NYC public education has become dedicated to racial categories: Part II
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
By now you may have heard of Richard Carranza, the current chancellor of the New York City public school system. He was appointed by NYC mayor de Blasio, and he’s made quite a splash:
…[I]t’s obvious [Carranza] expected every one here to agree with him that the city’s eight elite high schools are bastions of racism.
His calculations are as simple as groupthink can be: because black and Latino students don’t do nearly as well as white and Asian students on the single-entry test, the test is racist.
By that simplistic standard, so are the standards for playing for the Yankees and the Knicks.
But that is why Carranza was hired. It certainly wasn’t for his vast experience, or his knowledge of the New York City school system. A little background from when Carranza was first announced as the new chancellor (and this is from the NY Times, which might be expected to be somewhat sympathetic to his agenda) [emphasis mine]:
If the New York City school system, with its 1.1 million students, were its own metropolis, it would be the 10th largest in the country, bigger than Austin, Indianapolis or San Francisco. And starting next month, there will be a new mayor in town.
Richard A. Carranza will become chancellor of the system, with its 75,000 teachers and 1,800 schools, on April 2, taking on a job that is organizationally complex, intensely political — in a word, daunting.
But Mr. Carranza comes to the position with only modest big-district experience on his résumé, making it difficult to judge the skills and accomplishments he will bring to the job.
He spent seven years in San Francisco, first as a deputy superintendent and then leading the district, but there are just 14 public high schools in San Francisco. In New York, there are more than 400. Then he ran the schools in Houston, which is a larger system, but Mr. Carranza’s time there was so short that graduation rates from his first year in office have yet to be released.
Before Mayor Bill de Blasio made his choice, he said he would pick someone who would hew closely to the agenda set during his first term by Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Mr. de Blasio’s initial selection of Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of the Miami-Dade County schools, took some by surprise. Mr. Carvalho had focused on increasing school choice through magnet programs and some charter schools — not Mr. de Blasio’s priority. But he was also a career educator who had demonstrated strong results in increasing graduation rates and was hailed as a shrewd choice.
But after Mr. Carvalho’s very public about-face in turning the job down, the mayor seems to have reverted to a more familiar character.
From this excerpt we learn that de Blasio’s first choice, who seems to have been far more qualified and somewhat less politically correct/leftist that Carranza, turned de Blasio’s offer down in an embarrassing and public manner. So it’s possible that Carranza was a rush appointment.
From the same article, here’s more about Carranza’s background:
In San Francisco, Mr. Carranza championed an effort to change discipline practices, a path Ms. Fariña and Mr. de Blasio have taken as well, and suspensions were reduced by half during his four years as superintendent. In Houston, he started a program called Achieve 180, aimed at improving low-performing schools, which is similar in its approach to Mr. de Blasio’s Renewal Schools program. The Renewal program has shown mixed results so far, while for Achieve 180, which is still in its first year, it is too soon to tell…
The central goals Mr. Carranza articulated in Houston revolved around giving poor students a better shot. One of his major, and most controversial, plans involved making changes to the city’s magnet-school programs by giving some preference to children from low-income families and eliminating many of the test-score and academic requirements. Houston’s high-performing magnet schools are dominated by white middle-class families, and factions of the board are fierce defenders of the current rules.
Just about what you would expect. And recently it’s gotten worse. There are so many problems and so many articles that in the interests of brevity I’ll just list a few:
This article about how Carranza instituted a “toxic” whiteness purge that cost some DOE executives their jobs
Carranza held a training for school administrators on how concepts such as “individualism” and “objectivity” are part of “white supremacy culture.”
There’s also this:
A consultant [named Amante] hired by the [New York] Department of Education told administrators at a workshop that “racial equity” means favoring black children regardless of their socio-economic status, sources said.
“If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over the course of his lifetime he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy,” the consultant, Darnisa Amante, is quoted as saying by those in the room.
“That’s what racial equity is,” Amante explained.
“Racial equity” appears to be a growing industry right now, as you can see if you Google the term, with many consultants and consulting groups for hire, ready to do training sessions with educators and others. Their goal is what Thomas Sowell called The Quest for Cosmic Justice—the chase after the impossible, usually with dreadful consequences:
Cosmic justice is not just a higher degree of traditional justice, it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally, justice or injustice is a characteristic of process. A defendant in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and with the judge and jury being impartial…[T]raditional justice is about impartial processes rather than either results or prospects…
But this is not what is meant by those people who speak of “social justice.” In fact, rules and standards equally applicable to all are often deliberately set aside in pursuit of “social justice.” Nor are such exceptions aberrations. The two concepts [traditional and “social” justice] are mutually incompatible.
