Do you think having integrated schools is important for you - or for your children? Why? And if yes, what should those integrated schools look like?

Committees and Task Forces: Why do you think the New York City school system and the city's many mayors have spent so many decades studying how to integrate the public schools? Why do you think so many school systems in the United States are still segregated more than 60 years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education?

Freedom Day: A school boycott on Feb. 3, 1964, led by Black and Puerto Rican activists and families, involved almost half a million students, nearly half the entire New York City public school system. But the host reports that the press barely covered Freedom Day. She doesn't mention it, but The New York Times editorial board did publish an editorial a few days before the planned boycott, criticizing Freedom Day even before it happened. It begins:

The civil rights leaders who seem to be hellbent on staging a Negro and Puerto Rican student boycott of New York City's schools on Monday have set out on a reckless course. They could hardly wait for the new Board of Education plan for better integration and better education before turning loose their mimeograph machines to denounce it.

It continues:

A boycott, possibly followed by other demonstrations and more boycotts, can do no good. It is, under the circumstances, utterly unreasonable and unjustified. It is the violent, illegal approach of adult‐encouraged truancy.

Why do you think the press barely covered Freedom Day, and when it did, it used the word "violent" - as we hear in the podcast or read in the Times editorial? And, why do you think the press gave wider coverage to a much smaller protest held later that same month by white parents opposing court-ordered busing?

No Mandates: The host states, "The New York City Board of Education wanted to appeal to hearts and minds. They wanted to sell white people on the virtues of integration." Do you think integration can happen "naturally," without mandates? Do you think white parents - or any parents with access to better schools and resources - would be willing to share them with the larger community? Should they be willing?

Unintended Consequences: Episode Two begins and ends with Brooklyn parents in the 1960s writing letters to the Board of Education. Dozens of white parents advocated moving a new school building, yet to be built, closer to their neighborhood so the school could become integrated. Black and Puerto Rican families, represented by the Tenants Association for the Gowanus Houses, asked the city to keep the school closer to their homes, because they would be the ones who sent their children to the school. In the end, the city built the school closer to the white families, but the Black and Puerto Rican families were the ones who ended up attending the new segregated school.

When you reflect on this episode, do you think the white parents did anything wrong? And if yes, was their mistake writing the letters in the first place? Was it not communicating with the local Black and Puerto Rican families who lived just a few blocks away? Was it not sending their children to the new school after it was built closer to their neighborhood? Was it being naïve about what integration actually meant?

Your Community: What is the history of race, segregation and integration in your community? What are the consequences of that history today?

Change: Have you ever tried to speak up or create a change in your classroom, school or district? Why or why not? If you have tried to create change, how did you go about it and what happened?

Back to Nice White Parents

transcript

Listen to Episode Three.

Reported by Chana Joffe-Walt; produced by Julie Snyder; edited by Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by Eve L. Ewing and Rachel Lissy; and sound mix by Stowe Nelson

We saw what happened when white families came into one Brooklyn middle school. But what happens when they stay out?

chana joffe-walt

I.S. 293 opened in 1968. Renee Flowers was part of the first generation of students to walk in the door.

renee flowers

And you're talking about the building on Court Street. I went to school there. It was nice. And it was brand new. It was nice.

chana joffe-walt

The Gowanus neighborhood where Renee grew up, and still lives - the housing project's three blocks away from the school. Renee went to I.S. 293, graduated. And she kept going back to the building to play handball, to vote, to attend graduations. Renee coaches the neighborhood drill team, and they'd perform at the school. For years, she'd regularly go watch the basketball tournament. Renee is in her 60s. She's just retired from the post office. The school has been a fixture for most of her life. She knows every part of the building.

chana joffe-walt

As we we're talking, she closes her eyes. She can see it.

chana joffe-walt

Renee has this stack of old I.S. 293 yearbooks in her apartment - even the years she wasn't a student there.

She'll take the yearbooks out for Gowanus Old Timers Day every August. Renee is Black. She has never wondered why I.S. 293 is located on Court Street; why they all had to walk to the edge of the white neighborhood to get to school. She never heard about the battle over where the building would be located or the white parents who wanted a fringe school. Renee just knew the school was theirs. Imani Gayle Gillison told me the same thing - 293 was ours.

chana joffe-walt

Imani was very eager to talk about 293, which I found charming because she didn't even go there. She says she was one of the only Gowanus kids whose parents entered a Catholic school, and she's never forgotten it. She was so jealous of her brothers, all her friends at I.S. 293. They called it I.S. or Nathan Hale Junior High School. The kids would all walk home together in a big group. And Imani remembers seeing them in their green Nathan Hale sweaters, hearing them sing the Nathan Hale school song.

chana joffe-walt

From Serial Productions, I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. This is "Nice White Parents." We're telling the story of one public school building to see if it's possible to create a school that is equal and integrated. This episode - what if we dropped the integrated part?

[music]

I was talking to an academic recently, a sociologist and writer who studies education, a Black woman named Eve Ewing. I was telling her what I was working on. And at some point in the conversation, she asked me, why are you so obsessed with integration? It threw me. I guess I'm obsessed with integration because it feels like an obvious goal. It's the best way to equalize schools, empirically in terms of test scores and outcomes. But also, segregation is antithetical to the American promise - life, liberty. Segregation is anathema to all of that. It's caste. But after seeing what happened at SIS, the year the new white families came in, and after learning about how the school was founded on a false ideal of integration, how unreliable white families were, how they paid no attention to the actual voices and needs of families of color, I don't know. Why expend energy chasing white people who don't actually want to participate or don't even show up? Maybe it's better to set aside integration entirely and focus instead on the kids who do show up. For decades after it opened, I.S. 293 was largely a segregated school. There weren't any white parents pushing their wispy ideas of integration. The school was pretty much left alone. I'd seen what happens when nice white parents came inside the building. Was it better when they stayed out?

To start, I should say that I.S. 293 was not an experiment in Black self-governance. There were schools like that opening all over the country - schools founded on the premise that you didn't need white families to get a good education. Integration was not the answer. These schools focused on Black power. They developed afrocentric curricula and insisted on people of color in leadership positions. I.S. 293 was not that. It was a pretty average 1970s public school. The principal was white. The teachers were almost all white. The local community school board, also white. The kids were Black and brown. There were always some white kids at 293, but they were a small minority. I wanted to know - was I.S. 293 a good school back then? There wasn't much in the official record - some math and writing scores that weren't great. But aside from that, there was curiously little written about the school. Most schools show up here and there in the archive or in news reports - not 293. which could mean everything was going just fine. Or it could mean the school was falling apart. I found names of some I.S. 293 alumni in Renee's yearbooks.

chana joffe-walt

Was it a good school?

speaker

I don't really remember. I think I was one of the first ones to wear pants.

chana joffe-walt

You were one of the first girls to wear pants?

speaker

Yeah, underneath a skirt. [LAUGHTER]

chana joffe-walt

The pants have nothing to do with how the school was. It's just what she members of this time in her life. She wanted to wear pants. I had a lot of conversations like this. People had fond memories of I.S. 293. People had sad memories. But mostly, they had very specific memories.

chana joffe-walt

I heard about the song that was on repeat the summer before 7th grade, the lighting in the basement, Mr. Barringer, the scary dean, whom everyone called big head Barringer. One I.S. 293 graduate told me what she remembered was a teacher who used her long nails to eat pumpkin seeds in class. I met Sheila Saunders at a barbecue by the Gowanus Houses. She went to 293, so did all of her siblings, friends, nearly everyone else at this barbecue.

chana joffe-walt

Was I.S. 293 a good school during this period of time? The more I asked it, I recognized what a modern-day question that is. This is the way we talk about public schools now - good schools and bad schools. At I.S. 293, there was no school choice. Every neighborhood was zoned to its designated middle school. Apart from the white families, most everyone from the community was there - middle class, working class, poor kids, Black kids, hispanic, dorky, goofy, arty kids. Everyone went. I.S. 293 wasn't good or bad; it was just school. And then something happened at I.S. 293. When I was looking through the Board of Ed archives, the year 1984 stood out. It's the year I.S. 293 starts showing up in the records. That year, a few parents from the school began asking the district superintendent for an investigation into the local community school board. One person, writing on behalf of the 293 Parent Association, suggests an investigation is critical because the board is planning in secret to harm the school. The board, this person says, is, quote, "controlled by people who are out for the real estate interest and have little regard for minorities." Another parent writes, they're unhappy with the local school board because it has, quote, "ceased to act in the best interest of our children." I couldn't really understand from the archive exactly what these parents we're talking about. The first person I thought to ask was Dolores Hadden Smith. So many 293 alumni mentioned Ms. Smith. Ms. Smith worked at 293 longer than anyone else I talked to - 42 years.

