The Economist January 11th 2020
2 pupils drop out. An astonishing 40% of
high schools in the city do not teach chem-
istry, physics or upper-level algebra, notes
Clara Hemphill, the founding editor of In-
sideSchools, an education-policy website.
“The problem is not learning linear algebra
in schools, but not knowing arithmetic.”
Choice beyond a possibly poor neigh-
bourhood public school is constrained
both by geography and by financing. New
York has exceptionally good private
schools, available at exceptionally high
prices. Horace Mann School in the Bronx
costs $53,200 a year, from pre-kindergar-
ten to 12th grade. Charter schools, publicly
funded but privately run, provide choices
for the masses. Often they draw poorer pu-
pils from local schools. Some of the city’s
highest-performing charter schools, such
as Success Academy, draw bids from the
ranks of middle-class parents as well.
Anxiety and resentment are rife. The
programmes for gifted children offered by
the city foster extreme competition both
because they give some reassurance of a
free, high-quality education and because
space is extremely limited. Only 6% of
high-school pupils attend one of the eight
sought-after specialised high schools. Be-
cause admissions are based on high-stakes
tests, concerned families spend big sums
on test preparation—which then makes the
process less egalitarian than intended. Tu-
toring centres in the city sell one-on-one
preparation for $200 an hour or more.
Some advocates yearn for an egalitarian
model like Finland’s—where comprehen-
sive schools and a focus on special educa-
tion (or disabilities) rather than giftedness
coincide with high rankings on interna-
tional measures such as pisa scores. But
even in Finland, more than 10% of upper-
secondary schools (those before universi-
ty) are specialised. Other attributes, such as
high education spending and extreme se-
lectivity of applicants to become teachers
(only 10% make it), are probably also criti-
cal to the education system’s success. Re-
moving programmes for the gifted will not
suddenly turn New York into Finland.
No doubt the system in America could
be improved. It seems unlikely that gifted
children can reliably be spotted at the age
of four on the basis of a standardised test
(as is now the norm). More places would
help de-escalate the test-prep arms race. So
too would giving the screening test to all
pupils, rather than just to those who opt in.
Implementation of such a policy in Bro-
ward County, Florida—the sixth-largest
public-school system in the country—dou-
bled the number of Hispanic and black
children in programmes for the gifted.
Mr de Blasio floated the idea of scrap-
ping the entrance test and admitting the
top 7% of students from each middle
school (roughly, for pupils aged 11 to 14) to
specialised schools. One problem is that at
some middle schools this would include
students who had not passed the state
maths exam. This infuriated many Asian
parents, who do not see why their children
should be punished for studying hard.
Children from poor homes have pro-
blems that need to be tackled long before
they reach high school. A good education
system should be as capable of delivering
remedial instruction as education for the
gifted—and herein lies the problem. Segre-
gating pupils in schools of high poverty,
Although New York has long
American education
been considered a diverse area,
Signs of progress
racial segregation has often occurred in B R O O K LY N , N E W YO R K
A school district begins to tackle segregation at its middle schools
the city's schools
N ew york city is famous for its div-
ersity. Yet the 1.1m pupils in the city,
who are mostly non-white, attend some
of the most segregated schools in the
country. They are even more segregated
than schools in some southern cities
such as Atlanta. Complacency has
reigned for decades. But a school district
in Brooklyn is showing early signs of
success in a drive towards integration.
District 15 encompasses expensive
brownstone houses in Park Slope, im-
migrant enclaves in Sunset Park and one
of the country’s largest public-housing
projects in Red Hook. Despite that, it
remained intensely segregated. The
more affluent—and usually white—
school-age children flocked to the dis-
trict’s “good schools”. Last year, after a
parents’ campaign, the district eliminat-
ed admission screens, which included
test scores, attendance and behaviour
records, for its 11 middle schools. Parents
still rank their preferred schools, but
now the district uses a lottery, with 52%
of places at each school set aside for
pupils who come from poor families, are
still learning English or are homeless.
Eight of the 11 schools are now hitting
integration-rate targets. Richard Kahlen-
berg of the Century Foundation, a think-
tank, calls it “one of the most exciting
educational-reform efforts in the entire
country”. One school, MS51, was 47%
white last year. It is now 28% white.
It is still early days for District 15. But
so far, integration appears to be stable.
Fears of “white flight” out of the public-
school system have not been realised.
The middle schools’ incoming classes
remain 31% white, roughly the same
since 2015. MS88, which was only 9%
white last year, is now 24% white. Ailene
Mitchell, MS88’s principal, says children
from different backgrounds are starting
to socialise with each other and joining
each other’s after-school activity pro-
the status has not been changed greatly
United States 19
with few additional resources, is a recipe
for stagnation. The aim of integration
should be to eliminate such schools, but
perhaps not to dismantle upper-tier
courses. The fear that this might trigger
white or middle-class flight from public
schools may be overblown. Parents in Park
Slope, a mostly well-to-do neighbourhood
in Brooklyn, proposed an integration plan
for middle schools which went into effect
last year. The share of white children in the
schools did not drop at all. 7
Turning a corner
this action also
grammes. Jason Hoffner, a teacher, says
some of the “new” pupils had near- shows a positive
perfect exam scores, but in classroom
discussions there is little difference.
effects on the
The city hopes District 15’s success can
be replicated. Poor children who go to
integrated schools have higher test school
scores, are more likely to go to college
and are less likely to drop out of school. performance of
It may be a tough sell. One teacher
notes that parents in Park Slope can be the students
competitively progressive. The same zeal
does not exist across the city. Even in
liberal Brooklyn, there was unease at first
about District 15’s integration plan. A
plan to desegregate the district’s ele-
mentary schools has been postponed a
year to do more outreach. Sweeteners,
such as dual-language immersion pro-
grammes or Montessori teaching ap-
proaches, may help. “We won’t have real
integration until kids are going to each
other’s birthday parties and bat mitz-
vahs,” says Anita Skop, the district super-
intendent. But “it’s coming”.
such integration plan might still be hard to achieve in other
district, for unease even occur at first in Brooklyn