What “social justice” seeks to do is to eliminate undeserved disadvantages for selected groups…[T]his is often done in disregard of the costs of this to other individuals or groups—or even to the requirements of society as a whole.
This is what education has become today. And not just in New York.
“THBPBPTHPT!” by: Bill Watterson
the practice finished off my family before i could figure out they were doing that to me… then what? The other part of this that is not gonna get talked about is how X wants an answer to Y, but if that answer comes from Z, they refuse it waiting for M to do it… so all the work of Z goes down the tubes wasted, and the solution they have isnt shared and no one is helped until M does it, and if M never does, then what? too bad its illegal to hire a hit man to get yourself in your sleep…
“PTHHTHTHTPT” by: Ian McConville & Matt Boyd
NYC public schools continuing their long-standing policy of ritual seppuku.
Bill de Blasio is a mediocre man who recruits and retains people who are lesser men than he is. Hence this fellow Carranza. Look at Carranza’s background. He had no schooling in any academic subject, just credentials from teacher-training programs. He taught bilingual ed / ESOL ‘ere landing positions in administration. He has no interest in education per se, just making use of schools as toy theatres for his amateur social work projects (which in turn amount to using state power to harass identified social enemies). His appointment is indicative of what de Blasio’s about, and de Blasio occupying the position he does is indicative of the essential unseriousness of New York City’s electorate.
What Glenn Reynolds has said: our decision making classes are made up of people who are unfit to hold the positions that they do. The public reacts with cud-chewing indifference. Seventy years ago, this was a serious country.
because black and Latino students don’t do nearly as well as white and Asian students on the single-entry test, the test is racist.
Recall Thomas Sowell’s remark that those holding education degrees often identify with mediocre students because they themselves were mediocre students.
Carranza’s accession is another reminder that Idiocracy is now.
Public education systems in most medium to large cities are a travesty in that they do not educate, they focus instead on indoctrination and so called social justice. It is pretty well documented that these efforts do not produce better outcomes for the kids that are the favored recipients of these policies.
Recall Thomas Sowell’s remark that those holding education degrees often identify with mediocre students because they themselves were mediocre students.
An oldie but goodie on the same theme; “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; and those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”
Ritual seppuku indeed.
Ritual? Well, maybe, but if not then applied seppuku. ASAP.
Why do so many think that “graduation rate” is something to celebrate? Isn’t the idea to produce students who hold a certain level of useful and potentially productive knowledge, and if they do the system certifies that. All this numbers game does, when the goal is issuing more diplomas that were issued last year, is degrade the value of the diploma if the expected underlying knowledge is not evident.
They will lower the standards and teach to the test. Wasn’t it Atlanta that got busted for changing test answers (by staff) to raise the number of passing scores. This kind of game only causes all minority persons to be looked at as AA beneficiaries, even when they are actually qualified. This is where the tyranny of low expectation hurts everyone..
Cultural apportion is a SJW meme. I demand all non Caucasian people surrender their cell phones, automobiles, access to modern medicine, etcetera immediately.
I am waiting for the day, which may come soon, when Google and Microsoft favor blacks in spite of failure. This is the way civilization slides to worse than mediocrity. Corporations aren becoming centers of “Social Justice” and POC CEOs and marketing directors are giving us brilliant campaigns like the Gillette “Toxic Masculinity” razor commercials.
For the consumers of education, you often hear this phrase from parents: “I just want to send my children to good schools.” And by “good schools”, the unspoken meaning is that the diversity quotient is not too high, perhaps where no more than 20% of students are non-white.
After all this time, it may be easier to just admit that there are racial differences in intelligence and educational aptitude, just as there are in appearance and physical characteristics. And as Steve Sailer has noted, we are starting to run out of white students for black and Hispanic students to be around.
For the consumers of education, you often hear this phrase from parents: “I just want to send my children to good schools.” And by “good schools”, the unspoken meaning is that the diversity quotient is not too high, perhaps where no more than 20% of students are non-white.
That’s Steve Sailer and his votaries talking, and they’re projecting.