chana joffe-walt

She grew up in the neighborhood. Her mom worked at the school, her sister, her brother.

chana joffe-walt

Ms. Smith told me everything was fine. And then in the '80s, they started messing with us, started messing with who they sent to our school.

chana joffe-walt

There's a local news article from 1987 where the principal of 293 says the same thing. He accuses the district of, quote, "skimming off the high-achieving students from his school," specifically poaching white students. Ms. Smith says that just started disappearing.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

OK. So there was something happening behind closed doors, and the local community school board was part of it. I took these claims to Norm Fruchter. He was on the local school board around this time; although, I figured it was unlikely he'd say, why, yes, we did have a secret plot to steal 293's high-achievers and white kids. And yet, that is basically what he said.

chana joffe-walt

Norm says white parents had left his district in the 1970s. They left the public schools entirely or moved out of the city. Black families were also leaving in large numbers, but the school board was completely preoccupied by the white flight. Norm says board members saw a decline in white students as a serious threat.

chana joffe-walt

Their solution? A gifted program.

chana joffe-walt

To get into gifted programs, you had to take a test. Gifted kids would be taught in separate classrooms. They opened gifted programs in select elementary schools. And a new gifted program opened in a different middle school, a school called M.S. 51. This is part of what the people at I.S. 293 were seeing. Their strongest students were being siphoned off. White parents, even when they were not inside 293, were beginning to change the school.

[music]

Parents who were committed to getting their kids in the gifted program could do it.

chana joffe-walt

White parents?

norm fruchter

Yeah.

chana joffe-walt

And what about non-white parents who were committed to getting their kids into the gifted program?

norm fruchter

Well, what you had to also deal with there was a fair amount of bias in the testing administration.

chana joffe-walt

Norm says there were kids of color who were clearly qualified, but were not in the gifted program. And he says this was because the questions were biased, and the people administering the tests were sometimes biased. He also says parents were hiring their own psychologists to test their children and paying for test prep. But also, there was another reason Black and Latino kids were not in the gifted program.

chana joffe-walt

Nadine Jackson might have been one of those kids who would have qualified as gifted. She was a student at I.S. 293, a Black kid from the Gowanus Projects.

chana joffe-walt

Nadine was not kept out of the gifted program because of bias or lack of test prep. She simply had never heard of the program. She went to the school everyone else went to. She started seventh grade at I.S. 293 in 1993. And Nadine was eager to jump in - ready to be delivered to importance with hard work which she put in. Nadine studied computer technology. She played first clarinet in the band. She played Whitney Houston, "I Have Nothing" on clarinet over and over. In her first year, the I.S. 293 band went to perform at another middle school nearby - M.S. 51, the school with the gifted program. When Nadine arrived there, she walked right into an experience a lot of kids have when they leave their school and enter a world of wealthier kids.

chana joffe-walt

M.S. 51 and I.S. 293 were in the same school district. They were governed by the same local community school board, and they were a mile and half away from each other. When I asked Nadine the same question I had asked previous graduates of I.S. 293, what was the school like, she described the feeling of being trapped. She told me, it was normal at 293 to have 42 kids in a class. She said teachers came and went frequently in the middle of the school year. She had six or seven social studies teachers in one year. I was skeptical about the numbers, but I looked into it. And all of this seems entirely plausible for those years. There was a recession. School budgets were decimated. In 1991, New York City proposed 250 million dollars in educational spending cuts. In 1992, 600 million. School programs are being cut mid-year; class sizes ballooned; teachers were moved around, a lot. At the same time, Nadine's district was supporting gifted programs, bussing white kids out of their zoned schools, hiring separate teachers, administering special tests, running an entirely separate educational track. At M.S. 51, the gifted middle school, there were not 40 plus kids in a class; there were 30. The school was written up in a book from the 1990s called "New York City's Best Public Middle Schools." It describes the school's leaders as masters at developing faculty, talent and enthusiasm. The M.S. 51 principal is quoted saying, "when we started the gifted program, we got parents who were more involved, more inquisitive." He then goes on to say, "the gifted program shifted his whole educational approach. It made him recognize that children in early adolescence need close contact with nurturing adults." And he began to hire teachers who he saw as, quote, "warm and comforting." I.S. 293 and M.S. 51 were both public middle schools. But that day she visited M.S. 51, Nadine felt like this school - this is the school that's preparing kids to be someone of importance.

nadine jackson

The education system is better.

The way they talked is different. They were so smart. The children there, they were taking their Regents at a very early stage.

chana joffe-walt

Regents are state tests kids normally take in high school.

chana joffe-walt

After Nadine's out at M.S. 51, she says it made her see her own school differently. I.S. 293, to her, looked like a school for chumps.

chana joffe-walt

In the 1980s when the district started grading specialized programs at other schools, I.S. 293 parents fought back. But Norm Fruchter, the school board member, told me once the gifted programs were in place, they were there to stay. The board was serving a constituency of white parents who believed their kids deserved a program to serve their unique needs. And he says, those parents wielded tremendous power.

chana joffe-walt

They argued that the gifted program, designed to serve white families, was actually an integration program, when, in fact, it was a separate track in the school that kept Black and brown kids from resources from special programs, which is what segregation was designed to do - to separate. This was its latest adaptation, and it wasn't the last. That's after the break.

1994, about halfway through I.S. 293's 60-year history, and here's where things stood - 293 did not have any white parents messing with things inside of the building. But white families in the district were drawing resources away from I.S. 293 by creating specialty gifted programs in other schools. I.S. 293 was separate and increasingly unequal. And that is when Judi Aronson enters the scene - a woman who is not connected to I.S. 293, but was about to be. History is about to repeat itself.

chana joffe-walt

At the same time, Nadine, the nerdy honor roll student was starting junior high school at 293, Judi had a daughter who was finishing elementary school. Judi's daughter was zoned for M.S. 51, the school with the gifted program, but Judi wasn't excited about that school.

chana joffe-walt

Judi had been a special ed teacher in a public school. Then she left the classroom and started working at the Teachers Union, the UFT. Later, she became a school principal and a superintendent. So she'd spent a lot of time thinking about schools - what makes a school successful. And she'd begun to imagine what it would look like to build something better.

chana joffe-walt

Judi got a group of parents together, a planning committee.

[music]

chana joffe-walt

The planning committee put together a 13-page proposal for a new school called the Brooklyn School for Global Citizenship. The local community school board approve it; although, somewhere in the process they dropped the citizenship part - too controversial - and it became the Brooklyn School for Global Studies. OK. So, why am I telling you about the School for Global Studies? Because this brand new school needed a building - the community school board surveyed its options and chose a spot. The School for Global Studies would be located in the basement of I.S. 293.

chana joffe-walt

Nadine was in eighth grade when this happened, September 1994, and she was not into this idea.

chana joffe-walt

An article in the New York Times proclaimed, a miracle of a school opened its doors this fall in Brooklyn, thanks to determined parents who've created with the new principal called, quote, "the Taj Mahal of education." Global Studies had class sizes as small as 18 kids. The curriculum included trips to museums. The students went outdoors to learn, measured shadows for math. They dug in soil for science experiments. The students at 293 saw all of that, as they went about their days at the not Taj Mahal of education, and they were pissed.

chana joffe-walt

Whenever Nadine or the other 293 kids walked by the global studies classes, they'd make sure to bang on the classroom doors. And the 293 teachers and staff, school security officers, the custodian, the principal, they didn't welcome the new school for global cities either. I heard stories from this time about the staff from Global Studies asking to put up student work in the hallways and being told by the long-time 293 custodian, you can't. That's a fire hazard. Global Studies wanted to use the auditorium for a performance - sorry, it's occupied. And I heard this story from the Global Studies principal, a guy named Larry Abrams, who'd been hired to lead what, to him, sounded like such an exciting new school, and then he showed up to work.

chana joffe-walt

Remember how I said history repeats itself?

chana joffe-walt

Judi Aronson did not end up sending her daughter to Global because by the time it opened, her daughter was already in middle school. When her younger son was old enough for middle school, a couple of years later, she didn't send him either.

chana joffe-walt

This is not entirely true. I did speak with one parent from the planning committee who sent her son to Global Studies. Although, she said when they showed up in September, it looked to her like he was the only white boy in the school. She said he had a good experience there. Judi decided what was best for her kids was something else.

