Eliminating G&T neither desegregates nor better educates our city’s kids. The Department of Education (DOE) sees only race, not education, in its work to better educate our children. Political action will hold it accountable for ongoing failures.
Why must racial quotas limit or inflate one’s success? Why can’t the DOE fully fund its perennially underfunded programs which continue to fail too many NYC students and thus rob the city and world of immense potential? Why trigger an unnecessary race war while purporting to educate kids? Who ignores that Asians are as poor as those typically disadvantaged races (the model minority myth is false despite excess popularity)? Is it American to punish parents’ investing time, attention, hard work, and sacrifices in their children with racial quotas to serve consultancy-generated buzzwords like equality, equity, and access? Does the mayor think Asians are politically mute? Do School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) members think their academic titles and organizational affiliations add any credibility to their research-free reports?
SDAG’s two reports at www.schooldiversity.nyc avoids proving that eliminating G&T will decrease inequity, rather, merely apply racial quotas (70% of the DOE students are black, brown). It’ll raise inequity because disadvantaged receive nothing racially apportioned classmates, not educationally superior ones.
Desegregation doesn’t mean equity if parents lose faith in the DOE and compensate accordingly thus furthering segregation. Opening no new screened schools assumes new programs to meet the need which given DOE’s history won’t happen. Eliminate zoning as admission criteria merely increases bussing and transit thus further preferring the advantaged. Ignoring attendance in admissions increases the advantages of the privileged to replace education missed during travel and illness.
Eliminating G&T increases inequity and segregation. Our city’s children want education not racial politics.
Richard Chen lives in Brooklyn. He is a software developer, public school alumna, parent of NYC public school students, and founding moderator of AsiansNOW.
