PLP Statement on Parents Fighting for Justice
June 12, 2013
Contact
parentleadershipproject@gmail.com
917-385-8309
Parents Fighting for Desegregation and Educational Justice
Recently, the Bloomberg Administration has “proposed”—in classic Bloomberg fashion: without community input—that certain school districts become un-zoned in order to increase school choice and, they claim, equity.
The Parent Leadership Project (PLP) believes that the Bloomberg plan as it is being proposed will not increase equity. Below, we share some of the reasons why. It is true that zone lines are often one part of the problem of our segregated school system. However, simply removing zone lines and increasing choice without “controls” for equity only ends up creating a system in which parents increasingly compete for coveted school slots (and where schools increasingly compete for parents with greater economic resources). Time and time again, such systems of “pure choice” (i.e. a capitalist consumer- driven model) have been proven to only increase inequality.
Who We Are
The Parent Leadership Project (PLP) grew out of over a decade of collaboration between the Center for Immigrant Families and the Bloomingdale Family Head Start Program. In 2010, the two organizations decided to combine their efforts to address the reality of segregated and unequal public schools in District 3. PLP builds parent leadership, power, and organizing for educational justice in District 3 schools and beyond.
District 3 is one of the districts in New York City that
⎯ provides the most “choice” (without controls for equity) for parents about where
they might send their child to elementary school
⎯is the most racially and economically diverse
⎯is the most segregated and unequal.
PLP is currently working for an alternative student assignment plan for our District that will desegregate our schools, increase equity, and create a system that works for all children.
What does School Choice mean?
School choice can mean many different things, depending on the context. For example, in the South, post Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955), choice was used by state and local governments to avoid desegregating schools. Yet, in the post-Brown North, choice was at the center of public school boycotts and campaigns that worked to dismantle state-sanctioned and legal segregation.
Today, families across New York City have witnessed the ways school choice has been used (by local governments and private corporations) to further entrench structures of segregation. (1)
A key tactic that school choice advocates have used to sell their agendas (2) has played on the hard reality that the public system had long-underserved low-income communities of color. The reasoning was simple and went something like this: The public has failed you and your community, an alternative is needed, choice is necessary. Yet, the current accumulation of community experience demonstrates that school choice does not represent larger systemic transformation and, too often, increases instead of ameliorates harm.
The Bloomberg Administration is currently trying to make a similar sale to low-income communities of color. Specifically, the New York City Department of Education has been attempting to push through a plan to remove the zone lines of certain districts that are part of low-income and gentrifying neighborhoods. Their claim? That zones lines limit choice and freedom, and that greater choice and freedom will increase equity.
Unfettered Choice ≠ Justice
The joining of choice and freedom without justice and equity only exacerbates inequality.
At the Parent Leadership Project we do not support the status quo; nor do we support the Bloomberg Administration’s call for immediate de-zoning that would result in a “pure choice” model.
We believe the inequality that zone lines create needs to be dismantled— but with the voices of those who have been most excluded at the center, and through a lens of equity and justice. Change is needed — and we cannot allow the DOE to highjack the need for change.
One way advocates of school choice have been able to push forward these agendas is by stripping parents, teachers, and students of their relevant decision making power related to their schools. In New York City and Chicago, this has taken the shape of centralized control of city school systems through what is called Mayoral Control.
One of the powers that New York City school boards (now called Community Education Councils) continue to hold is the power to determine zone lines. As several activists and scholars have shown, this power has too often been mis-used and abused, and has resulted in intentionally segregated schools.
Like choice, local control can translate to different outcomes, and must be guided by a commitment to justice and equity.
We believe that Controlled Choice offers a policy framework that can support these goals.
What is Controlled Choice?
Controlled Choice is a policy framework that was developed in the early 1980s as a way to desegregate schools.
Controlled Choice offers a student assignment system that is different from both mandatory assignment plans and open enrollment plans.
Controlled Choice does not rely on zone lines but, instead, requires that specific district- wide criteria (or controls for equity) are established that each school is required to meet3.
The controls are based on “differences” that are understood to make the most difference in a given district, thus making the plan place-specific and requiring:
1. A community-driven process of at least four months to examine how segregation and inequality are structured in a particular district’s schools; and
2. The implementation of a transparent student registration and application process and the development of a district-wide and accessible family resource center.
PLP partners with the Participatory Action Research Center for Education Organizing (PARCEO) in our work for equitable admissions. We are also part of a D3 working group on fairness and equity in admissions and are partners in the Project for Fairness and Equity (PFEE) with District 1 parents, PARCEO, and Appleseed NY. We invite you to join us as we struggle for educational justice and the future of our children, schools, and communities.
(1) The many ways school choice is implemented as policy range, for example, from charter schools, to magnet schools, to voucher programs, and more.
(2) These agendas have, for example, included: 1) expanding standardized testing; 2) closing historically under-resourced public schools in low-income communities of color and rapidly increasing the number of charter schools; and 3) tying teachers salaries to students’ test scores.
(3) Again, as history tells us, almost anything can be used for anything, and much is context dependent, especially when it comes to the contradictory history of choice as reform in education. Controlled Choice has been used by school districts across the country to desegregate their school systems. Yet, the policy was also recently lauded by former Washington D.C. public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee as a way to combat racial isolation and its related “achievement gap.” Thus, while several districts have used Controlled Choice as a policy to facilitate the re-distribution of resources among schools, Rhee’s recent advocacy stance in her version of Controlled Choice draws heavily upon the Coleman Report’s dangerous articulation of the harms of racial isolation that rely on culture of poverty theories and claim that poor children, and specifically poor children of color, can not learn well together. For PLP, Controlled Choice provides a mechanism through which we can redistribute resources and thus desegregate our schools.