[music]

In an effort to appease white parents, the school district had once again made a choice that sidelined 293. White parents had said jump, so the district jumped. And now they were left trying to fill the school for Global Studies, a school that had no obvious constituency. Most of the parents who created it didn't send their kids, and the neighborhood kids already had a school - I.S. 293. This meant, to fill Global Studies, the district had to find kids who weren't happy at their schools, or kids whose schools weren't unhappy with them. Or they had to bank on families randomly applying to a school they'd never heard of.

chana joffe-walt

Within six or seven years, most of the original Global Studies staff had left, including the principal. Within a decade, nobody knew why the school was called Global Studies in the first place. Global Studies became a regular segregated public school, which shared a building with another segregated public school.

[music]

In my experience, schools are immune to long-term memory. They get new principals, new names, a new generation of parents. And they're populated by children who have no reason to care about what came before - clean slate every September. This, I believe, is also what makes it possible for us to keep repeating the same story. We constantly reset the clock and move forward. When we look to diagnose the problems of our public schools, we look at what is in front of us right now. We look forward. Nobody looks backwards to history. And so the question is not how do we stop white families from hoarding all the resources. Instead, the question is, what's going on with the Black kids? This became the question driving the next era at I.S. 293, the latest era of school reform - the mid 1990s right up to today, a time when business people and American presidents and tech company billionaires committed themselves to solving the problem of failing public schools. Basically, it's everything you've heard about schools in the last two decades - charter schools, No Child Left Behind, and accountability, the achievement gap, Race to the Top, these were data-driven initiatives. They assessed the educational landscape and identified schools that were failing - teachers who were not getting results - children who were not performing. At I.S. 293, this meant a flurry of new programs that came and went, sometimes in rapid succession. First, I.S. 293 a grant from RJR Nabisco to break itself up into small academies - smaller schools within the building that would focus on different specialties. A long-time 293 teacher, Carmen Sanchez, told me, after that, everything just started changing. The staff turnover was dizzying.

chana joffe-walt

Ms. Sanchez says one of them came in to run the place, and she opened her staff meeting by promising to fire everyone.

chana joffe-walt

Ms. Smith, Delores Hadden Smith, was in her third decade working at the school when this started changing names. They were The Mathematics Academy, The Academy for Performing and Fine Arts, The School for Integrated Learning Through the Arts. Teachers left. New staff came in, new initiatives. They needed to be smaller, more specialized. They needed more science. They needed a trade. They needed to be a 6 through 12 school, middle and high school. Ms. Smith says this was confusing for the parents, especially the parents in her community, the Gowanus community, parents who went to 293 and knew it as 293. Now, they were asking Ms. Smith, what happened to 293? The School for Integrated Learning Through the Arts, what's that mean?

chana joffe-walt

By this time, public school admissions allowed more choice about where parents sent their kids. So some of these local parents started choosing other schools. 293 was losing students, which meant they were losing money. A new principal came in - and an assistant principal named Jeff Chetirko. By that point, 293 had been renamed The School for International Studies. But not even assistant principal Chetirko knew why. Prospective parents would ask him, why should I send my kids here? What does international mean?

chana joffe-walt

By 2003, SIS had low enrollment and terrible test scores. The state put it on a failing schools list, the dreaded SURR list, Schools Under Registration Review. Being on a failing schools list made it harder to sell the school to prospective families, but it did mean SIS got a chunk of money to turn things around. They bought new reading programs, an academic intervention program. They doubled periods for reading and math. During this time, the leadership was stable - less teacher turnover. The school was less chaotic. The test scores stabilized. Jeff Chetirko says they were feeling good about where things were headed. Still, they had to compete for students. So he hired a marketing firm to help draw families in.

chana joffe-walt

He says the marketing idea didn't attract any local families into the school. Instead, it attracted the attention of the New York Post, which found out the school was trying to market itself, as it had been told to, and wrote a snarky article about it. The headline read, "Lousy Brooklyn Public School Wants to Hire a Press Agent to Enhance Appeal." it goes on to say, quote, "If they build a buzz, the kids will come. That's the thinking at a mediocre Brooklyn Public school with grandiose aspirations." The article ends with the list of suggested marketing slogans for the school. It's mean spirited and racist. Having trouble with English? So is we. The School for International Studies, the best six years of your life. Jaguar pride - where you can go from state champs to state pen. The Jaguars - we score baskets; we just can't count them. Jeff says everyone at the school read it. He distinctly remembers the feeling.

chana joffe-walt

Here is what happened next.

chana joffe-walt

Six years later, I'm standing in a sweaty school gym at a middle school fair for parents. It's 2017, two years after that gala thrown by the French Embassy for SIS. A couple dozen schools are here with information tables. The table for the school for International Studies is mobbed. There's a line of parents waiting to get a chance to talk with someone from the school. A mother named Anissa is near the very back of the school.

chana joffe-walt

After 40 years of being neglected, messed with by the school board, after losing students and losing money, losing the building, being blamed and publicly mocked, SIS was suddenly the hot ticket, as if history had been wiped away. Parents asked the SIS admissions director, can their kids get priority if they have good grades? Extracurriculars? Does attendance count? They want to know if it helps their chances if they show up for a tour.

chana joffe-walt

They want to know, will you have enough space for all these people?

chana joffe-walt

Three years earlier, SIS had 30 sixth graders. What changed? The admissions director is the same. Most of the staff is the same. The building is the same. The test scores are still pretty low. There's an IB program now in French. But the biggest change between the era of being ignored and punished and the era of being celebrated and oversubscribed is that white kids arrived. That's what's different, nine times as many white students.

[music]

Episode Three explores how the choices that families make about where to send their children to school can have a powerful impact on the school system as a whole, and even on the very schools they don't send their children to.

Tracking: Episode Three discusses how the creation in the 1980s of a new gifted and talented program in the local district ended up hurting I.S. 293. Norm Fruchter, a member of the local school board at the time, states that the district "started the program explicitly to maintain a white population." How do programs that enroll students in different tracks perpetuate or exacerbate existing segregation and inequality? What efforts should schools make to ensure that gifted programs are representative of the student body?

Equal Opportunity?: When Nadine Jackson, an honor student at I.S. 293, visited M.S. 51, the gifted school in her district, during an orchestra trip, she was amazed. In the podcast she describes how the visit changed her view of her own middle school experience:

This is where we all went. That's what we knew. That's what our parents knew. It really makes you wonder, do we even have a chance? You're trying to figure out who you are. How do I fit in to society? Where do I put myself? That was hard. It made me feel dumb in a sense. I didn't know anything.

What does Nadine Jackson's experience say about the district's gifted program - and about the separate but unequal schools in New York City?

School Reform: Much of Episode Three is devoted to recounting the history of school reform in the 1990s and 2000s in the I.S. 293 building, from opening a new school in the basement and breaking up the school into small themed academies to implementing new reading programs and scheduling double periods. What do you notice about this flurry of reform efforts? What do you wonder? Does the experience at I.S. 293 connect in any way to your school - and if yes, how?

Segregation: Why have schools historically been segregated in the United States, and not just in the Jim Crow South, for as long as we have had public schools? What is the point of segregation? Who benefits from it? What are the historical roots of it? And why is school segregation so difficult to end more than six decades after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1954?

Choice: How much choice have you - or your family - had in your education? How has your identity (your race, social class and more) affected your ability to make important choices - or not - about your education?

Back to Nice White Parents

transcript

Listen to Episode Four.

Reported by Chana Joffe-Walt; produced by Julie Snyder; edited by Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by Eve L. Ewing; and sound mix by Stowe Nelson

Is it possible to limit the power of white parents?

chana joffe-walt

I want to tell you about another old film I found during my research. It's from 1951. We see a housewife, a white woman - everyone in this film is white. She's sitting in her living room with some neighbors. They're here to solve a problem. [OLD MOVIE PLAYING]

chana joffe-walt

They sit on couches with notepads, deep in discussion. They will solve this problem together. In another scene, a machinist in California approaches his bus, the factory owner, with a request from the workers.

chana joffe-walt

They had. The discussion requires listening, debating and waving your arms a lot, which they do in the film.

chana joffe-walt

Where were they taught the Democratic method, you might ask? Public school, where the housewives taught to problem solve for the safety of the community's children, public school. This film was made by the National Education Association. It's a 25-minute promotional film that spends almost no time inside schools. Instead, it's all about the purpose of public schools, how they prepare us to live together as citizens. We see Americans use their public school training in everyday life, when they sit with their neighbors, debate their bosses, when they go shopping, and drive a car, buy a house. We are all part of a grand play, interdependent - the senator, the homemaker, the factory worker.

chana joffe-walt

Fred the farmer has a nameless wife, whom we see now standing next to him. Fred's wife is trying to resolve a problem. The neighbors want to build a drainage system into a pond. The lowest land for the pond is an orchard that belongs to Fred and his nameless wife. The wife understands that to prevent further flooding, she and Fred will need to sacrifice for the greater good. Fred is not so sure.

chana joffe-walt

Luckily, Fred has the tools to do it.

chana joffe-walt

And thank goodness, because the stakes are high.

chana joffe-walt

chana joffe-walt

Denagee is one of the many students from SIS upstairs, who is eager to tell me about the charter school and its rituals, their silent, controlled lines.

chana joffe-walt

That's his friend Chris saying Storm Troopers. Sometimes they'll hear Success teachers say, make a bubble in your mouth. And then a line of six-year-olds will close their lips and fill their cheeks up with air, that way nobody's talking. Chris and Denagee told me they look like puffer fish.

chana joffe-walt

And they don't?

denagee

No. That's what's so weird.

