Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

integration

integration

  • New York City Schools and The Myth of Meritocracy

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    Mayor de Blasio at a schools announcement (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)


    When I was younger, my grandfather - an asylum seeker - used to tell me that hard work and persistence will always be rewarded. After all, he became successful in the United States after years of injustice in Egypt. And so, I believed him.

    But during my time in high school, I have learned that this idea of hard work amounting to success is not the case in the New York City public school system.

    Right before I was born, my family moved into a tiny downtown apartment

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  • When the School Segregationist Dog Whistle Becomes a Bullhorn

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    Students at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    Dog-whistle politics refers to the use of racially-coded language as a strategy to rally perceived allies while providing plausible deniability against charges of racism. Donald Trump and the Republican Party regularly use racist dog whistles in the context of ...

  • Pandemic Reinforces De Blasio's Inaction on School Desegregation Recommendations

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    Mayor de Blasio during a school visit (photo: Edwin J. Torres/ Mayor's Office)


    As the coronavirus pandemic further exposes deep fissures in the city's education landscape for low-income students and students of color, it has also further stalled Mayor Bill de Blasio's already-halting efforts to integrate New York City's deeply segregated schools.

    In the nine months since a de Blasio-appointed advisory group released its final recommendations on ways to desegregate and in other ways improve city schools, virtually nothing has been said on the

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  • New York City is Waist-Deep in a School Desegregation Conversation - How Did We Get Here?

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    (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    Earlier this week, the School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) released its second and final set of recommendations to integrate city schools, a significant development in the current chapter of the city’s response to deep racial and economic segregation in its school system, which is the largest in the country and home to 1.1 million students.

    This chapter began in 2014, 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education and Bill de Blasio’s first year as Mayor, when ...

  • 'We're Moving Now': City Pursues School Desegregation Measures, with Major Looming Test

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    Chancellor Carranza & Mayor de Blasio (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York City schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced on June 10 that the city will adopt 62 recommendations focused on diversity and integration in public schools, focusing on middle and elementary schools, from the Department of Education’s School Diversity Advisory Group, a new step toward school desegregation as many students, families, educators, and others have waited years for the city to make progress.

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  • Segregation is Not an Excuse, Mr. Mayor; It’s Opportunity to Lead

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    (Photo via Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    Curbed NY recently reported that the vast majority of the affordable-housing units created under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Housing New York plan are unaffordable to large swaths of the population. The ironic response from New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) was that the policy promotes “diverse and integrated neighborhoods.”

    This explanation is

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