Franklin Schargel’s Blog

Most people would answer the name of some state in the south but that is not the case. A report released today by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project finds that public school students in New York State continue to be severely segregated. Public school students in the state are increasingly isolated by race and class as the proportion of minority and poor students continues to grow, according to the CRP report, “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation: Inequality, Inaction and a Damaged Future.”

The study explores trends in enrollment and school segregation patterns from 1989 to 2010 at the state and regional levels, including the New York City metropolitan areas of Long Island and the New York City District, and the upstate metropolitan areas of Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.  In New York City, in particular, the report highlights both historical and current practices and policies perpetuating racial imbalance and educational inequity across schools, and challenged by parents and community organizations.

Educational problems linked to racially segregated schools, which are often intensified by poverty concentration, include a less-experienced and less-qualified teacher workforce, high levels of teacher turnover, inadequate facilities and learning materials, high dropout rates, and less stable enrollments. Conversely, desegregated schools are linked to profound benefits for all students.

“This report runs the geographic gamut: from the upstate metros dealing with transforming demographics and an urban-suburban divide, to Long Island, one of the most segregated and fragmented suburban rings in the country, and New York City, the largest school district in the country,” said John Kucsera, lead author of the report.

Specific findings at Various Geographic Levels 

Statewide:

• At the state level, the proportion of Latino and Asian students has nearly doubled from 1989 to 2010, as the exposure of these groups to white students has decreased.
• Concentration levels have increased for black students in intensely segregated minority schools (where less than 10% of the student body is white), and there has been a simultaneous and dramatic increase in black exposure to Latino students over the last 20 years.
• In terms of poverty concentration, statewide patterns show that schools become more low-income as their enrollment becomes majority minority.
• Nearly 50% of public school students were low-income in 2010, but the typical black or Latino student attended a school where close to 70% of classmates were low-income. Conversely, the typical white student attended school where less than 30% of classmates were low-income.

Upstate Metropolitan Areas:

• In Buffalo, the typical white student attended a school with 30% of poor students compared to 73% for the typical black student, two and one half times more.
• Black and Latino students experienced a substantial increase in the percentage concentrated in intensely segregated schools (those with less than 10% white students) since 1989.
• In the Syracuse metropolitan area, the proportion of black students grew by 4%, but black isolation rates skyrocketed. The average black student attended school in 1989 with a third of students from their own race; twenty years later, the typical black student attended schools with nearly half black students.
• The majority of school districts in upstate New York remain predominantly white.  In the Rochester metro, however, near a quarter of school districts are drastically changing, with most substantially integrating nonwhite students.
• In the Albany metro, 97% of the metro’s multigroup segregation ““ measured by the distribution of racial groups in schools across the metro ““ occurred between rather than within districts.  A total of 59 out of 65 districts in 2010 were predominantly white or nonwhite.

New York City:

• Across the 32 Community School Districts (CSDs) in New York City, 19 had 10% or less white students in 2010, which included all districts in the Bronx, two-thirds of the districts in Brooklyn (central to north districts), half of the districts in Manhattan (northern districts), and only two-fifths of the districts in Queens (southeast districts).
• 73% of charters across New York City were considered apartheid schools (less than 1% white enrollment) and 90% percent were intensely segregated (less than 10% white enrollment) schools in 2010. Only 8% of charter schools were multiracial[1]and with over a 14.5% white enrollment (the New York City average).
• Magnet schools across the New York City district had the highest proportion of multiracial schools (47%) and the lowest proportion of segregated schools (56%) in 2010.  However, 17% of magnets had less than 1% white enrollment and 7% had greater than 50% white enrollment, with PS 100 Coney Island having a white proportion of 81%.

New York Metropolitan Area:

• For the New York City metro in 2010, the five boroughs represented nearly 60% of the state’s total black students, two-thirds of the total Asian and Latino students, but only 10% of white students.
• In Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, where charter schools consist of around 10% of all public schools, nearly all charters were intensely segregated in 2010, with less than 10% white student enrollment. 100% of the Bronx charters, 90% of those in Brooklyn, and 97% of the Manhattan charters were intensely segregated.

With the help of various New York-based community groups, researchers, and civil rights organizations, the report provides a host of recommendations and actions to help create and maintain integrated schools from the federal level down to local communities and schools.  These include altering school choice plans to ensure they promote diversity, supporting communities that are experiencing racial change by helping them create voluntary desegregation plans, and creating regional or inter-district programs in urban/suburban areas.

To read the report, data, metro summaries and maps, go to: https://goo.gl/aE49v8

 

Mindy Grossman, A Board Member of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF wrote a letter to the editor of the NY Times part of which is shown here:

Education is the most powerful and effective way to address inequality. Yet 31 million girls of elementary school age are not receiving an education. As girls get older, they become more and more likely to drop out of school. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, only 83 girls for every 100 boys are enrolled in middle and high school.

According to Unicef, if we can keep girls in school past grade 7, they are more likely to marry later, more likely to have an average of 2.2 fewer children, and more likely to see their own children go to school.

An educated girl feels empowered to stand up to abuse and to demand equal treatment. She is worth our collective investment.

MINDY GROSSMAN
National Board Member
U.S. Fund for Unicef

Large numbers of new teachers and teachers who are ready to retire have left a gap of experienced classroom teachers in Arizona.  The Arizona Department of Education has compiled data showing thousands of teachers have left schools in the past 5 years.  The greater Phoenix Education Management Council estimates that 72,000 employees left the Arizona State Retirement System before reaching retirement.  The Arizona Education Department reported annual teacher retention rate at 65 percent.