It helps me think, or it makes me think about - what really happens inside of the classrooms with them to be coming out like that?

chana joffe-walt

The year I was reporting at SIS, The New York Times published a video that showed a particular and alarming moment inside one of the Success classrooms. It was secretly recorded by an assistant teacher, who leaked it, and it went viral. You see a group of first-graders gathered in a circle on a polka-dot rug, sitting legs crossed, hands in their laps. And a teacher is asking one girl to correct a math problem she got wrong.

chana joffe-walt

The girl does not respond. The teacher leans in and repeats.

chana joffe-walt

The girl whimpers, or says something so quiet you can't hear. The entire class is watching. It's silent, intense. The teacher is visibly upset, picks up the child's paper, and rips it in half, points an angry finger to the side of the room.

chana joffe-walt

She goes. The teacher turns to the rest of the circle.

chana joffe-walt

A boy rushes over to do it correctly. But the teacher is not done publicly reprimanding the girl, who's now sitting to the side of the classroom in the calm down chair.

chana joffe-walt

chana joffe-walt

Principal Bishop looks over to the PR person again, as if to say, am I not being clear with this chick? Why isn't she getting it? But I seem to be unable to stop myself from listing all the things I've seen white advantaged parents demand in public schools.

chana joffe-walt

If parents were like, we want this to be a dual language French school, and we can help fund it -

alissa bishop

We don't have - our curriculum is network-based. We're given curriculum. We don't have a language curriculum in our elementary schools.

chana joffe-walt

Or, if parents were like, we want there to be less math, or a different kind of math, or we want there to be a film program, a film program, or whatever, any of those things. Parents are like, we want -

alissa bishop

Yeah, this is our model. It's our model across all of our schools. No changes.

chana joffe-walt

The C.E.O. of Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz, followed up later to tell me, if parents want to give money, they can. But it will be distributed evenly across all of our schools. We can't have our Cobble Hill families getting more than our families in Harlem.

Here's what I started to understand about how Success Academy was limiting the power of white parents. Success was limiting the power of white parents by limiting the power of all parents. I met a dad named Travius Sharpe outside the building one day, a Black guy who grew up in Brooklyn. His son Ethan is at Success.

chana joffe-walt

Upstairs, SIS tripped over itself to meet the demands of new, white parents. Downstairs, all parents at Success Academy are being graded. Even day to day, the Success principal and teachers make sure to remind parents when they're falling down on the job.

chana joffe-walt

One day, in the cafeteria, I met a white mom named Sarah Stanich. Sarah is a financial advisor. Her son's in fourth grade. And she was telling me she likes the school, even though - and then Sarah lowered her voice, pointed at her boy, and said, he's been suspended.

sarah stanich

He's been suspended. And I was not happy about that. And I definitely never had that experience when I was a kid. But -

chana joffe-walt

How old was he when that happened?

sarah stanich

Well, it's happened more than once, embarrassingly.

So kind of young. Maybe third grade, or maybe even second the first time it happened.

chana joffe-walt

How many times has he been suspended?

sarah stanich

A few times, a few times, probably three - but pushing, fighting. And he's really not a fighter, but they're boys, and - and sometimes I think it's kind of harsh. They're young kids. And I know that that's a complaint about suspensions in the schools. But on the other hand, he had warnings, and it wasn't that I think that his teachers had given him given him space and slack in other areas. I have no lingering anger about it.

chana joffe-walt

Overall.

sarah stanich

Yeah. Overall, I've been I feel very lucky to have been able to be a part of this community and be part of this school. Sarah later wrote me to say her kid was actually suspended four times that year. I've reported on discipline in schools and the use of suspensions a lot. I've talked to many mothers of children who have been suspended. Not one of them has been white. Black kids are suspended in New York City schools at five times the rate of white kids. After I met Sarah, I double checked the numbers for the 2017 school year, just to be sure. In the regular New York City public schools that same year, not Success or other charters, but the traditional, public elementary schools, that year, there were 327 suspensions for non-white kids. For white kids, there were only nine. I was so surprised after meeting Sarah when I left the building I called two people, who know a lot about education to say this is what's happening at Success Academy, Cobble Hill. White boys are being suspended, rich, white boys. And they couldn't believe it either. One of them, Noliwe Rooks, a professor at Cornell, said, well, well, how's that for equality?

So white parents can't raise money, they can't ask for special programs, and their kids get suspended. Why are they suddenly OK with equality? I interviewed lots of Success parents.

suzanne gigliotti

We did get a flyer. They put them on the doors. They put them on the doors in the neighborhood.

chana joffe-walt

Suzanne Gigliotti saw the flyer for Success when her son was in preschool. So she looked into it and every other possible school option she had.

suzanne gigliotti

It was in our neighborhood. But more importantly, we toured so many schools, public, private, parochial. We were slated for 58, which is an excellent school. And we did get in there. But Success was head and above any school I'd seen, just the level of excellence. And yeah, nothing matched it. The test scores - almost every parent I spoke with said they were initially drawn to Success Academy because of the excellent test scores. If your measure of success in school is standardized tests - and at Success Academy, it is - this is one of the best schools in the city. The scores are truly remarkable. Success Academy students perform twice as well on state tests as regular New York City public school kids. The vast majority of Success kids pass the tests, 95%, 97%. In your average city public schools, it's less than half. And even more impressive, to me at least, is that the kids at Success are doing well on tests no matter if they're poor, or rich, or Black, or Latino, or Asian, or white. This is the problem that decades of public education reforms have tried to address, the achievement gap. Success Academy was pulling off, not only an integrated school, but an equal integrated school that was closing the achievement gap.

The way Success achieves equality though, some things give me pause.

speaker

What's my first expectation? Lock your hands. Track Kamira. The first expectation is read -

chana joffe-walt

Last year, I went into the Success classrooms.

chana joffe-walt

I didn't see any teachers reprimanding kids or ripping up work, like the one in the video. What I did see were teachers, who issued a constant wall of verbal directions, where to look, what to do, how to sit, delivered in the same and consistent, neutral tone. When a teacher calls on someone, she gives a direction to the class to track the speaker, look at the person speaking. Meanwhile, a second teacher roams and hovers, issuing reminders.

chana joffe-walt

Shana answers correctly.

chana joffe-walt

Success achieves equality, at least in part, through utter uniformity. Every Success Academy across the city uses identical methods, identical curricula, and identical classrooms. The kids sit on the same polka-dot carpet, hands locked in their lap, same signs on the wall, singing the same chants. Even the teachers look the same. They're almost all young white women in cotton dresses and ballet flats just out of college, sometimes the same college. I know this because the classrooms are named after teachers alma maters. And there are three Penn State classrooms.

chana joffe-walt

Education people talk a lot about the difference between equality and equity to a point that I believe is tiresome. But I thought about this difference a lot at Success. Equality means everyone gets the same thing. Equity means everyone gets what they need. Success is equal. Everyone is treated the same. But kids are never all the same. Some kids are chatty in the hallway, or need a minute to think before answering a question. Some kids have a million bucks at home, and some kids don't. A Black girl might respond differently than a white girl to being reprimanded by a white teacher. A single parent with two jobs might have a harder time getting their kid to school on time than, say, a stay-at-home mom with a partner. One of the main criticisms of Success Academy from public education advocates is that Success doesn't actually serve all students, that it has excellent test scores because it serves a select group of students. Kids who don't test well, or can't sit still, they're weeded out of the school. Success Academy vehemently denies this. They point out that they make special accommodations for kids with special needs, and they note that they don't get to choose students because kids get spots in their schools by random lottery. And that's true. But it's also true that lots of parents don't apply to the lottery because they know the school's culture and the demands it makes of families won't work for them. And plenty of kids who do end up at Success don't last long. Maybe they get held back a grade or they're suspended. A civil rights complaint filed on behalf of more than a dozen families alleges their children were regularly removed from class and suspended, seven, 10, 13 times at Success Academy. Most of those families eventually left the school.