Arizona superintendents say that low pay and no raises are causing the mass exodus.

This isn’t just a problem for Arizona but for the nation as well. I believe that the problem isn’t just l0w wages but also an assault by conservatives who believe that anyone can teach and that educational accountability only means teacher accountability.

 

While there is a national concern about students dropping out, there is less concern about the graduation gap among various minority groups.

The Education Week Research Center calculated the number of graduates and nongraduates for the class of 2012 by multiplying the 2011-12 graduation rate by the estimated size of the entering freshman class four years earlier. Nationally, about 760,000 of the 3.8 million students who started high school in 2008 failed to earn diplomas.

Members of historically disadvantaged minority groups make up a disproportionate share of dropouts. Black and Latino students, for example, together account for 54 percent of non-graduates, but only 38 percent of the high school population. 42 percent of whites fail to graduate but 29 percent of Blacks and 25 percent of Hispanics fail to graduate.

For the high school class of 2012, 72 percent of economically disadvantaged students graduated with a diploma, compared with 86 percent of their more affluent peers””a gap of 14 percentage points. Even larger disparities are found for students with disabilities (22 points) and those with limited English proficiency (22 points).

The size of these divides also varies dramatically across states. For example, the largest socioeconomic gap in graduation is found in Minnesota, where disadvantaged students lag 28 percentage points behind their classmates. By contrast, gaps of less than 10 points are found in six states.

The governors of Oklahoma and South Carolina signed bills repealing the Common Core standards, guidelines for children’s achievement in reading and math between kindergarten and high school graduation. Both states had been among the 46 and the District of Columbia that had adopted the standards, written by a group of educators and other experts convened by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. But as resistance grew in their states, lawmakers moved to replace them with standards developed within the states. Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina signed that state’s bill last week, and Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma signed a bill  that would require educators in the state to set new standards to replace the Common Core.

A study by Everytown for Gun Safety indicated that at least 100 children were unintentionally killed by gunfire since the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

The report, titled, “Innocents Lost: A Year of Unintentional Child Gun Deaths,” is an examination of the frequency, causes and victims of accidental shootings of children. The report says 73 percent of the deaths it counted involved a shooter who was a minor, which it defined as age 14 or younger. In 57 percent of cases, the victim was shot by someone else. In 35 percent of cases, the victim accidentally shot himself or herself. The youngest victims were most likely to shoot themselves. The eldest were most likely to be shot by peers.

Unintentional shootings of children occurred most often in places familiar to those who were killed. Eighty-four percent of victims were killed in their home, the home of a friend, or the family car, according to the study. In 76 percent of the cases, the gun belonged to a parent or other family member.

The killings occurred more often in small towns and rural areas than in cities. They occurred in 35 states.

The number recorded by Everytown is higher than some other sources suggest. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has projected that an average of 62 children ages 14 and under are accidentally shot to death each year.

As a percentage of total victims of gun violence, children who are unintentionally killed is quite small. But the 100 shootings over the course of the year averages out to almost two per week.

Part of the problem, Everytown argues, is poor education about the dangers of firearms and how to safely store them. The group advocates “well-tailored child safety” laws, including those “imposing criminal liability” for irresponsible gun storage. The report cites Florida’s “Child Access Prevention” law as one to emulate.

Gun safety is a section in my latest book, “Creating Safe Schools: A Guide for School Leaders, Teachers, Counselors and Parents”.  The book is available from my publisher, Routledge Press or Amazon.

 

More teachers are leaving classrooms in order to retire or through resignation.  These teachers cite sever reasons for this:

• a new teacher evaluation system
• holding educators solely responsible for the achievement level of their students without holding the students or their parents equally responsible.
• the implementation of the “common core” standards without adequate field testing or the distribution of supplies, curricula and materials aligned to those standards.

In Albuquerque, NM retirements are up 19 percent and resignations are up 13 percent over the previous year.  The bump in retirements couldn’t happen at a worse time as districts are attempting to hire additional personnel to meet class size limits.  The teachers that are leaving are taking with them their years of experience as well as the costs incurred by the district in training them.

We live in a data-driven world. Data is all around us and is growing to be a larger part of our world. To get a sense of the rate at which data flows every minute of every day, consider these numbers. Every minute of the day:

• Google receives over two million search queries.
• YouTube users upload 48 hours of new video content.
• And there are 100,000 credit card transactions in the United States alone.
• Look at Facebook. In only 15 minutes, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook is greater than the number of photographs stored in the New York public photo archives. What were you doing 15 minutes ago? Now consider the amount of data uploaded in the last day, week or month.
• Twitter. Users post updates that must be 140 characters or fewer. A tweet is much smaller than a photo. So, how much data can this be?  According to the official Twitter blog in 2011, “Every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10-million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s “˜War and Peace.’?” Now, if you stacked all those copies of Tolstoy’s novel on top of each other, they would reach a towering 1,470 feet. That’s 15 feet taller than the Empire State Building. Keep in mind, that figure was a calculated rate for three years ago.

Graphical tools serve not only to understand data but also to communicate one’s findings. We see this frequently in modern infographics. Learning to graph data is an important tool for the modern mathematical student. As a means to this end, students can and do develop infographics. The classes range from general education to a higher-level class. The first step in such work is raising students’ awareness of infographics’ role in modern communication. From magazine ads to news stories, data is often displayed and tells an important part of the story.

Telling a story visually and through the data itself adds the power of a story.  Get your students to develop a visual picture of information.  It will add to their understanding.