I had a thought walking through Success. I suspected that the strict classroom control was partly what made white parents feel comfortable at Success Academy. I'm speculating here. None of the white parents I spoke with told me they chose Success because the school polices Black and brown students so well. And I don't believe this is a conscious thought for anyone. But I do know that white parents bring plenty of unconscious biases to public schools with Black and brown kids, fears that the classrooms will be chaotic, or not challenging, that the kids will be disorderly or threatening. White parents worry that our kids will be harmed. Success Academy completely controls for these fears. Everyone gets excellent test scores. There's no room for misbehavior, no risk of disruption because there are no idle moments. If 30 children need to move from their desks to the rug, it sounds like this.

chana joffe-walt

chana joffe-walt

Back then, Imee told me there's no stopping it. She's worried she couldn't protect what she loved about her school.

chana joffe-walt

If you were right, and the worst case scenario happens, what does that look like in a year or two?

imee hernandez

That there's no more color in this school.

Then there's no more community, which I really hope I'm wrong. That's my biggest fear. Then I would question if my daughter's coming back. I really would.

chana joffe-walt

Imee feared that each year, more and more white families come into SIS until it just became like the other segregated middle schools, where all the white parents fought to enroll their kids. Against the repetition of history, Imee was wrong. What happened at SIS was nothing like she or I expected. That's up next when we go back upstairs.

This past spring, a Black teacher at Success Academy named Fabiola St Hillaire publicly criticized the C.E.O. for not taking a stand after the murder of George Floyd, or acknowledging the effect police violence was having on the families and communities Success serves. After that, more staff, families, and alumni raised alarms about Success, calling some of its practices racist and abusive, its discipline policies, the way white staff and leadership speak to kids and parents of color. In response, the C.E.O. apologized, and Success has released a plan that commits to mandatory bias and sensitivity training for staff. The plan says they will create an Equity Team and review their culture, their relationships with staff, and families, and kids with quote, "an attention and sensitivity to race." I read this plan and thought, huh, there is a school that's already doing many of these things, right in the same building, right upstairs.

chana joffe-walt

It's September, 2019. I'm back at SIS. It's been four years since the French gala and the drama with the PTA. Rob, the dad, who fundraises, he's not here anymore. His son finished middle school. Imee is still here. Her daughter is a junior in high school. And a new crop of sixth graders and their families are settling into the auditorium.

chana joffe-walt

The school is no longer called SIS, the School for International Studies. It's now BHS, the Boerum Hill School for International Studies. They changed the name, again. BHS has a new principal, Nicole Lanzillatto. She gets up on stage, and the staff cheers. Miss Lanzillatto welcomes the new families to BHS.

chana joffe-walt

Miss Lanzillatto lists the ways the school reflects the world, race, ethnicity, language, gender.

chana joffe-walt

Miss Lanzillatto says BHS is going for true equity. She says the word equity three times in this welcome speech. Miss Lanzillatto is white, chatty, well-liked, with black hair that's styled straight up. The hair is really Miss Lanzillatto's defining feature. Picture boy band pompadour. She's worked here most of her professional career. The year white families arrived at SIS, Miss Lanzillatto was the assistant principal. She won't say anything bad about that year. It was a learning experience. It's a process her predecessor, Ms. Juman, talks about it the same way. Remember? Principals - diplomatic. They're careful not to place blame, but both of them said after that year, it was clear they needed to intervene. One of the first things Miss Lanzillatto did as principal was request special permission to reserve 40% of the seats for kids who get free and reduced price lunch. The majority of kids who get free and reduced price lunch are kids of color. And Miss Lanzillatto didn't want the school to flip. She didn't want Black and brown kids to get pushed out. The assistant principal told me they wanted to make sure the school did not become colonized. Some things here have changed. They got rid of the foundation, the Brooklyn World Project Rob and the other white parents had created. They scrapped some of the French programming, hired more teachers and staff of color. And one of the most striking changes I noticed - spend 10 minutes of the school, and you can't not notice - Miss Lanzillatto is talking directly and constantly about race and equity. She told me everyone here needs to be on alert for racist habits and ideas. They need to aggressively address them, whenever they pop up, in the cafeteria, in the classroom.

chana joffe-walt

Coming back to equity. I could not get over how much time and energy the school puts into ensuring equity, not equality, equity. It's almost like the obsessive focus Success puts on making sure everything is the same is exactly matched by the obsessive focus BHS just puts on recognizing everyone is not the same. BHS formed an Equity Committee of staff and students a few years ago. They looked for bias in the curriculum, in the signs on their walls and the books on their shelves. They analyzed achievement data, discipline data, where they could clearly see that the school punished Black boys more harshly than other students. So they revamped their entire approach to discipline, created a restorative Justice Department. They applied for grants to help pay for this to train their teachers on implicit bias and then train them again. They brought in experts.

chana joffe-walt

Last fall, I watched two equity consultants, Cornelius and Kass Minor, show a group of BHS teachers how to observe racial dynamics in their school. This involved teachers walking around in a huddle with clipboards, taking diligent notes as kids walk through the hallways.

chana joffe-walt

Mr. Minor is full of fun things the teachers should look for.

chana joffe-walt

They all take turns peering through the small window of a classroom door. They take more notes. Later, the teachers meet as a group. And one teacher, Stacy Ann Manswell, explains her observations from a math class.

chana joffe-walt

The teachers talked about this moment in depth, what it might mean, what messages the kids were picking up in their school about race, about who's important, who's bad, who's smart. And it's not just the staff. The administration is telling white parents that their mere presence in the school does not make it integrated. They have to work at making this place fair.

chana joffe-walt

One Saturday morning, a group of two dozen parents gathered in the BHS library for something called Family Academy. This event was open to everyone, but mostly white parents showed up. And many of them shared that they had never really talked about race very much when they were growing up.

chana joffe-walt

Assistant Principal Meghan Casey walks went through a workshop on race and racism in America and child development. I think about how just a few years ago, the buzzword in this very school was diversity. Everyone is all about celebrating diversity. But now, Meghan Casey tells this room of parents diversity is not the goal. Having a diverse school does not mean we have an integrated school. We need to work on that to get to an integrated school. She says they surveyed BHS students last year, asking them about their experiences.

chana joffe-walt

It's a little jarring to hear school leaders telling parents, even though everything looks OK, it's not. Principal Lanzillatto says she knows it can be hard to hear some of this stuff.

chana joffe-walt

Is that the point of a school? When Miss Lanzillatto said this, I got stuck on the phrase. What is the point of a public school? We don't seem to have any kind of unified vision. Maybe there was one back when they made that old film about public schools teaching us about democracy and how to live together. But we don't have a shared vision now. What we have is choice. You can choose your vision for a public school. You can go to the test score school, like Success Academy, or the racial justice school, like BHS. There is no city policy that says every school needs to be integrated and equitable. It's up to us. If we want that, we can choose it. For families with the most power, the most choices, that means we get to choose. Do we want to play fair or not? At BHS, families were choosing equity, white advantaged families. I didn't see anyone leave the room at that parents workshop, or seem upset, or blamed at all. The parents I met at BHS of all races were pretty happy with the school. They seemed bought in. Meanwhile, the test scores at be adjust have improved dramatically. There's still an achievement gap, but it seems to be closing. Black boys are no longer being disciplined at much higher rates than everyone else. And the kids seem happy, warm, and confident, and adept at talking about things like race and power. One day though, I heard a rumor. It was going around the high school. Kids were saying the PTA was stealing money from the high school and giving it to the middle school. I heard it first in the library from a group of 10th graders. They said the PTA had taken $1,500 to create a garden, and they were pissed. Later, I heard it again from a tenth grader named Farzana. And it wasn't $1,500 anymore.

chana joffe-walt

This was meaningful because the BHS middle school is much whiter and larger than the high school. And despite all the focus on racial equity for the past few years, the PTA leadership at BHS is now almost all white, a lot of middle school parents, which has not escaped the notice of students, who have been encouraged by their school to notice such things and call them out. A girl named Paola told me we have to keep watching them because there's no one there representing us. My mom works. She can't go to PTA meetings.

chana joffe-walt

That's Jeremiah jumping in. Jeremiah is a kid who jumps in. He's the guy you go to if you're feeling angry about something unjust, and what you want more than anything is someone who will feel just as angry as you do. Jeremiah tells Paola this is ridiculous. I'm going to go to the PTA and just tell them straight up.

chana joffe-walt

I wasn't sure they had the details exactly right. But I did think, yeah, here we go again. The mostly white PTA probably is manipulating where money goes. So I looked into it, and it wasn't true. The PTA did not steal money from the high school. It did get money for a garden, but it was grant money, not regular PTA money. Plus, the garden is mostly for the culinary program, which mostly serves the high school. Jeremiah texted me a few days after we spoke to say, sorry to bother you, but I think I might have been a little too critical of the school. Is it possible to do a follow-up interview? He was mad at himself and his friends for believing the rumor. He was mad that he said it to me and looked stupid.

chana joffe-walt

What do you mean by leftover feelings?

chana joffe-walt

It's always been that. It took me a while to get Jeremiah to say more about what he meant by that. Jeremiah is 15 years old. When he was in third grade, the city closed his mostly Black school - called it failing. His mom, a Black woman, fought the school closing as hard as she could - went to every meeting. It happened anyway. The city put a charter school in the building. And it also opened a new small school designed to appeal to the newly gentrified neighborhood. It had a global studies curriculum and a dual language Spanish program. Jeremiah went there third through fifth grade. Then he went to SIS for middle school, the year the white kids came in. Suddenly, his science class was sometimes taught in French. The after school programs he wanted to go to, also French, which he didn't love, for obvious reasons.

chana joffe-walt

Right, Jeremiah, a Black kid, believed a rumor that white parents in the PTA were stealing from him and his classmates because he understands that this is how schools work. He has leftover feelings. Jeremiah likes the new BHS, and he says it does feel more integrated and more equal. I told him about some of the white parents I had been meeting at the school, who seemed truly committed to integration.

chana joffe-walt

That's probably true. White parents are opting in to be at BHS right now. But they can just as easily opt out. Historically, they have.

When this school building first opened its doors years ago, Black and Puerto Rican parents were demanding integrated equal schools city wide for everybody. They weren't asking for one curated school or a small network of schools where people could integrate, if they wanted to. They were asking the Board of Education to have a plan for all schools. They were asking for things to go differently than they have for all of history. Next time, on "Nice White Parents," things go differently.

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Julie Snyder and me, with editing on this episode from Sarah Koenig and Ira Glass. Neil Drumming is our managing editor. Eve L. Ewing is our editorial consultant. Fact checking and research by Ben Phelan. Additional reporting from Emmanuel Dzotsi, Jessica Lussenhop and Alvin Melathe. Music supervision and mixing by Stowe Nelson with production help from Aviva DeKornfeld. Our director of operations is Seth Lind. Julie Whitaker is our digital manager. Finance management by Cassie Howley, and production management by Frances Swanson. Original music for "Nice White Parents" is by The Bad Plus with additional music written and performed by Matt McGinley. Film clips, courtesy of the National Education Association and C-span Video Library. Special thanks to Tina Priceman, Johanna Miller, Leonie Haimson, Jill Cysner, Clayton Harding, Kate Taylor and Ana Espada. At The New York Times, thank you to Kelly Doe and Jason Fujikuni. And at Studio Rodrigo, thanks to Khoi Uong, Becki Choe, Nick Emrich and Christina No.

"Nice White Parents" is produced by Serial Productions, a New York Times Company.

In Episode Four we learn about two integrated public schools with very different approaches to pedagogy and to striving toward equity.

Public Education: Episode Four begins with a film made in 1951 by the National Education Association that tries to illustrate how public schools "prepare us to live together as citizens." Ms. Joffe-Walt references Horace Mann, an early advocate for public education who believed that "America and democracy cannot survive without public education. We need common schools where rich and poor come together to solve problems, generate 'fellow feeling.' Public schools, the great equalizer."

What do you think is the purpose of public education? Do you agree with Horace Mann that American democracy cannot survive without it? Do you believe that public schools should be the "great equalizer"? Why?

Equity Versus Equality: This episode explores two different schools housed in the same I.S. 293 building: Success Academy, a charter elementary school, and Boerum Hill School for International Studies, a public middle and high school. The host states that Success Academy is focused on equality: "Success achieves equality, at least in part, through utter uniformity. Every Success Academy across the city uses identical methods, identical curricula and identical classrooms." She states that B.H.S. is focused on equity: "Coming back to equity. I could not get over how much time and energy the school puts into ensuring equity - not equality, equity. It's almost like the obsessive focus Success puts on making sure everything is the same is exactly matched by the obsessive focus B.H.S. just puts on recognizing everyone is not the same."

The host makes a clear distinction between equality and equity: "Equality means everyone gets the same thing. Equity means everyone gets what they need." Do you think this distinction is important? Do you think one goal is more important than the other? Can a school achieve equality without also achieving equity? Why? What examples of equality or equity do you observe or experience in your school?

And our white kids over all said it feels like I'm in a Benetton ad, and it's so diverse, and lovely, and I'm not experiencing racism, or racial bias, or implicit bias here at school. It's great. And our kids of color were saying they feel less loved, less seen. They talked - though they didn't use this language - they talked about stereotype threat, they talked about implicit bias.

Why do you think this difference in experiences exists at the same school? Do you think a similar difference exists in your school - in which white students have a different experience from students of color? To what extent does racism or racial bias exist in your school? How much racism do you face in your daily life?

Yeah. You're a part of it. Thanks, but are you just - do you genuinely care, or is it, everyone's doing it? When it's not beneficial to the white families, it's going to be changed. And history repeats itself. So when this integration isn't beneficial, then it'll go right back to where it was before.

Do you agree with Jeremiah's skepticism about white families' commitment to integration - and to the good of his school? Why?

Episode Five looks at what happens when parents with power - the 'nice white parents' featured in the series - hold the district accountable for integrating schools.

Coded Language: Neal Zephyrin, a Black member of the District 15 Working Group and Parent Council, talked about white parents in the working group who said, "We know my kid's going to suffer in a classroom. And behavioral issues are going to occur. And the school academic standard is going to go down. And to me, I look at that as code word, code language." Mr. Zephyrin considered those descriptions to be " coded language," or seemingly race-neutral language that disguises a person's true feelings about race? Are you familiar with coded language? What are examples you have heard when people don't want to mention race directly?

A Failure to Communicate: The host comments, "Something I've noticed about white parents who want to create change in schools is often they only talk to other white parents, because that's who they know. Even if they live in New York City, where the vast majority of public school families are not white, white parents talk to white parents." Why do you think this consistently happens throughout the history of I.S. 293? What are the challenges of meeting and talking to people from different backgrounds, even in a diverse city? And what are the limitations of organizing to make positive social change in that way?

The System: The podcast focuses on the power that white parents wield in a Brooklyn school and district. It also discusses how Black and brown parents are often neglected, pushed aside or berated, even when they organize in huge numbers. But there is another major actor in the history of separate and unequal schools in New York City, and that is the school bureaucracy. What responsibility does the school system - and the people who run it - have for the history at I.S. 293? What responsibility does the bureaucracy have for the city's largely segregated schools? Why do you think the system has moved so slowly in trying to desegregate the city's schools? What do you think could be done to make the system act?

Student Organizing: While the focus of the podcast series is on parents, Ms. Joffe-Walt mentions "well-organized students of color" who were "pushing the mayor to do something about segregation." In New York City, students staged a walkout at Beacon High School to protest admission policies and have followed the mayor across the country to confront him on school arrests. In 2019, The Times covered the stories of six student activists who are trying to change their schools. What actions are students in your district taking to create change in schools? How can you get involved?

Apology and Acknowledgment: Tracey Pinkard, a Black woman who graduated from I.S. 293, asked, "Are we going to actually publicly acknowledge the fact that this has been an issue for how many years? And how many - how many families have suffered from this type of lack of diversity or resources in schools?" Based on what you've learned about the history of I.S. 293, do you think an apology is owed to families? Who should make that apology, and what would it look or sound like? What about in other communities or nationally? Should an apology be made for segregated, unequal schools?

Meritocracy?: During one of the District 15 working group workshops, a white dad said, "Isn't it good that the system rewards working hard and merit?" To which a Latina mom asked, "But does it reward merit? Doesn't it just reward access to resources? If you audition for the Performing Arts school and your kid has been getting dance programming since she was 3 - my kid never had that at her elementary school." To what extent, if any, do you believe access to a good public education should be based on merit? What are the strengths of a merit-based system and what are the limitations? How do merit-based systems in schools perpetuate inequalities, and are there any ways to rectify that?

An Integration Plan: What do you think of District 15's new integration plan? How is the plan, and the long process that yielded the plan, similar and different from other initiatives that white parents in the district had pushed for in the past? What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this plan? Do you think it will work? Could it work in other parts of New York City as well, or in other parts of the country? Why, or why not?

"Interest Convergence": Derrick Bell, a legal scholar and civil rights advocate, created the term "interest convergence" to describe the theory that Black people achieve an expansion of civil rights only when white Americans benefit, when interests converge. Ms. Joffe-Walt applies this theory to District 15's integration plan and how it became official policy. She wonders, if white people in the district had been satisfied with the old middle school admissions policy, if things hadn't gotten so intense and competitive, would they have supported the new integration plan? Do you think Ms. Joffe-Walt is being overly cynical? Or do you think the interest convergence theory accurately applies in this situation? What examples from the five podcast episodes, or from your own community, support your conclusion?

Unanswered Questions: Chana Joffe-Walt concludes Episode Five with these questions: "White children are the minority in District 15 and in New York City public schools and in American public schools. What about the interests of all the other parents who are not white or not advantaged? What about parents like Laura Espinoza, who did not especially care about diversity, but cared deeply about smaller class sizes? How does that happen? What about parents whose primary concern is better reading instruction or better special ed services or sports programs or functioning air conditioning in their kids' classrooms? How can we have equitable schools if our public institutions will only respond to these demands if they happen to align with the interests of white parents?" Do these questions resonate with you? Does the podcast series provide any answers?

Lingering Thoughts: What are you still thinking about? What sat uneasily with you? Whom do you want to talk to more, if you could have a conversation from the show? What questions do you still have?

A Bright Future: Can you envision a future in which all children in your community have access to a quality education? What would that look like in your school or district? What steps do you need to take to move toward that future? What steps do we need to take collectively to make that happen?

After listening to all five episodes, reflect on the three essential questions we posed at the beginning of this guide. Has your opinion changed in any way? Do you respond to those questions differently after listening to the podcast?

Why do you think the podcast was called "Nice White Parents"? Do you think the title works - or can you think of a better one? What do you think about labeling the parents featured in this podcast as "nice white parents"?

How well do you think the host navigates discussing a very complex and sensitive topic throughout this series? Why?

New York City public schools remain one of the most segregated districts in the nation. The district includes 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools. The current demographic makeup of the public school student population is 40.6 percent Hispanic, 25.5 percent Black, 16.2 percent Asian and 15.1 percent white. Half of all those public schools have over 90 percent Black and Hispanic students. And 72.8 percent of the city's public school students are from economically disadvantaged households. "Nice White Parents" takes place in a gentrified neighborhood in brownstone Brooklyn. Do you think the themes, issues and arguments raised in the series are relevant to the rest of the city's public schools? Are they relevant to your own community's schools? What feels most relevant, and what doesn't?

Do you agree with the narrator's claim that limiting the power of white families is essential for progress to be made in public schools? Why? If you don't agree with her claim, what is your counterargument?

Now, deepen your post-listening discussion with these questions:

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'Nice White Parents' Discussion Guide (Published 2020)

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This companion guide invites families, students and educators to have a conversation about the goals of public education in America ... and the relationship between race, social class and a quality education.

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A Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast on what it means to be human.

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A big conversation to live by starting NEXT WEEK - every Thursday - from September 21.

Loss - and love. AI - and the intelligence that lives in our bodies.

Kerry Washington, Kate Bowler, Reid Hoffman, Latanya Sweeney, Nick Cave, Baratunde Thurston ... and more.

Subscribe, tell your friends, and buckle your (metaphorical) seatbelts.

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On Being with Krista Tippett | The On Being Project

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A new season of shows is now live for binging, joining beloved classics: Mary Oliver, John O'Donohue, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, and so much more.

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, is a safe place to have the uncomfortable conversations about race that many people have never been able to hav...

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A MERICA'S PROBLEM with racism can be divided into two parts. One contains all the myriad injustices that still blight African-American lives a century and a half after the end of slavery. The other is the way that factions on the right exploit racial division as a political tool. An example of the first occurred on May 25th on a shabby street corner in Minneapolis, when George Floyd was killed by a white policeman. An example of the second occurred on July 3rd, at Mount Rushmore, against the monumental backdrop of the country's greatest presidents, when Donald Trump sought to inflame a culture war centred on race to boost his chances of a second term. To be successful, a campaign for racial justice needs to deal with both.

Leaders like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King used vigorous protest and relentless argument to push society towards their vision of equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Most Americans still hew to that classical liberal ideal as do many of those who marched with justified anger over the killing of Mr Floyd. But a dangerous rival approach has emerged from American universities (see article). It rejects the liberal notion of progress. It defines everyone by their race, and every action as racist or anti-racist. It is not yet dominant, but it is dynamic and it is spreading out of the academy into everyday life. If it supplants liberal values, then intimidation will chill open debate and sow division to the disadvantage of all, black and white.

The premise underpinning this ideology is correct: that racial inequality is shockingly persistent. Even though attitudes to race have improved, the quality of African-American lives has not kept pace. A third of black boys born in 2001 will probably spend time locked up, compared with one in 17 white boys. In 1968 black households earned around 60% as much as white households, and owned assets that were less than 10% of those of a typical white family. They still do.

This ideology also has some valid insights. Racism is sustained by unjust institutions and practices. Sometimes, as in policing, this is overt. More often, in countless small put-downs and biases, it is subtle but widespread and harmful.

But then the ideology takes a wrong turn, by seeking to impose itself through intimidation and power. Not the power that comes from persuasion and elections, but from silencing your critics, insisting that those who are not with you are against you, and shutting out those who are deemed privileged or disloyal to their race. It is a worldview where everything and everyone is seen through the prism of ideology-who is published, who gets jobs, who can say what to whom; one in which in-groups obsess over orthodoxy in education, culture and heritage; one that enforces absolute equality of outcome, policy by policy, paragraph by paragraph, if society is to count as just.

It is tempting to see such ideas as nothing more than overheated campus radicalism. And, true enough, they have not yet taken over a political party. When people speak of ending white privilege, most of them have good things in mind like inclusion and justice. But ideas are important, and the spread of campus terminology into newsrooms and boardrooms invites in ideologues. Their approach is already taking a toll. In universities research agendas are being warped. Outside them, public shaming and intimidation have been curbing debate.

The pity is that these ideas will not solve America's problems with race. They will not eliminate inequality because they are a poor way to bring about beneficial change. Unless you can freely analyse causes and question orthodoxies you will not be able to solve problems. And unless you can criticise people and practices without fear of being called out, you will not be able to design effective policies and then go on to refine them.

The new race theory blocks progress in another way, too. The barriers to racism can be dismantled only when they are exposed-and so they must be, however painful. But the false idea that ingrained racism will forever block African-Americans at every turn is a barrier in its own right.

And, by focusing on power and division, this ideology only creates more space for some on the right to exploit race as a tool. A fundamental belief in power above persuasion frustrates coalition-building. Essential allies are not carried along, but forced along. When every transaction at work, at home, or at the school gate is seen through a prism of racial power, no encounter between different races can be innocent.

The new ideology of race is not just wrong and dangerous, it is also unnecessary. Liberalism can offer a fairer, more promising route to reform. It asserts the dignity of the individual and the legal, civil and moral equality of all people, whatever the colour of their skin. It believes in progress through argument and debate, in which reason and empathy lift truthful ideas and marginalise bigotry and falsehood.

Liberalism thrives on a marketplace of ideas, so diversity has a vital role. New voices and experiences enrich the debate. Liberalism does not fight power with power, which risks replacing one abusive regime with another. Instead it uses facts and evidence, tested in debate, to help the weak take on the strong.

Liberalism is all about progress, including about putting right its mistakes-and there have been many, especially over race, including finding reasons to accommodate imperialism and slavery. That is one reason why, in the 250 years in which it has been influential, humanity has seen unprecedented material, scientific and political gains, as well as a vast extension of social and political rights. Progress on racial inequities has been part of this-as in South Africa, where liberals joined forces with the trade unions and communists to sink apartheid.

Liberals can help in America, too. Much of the material gulf between African-Americans and whites can be bridged with economic policies that improve opportunity. You do not need to build a state based on identity. Nor do you need tools like reparations, which come with practical difficulties and have unintended consequences. Economic policies that are race-neutral, which people qualify for because of poverty, not the colour of their skin, can make a big difference. They have a chance of uniting Americans, not dividing them. If the mood now really is for change, they would be politically sellable and socially cohesive.

Our Briefing lays out what some of these policies might look like. Top of the list is tackling the housing segregation that is central to America's racial economic inequality. The reform of zoning laws and the grant of rent-assistance vouchers are the chief ingredients. That would bring many benefits, improving public services and lessening violence. More integrated housing would integrate schools too and, given America's locally financed education, mean that more would be spent on black children. Affordable measures, including advice and modest cash grants, have been shown to boost graduation from college. A third tool is the tax system. The earned-income tax credit tops up wages of working adults. A child allowance would cut poverty. A baby bond would help shrink the wealth gap.

In the past liberals have helped bring about change when society faced a challenge to the status quo, as when reforms limited child labour and won women the vote. If America has reached such a moment today, it must not resort to identity politics-and suffer intolerance, intimidation and division. Instead, for reform on race that works, it must look to liberalism. ■

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The new ideology of race"

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A MERICA'S PROBLEM with racism can be divided into two parts. One contains all the myriad injustices that still blight African-American lives a century and a half after the end of slavery. The other is the way that factions on the right exploit racial division as a political tool.

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21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge​

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21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge​

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Short, Coffee Break Length

The Disturbing History of the Suburbs, An Adam Ruins Everything episode that quickly and humorously educates how redlining came to be (6 minutes)

What Would You Do?: Bicycle Thief Episode ABC's popular show explores the impact of racial and gender bias and prejudice at a family friendly park. Before this video, would you have anticipated this differential treatment?

Medium, Lunch Break Length

Munroe Bergdorf on racism, trans activism and acceptance English activist and model Munroe Bergdorf, known for speaking her mind on trans issues, racism and misogyny, talks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy about her own transition, the controversy that led to her being dropped by L'Oreal and why tolerance is not enough (38 mins)

How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them, TED Talk by Vernā Myers, encourages work vigorously to counter balance bias by connecting with and learning about and from the groups we fear (19 minutes)

Long, Sit On the Couch Length

Race In America: Fighting for Justice Bryan Stevenson interview with Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart delves into the state of US racism and racial justice as of October 2020 and explores the role of hope in staying the course (1 hour)

Slavery by Another Name, 90 minutes PBS documentary challenges the idea that slavery ended with the emancipation proclamation. (90 minutes)

Unnatural Causes, Seven part documentary by California Newsreel that explores the impact of racism on health and US healthcare. (4 hours total, episodes have variable lengths)

Once people start to learn about white privilege and America's systems of oppression through history, they often ask, "Why didn't I see this sooner?" It's easy to overlook what we're not looking for. Once you understand the phenomenon of selective noticing, take yourself on a noticing adventure.

1) Watch the Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

2) Go out in the world and change up what you notice. (Some of this will be influenced differently pre/during/post COVID. You may need to rely on memories until we are on the move again!) Here's some of what you might look for:

Who is and is not represented in ads?

Who are your ten closest friends? What is the racial mix in this group?

As you move through the day, what's the racial composition of the people around you? On your commute? At the coffee shop you go to? At the gym? At your workplace? At the show you go on the weekend?

What percentage of the day are you able to be with people of your own racial identity?

Notice how much of your day you are speaking about racism. Who are you engaging with on these issues? Who are you not? Why do you think this is?

What are the last five books you read? What is the racial mix of the authors?

What is the racial mix of the main characters in your favorite TV shows? Movies?

What is the racial mix of people pictured in the photos and artwork in your home? In your friend, family, and colleagues' homes?

Who is filling what kinds of jobs/social roles in your world? (e.g. Who's the store manager and who's stocking the shelves? Who's waiting on tables and who's busing the food?) Can you correlate any of this to racial identity?

Who do you notice on magazine covers? What roles are people of color filling in these images?

If you're traveling by car, train, or air, do you notice housing patterns? How is housing arranged? Who lives near the downtown commerce area and who does not? Who lives near the waterfront and who does not? Who lives in industrial areas and who does not? What is the density of a given neighborhood? Can you correlate any of this to racial identity?

3) Review the Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution with a small group of people at your workplace, faith institution, club, or any organization you're a part of.

Where do you think the organization is right now? What's your evidence? Has the organization evolved in some ways? What caused/allowed for that? Has the organization articulated a desire to evolve towards being an anti-racist, multicultural organization? If not, do you have the power to influence that movement? Who are your in-organization and/or stakeholder allies? If yes, what steps is it taking? Could it be doing more? If so what? Who are your in-organization and/or stakeholder allies?

This can be the hardest part for people new to racial justice work. Engaging in racially mixed settings can trigger age-old power and privilege dynamics. The goal is to be a learner more than a knower, exactly the opposite of what dominant U.S. culture teaches us to be.

Here are some Engagement Tips to guide you:

Enter the process to learn and bridge knowledge gaps.

Enter the process to practice mindful social habits like the ones below.

Work to stay engaged even when your mind and body start sending you signals to shrink or walk away.

Ask clarifying questions.

Acknowledge what you don't know.

Validate others by listening closely and believing the truth and importance of what they are sharing.

Share airtime so that multiple perspectives are shared.

Step Up Step Back. If you are generally quiet, step up and practice speaking more. If you are generally a talker, practice stepping back and listening more.

Notice your biases and judgments as they arise. These are gold for you to excavate your subconscious!

Notice when you are uncomfortable. Reflect on why you're uncomfortable and think about what you can do to build more emotional stamina in this area.

Honor confidentiality. Though you can share what you are learning in general terms, do not repeat stories in a way that can be traced back to the person who shared it.

Find a mentor within your own racial group to support and guide your growth.

If you are white, join a Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) chapter in your area.

Google who's who in your area by typing in 'Racial Justice" or "Anti-Racist/m" + name of city/town, organization, or sector. A few website visits, emails, and phone calls later, you'll likely have an idea of how to get on the mailing of one or more organizations in your area who are addressing issues of power and privilege. Once you connect to one, it's easy to connect to many!

Research racial justice speakers and see who might be coming to your local university, church, community center, or speaker series.

Take a course or workshop. Community Colleges and Adult Education Centers are a great place to find a course about social justice issues.

Though many people want to jump to action sooner instead of later, action without a vigorous self-education, self-reflection, and multiracial coalition can unexpectedly reproduce the very power and privilege dynamics we seek to interrupt. That said, sometimes acting immediately is called for. Welcome to the messy, imperfect world of challenging the status quo! Here are a few actions that you might consider:

Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to do the 21-Day Challenge with you.

Prepare yourself to interrupt racial jokes. Click HERE for some advice about how.

Interrupt the pattern of white silence by speaking openly with family, friends, and colleagues about what you're doing and learning in the 21-Day Challenge.

Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to join you for one or more of your daily "to-do's" for a low-threshold invitation into the work and introduction to the 21-Day Challenge.

Find out if your school, workplace, or faith group has an Equity Committee. What can you learn from them? Are they open to new members? Join if you can. Support in other ways if you can't.

Find organizations such as The Privilege Institute, your local YWCA, and other non-profits doing racial justice work and support them through donating your time, money, and other resources.

Find a 21-Day Challenge group in your region or sector and reach out to connect with, and perhaps co-create a region or sector specific 21-Day Challenge in the future. Google "21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge + your state, region, or sector"

When the status quo is blatantly racist, disrupt it. No matter how big or small put yourself out there to create change. No need to wait until you are comfortable disrupting; it may never get comfortable, though you will get better at managing discomfort. These actions are generally more successful when done in multiracial coalition. Examples from past participants include:

Demanding administration change the name of a dodgeball team from "The Cottonpickers"

Improving the representation of books in the library by raising funds and purchasing hundreds of new books

Conducting an equity audit within the organization

Creating learning communities to set goals, objectives, and action plans

Disrupting inappropriate language by offering alternative language you yourself are learning

Speaking, emailing, and posting about articles, blogs, movies, and this 21-Day Challenge that you find impactful.

Let people know you are not neutral!

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21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge©

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Short, Coffee Break Length The Disturbing History of the Suburbs , An Adam Ruins Everything episode that quickly and humorously educates how redlining came to be (6 minutes) What Would You Do?: Bicycle Thief Episode ABC's popular show explores the impact of racial and gender bias and prejudice at a family friendly park.

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, a film should be able to generate quite a robust conversation. Queuing up a movie that tells the stories of people, events, and instances that shaped race relations in America is a fantastic way to engage every member of your family in a dialogue about Black history, from young children all the way up to grandma and grandpa. With plenty of films available that are suitable for young children as well as adults, there's a long list of options to screen for your next family movie night, which should be followed by a household discussion on what the takeaway from the story was. Here are a few suggestions for family-friendly films that are sure to edu-tain your household.

Harriet

Selma

42

Hidden Figures

Ruby Bridges

Remember The Titans

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Exploring Black History Through Family-Friendly Films

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, a film should be able to generate quite a robust conversation. Queuing up a movie that tells the stories of people, events, and instances that shaped race relations in America is a fantastic way to engage every member of your family in a dialogue about Black history, from young children all the way up to grandma and grandpa.

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As we move along....

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100 Ways White People Can Make Life Less Frustrating for People of Colour