The problem isn’t minorities per se, it’s that the interaction between school administrators, state regulators, the public interest bar, black politicians, and the parents of bad kids results in lax discipline for blacks and hispanics. Sequester the bad kids and have rigorous tracking, and every student will be enrolled in a satisfactory school. The problem is, these solutions are unacceptable to various stakeholders, the school administrators and the teacher-training faculty who manufacture their professional ideology in particular.
Liberals ruin everything.
I am waiting for the day, which may come soon, when Google and Microsoft favor blacks in spite of failure.
As we speak, about 10% of the baccalaureate degrees in computer and information sciences are awarded to blacks. In 1995, the proportion was almost precisely the same. About 8.5% of those working in computer and mathematical occupations are black at this time. Affirmative action is a cancer, but I doubt it’s all that consequential in this segment of the economy.
I finally got around to watching “Doctor Zhivago” last night, all 3 and a half hours. It had been on my list for months. I had seen it as a child and remembered almost nothing.
To my surprise, when the Bolsheviks really began to enforced their PC groupthink, the word “justice” and the phrase “social justice” came up repeatedly. Keep in mind the writing and dialect is all British, but even so it is striking. The left seems to just recycle their greatest hits. FDR’s “National Recovery Act” becomes Obama’s “American Recovery Act,” and so on.
Carranza and Amante are made from the same cloth, if this is the Darnisa Amante that was mentioned: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/darnisa-amante
A more impressive formal education than Carranza – Brandeis for undergraduate and a masters then matriculated to complete an Ed.L.D at Harvard GSE. She is the CEO of an organization called Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP), but both Carranza and Amante carry out same indignant, self-righteous agenda. DEEP’s mission:
“The Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP) is a professional development and strategy organization that is focused on the intentional, developmental, and complex work that is associated with changing mindsets around equity and dismantling systemic oppression and racism.” As you can see from the link that many notable educational organizations have bought the “fight systemic oppression and racism” – they’re eating their own kind.
She’s a ‘consultant’, i.e. grifter.
Her real enemy isn’t ‘racists’, it’s someone who is willing and able to undertake valid and reliable social research. And the stones to get it published.
“…changing mindsets around equity…” This recent academic/quasi-academic fad of substituting “around” for “about” is fingernails-on-chalkboard-level grating to my ear. Frequently it’s combined with another and somewhat lesser annoyance, the overuse of “have [or having] a conversation [or conversations].” As in “We will be having conversations around equity.”
I would find it very difficult to continue a conversation with a person who used it, because I would not be able to control my irritation. Petty and hypersensitive, I guess, but I read somewhere recently (here?) that there is actually a name for the condition in which one is unreasonably and disproportionately angered by loud chewing and similar sounds. I’m that way about some of these verbal tics.
The use of “bodies” for “people” is another one.
As we speak, about 10% of the baccalaureate degrees in computer and information sciences are awarded to blacks. In 1995, the proportion was almost precisely the same. About 8.5% of those working in computer and mathematical occupations are black at this time. Affirmative action is a cancer, but I doubt it’s all that consequential in this segment of the economy.
Art Deco: I’d be curious to check your sources. Those numbers don’t match my experiences in California or New Mexico.
Working as a software engineer in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, I saw that blacks were at best 1-2%. As a STEM student at UNM, that’s what I’m seeing in math and computer courses.
Of course, those are anecdotal numbers. But I have trouble believing the real numbers are 5x or more. Though there are definitely more blacks working tech in state or federal jobs.
Looking over the web, I can’t find your 10% bachelor degrees and 8.5% employment numbers anywhere.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment, including racism) is another euphemism in the PC catalog, which many people left and right have adopted.
Art Deco: I’d be curious to check your sources.
My sources are the Digest of Education Statistics, which is published annually, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data published online. Blacks account for 6.6% of the population in the seven counties around San Francisco Bay, 6.8% of the population of the four counties around Los Angeles, and 2% of the population of New Mexico.
” Though there are definitely more blacks working tech in state or federal jobs.”
Years ago I worked at the headquarters of a major Army command and noticed that there seemed to be a disproportionate number of people of color. If you look at the statistics you will find that government employment, local, state, federal, accounts for about 1/3 of black employment. The government is WPA for blacks. What I found amusing was that the SES was practically all male and white.
If you look at the statistics you will find that government employment, local, state, federal, accounts for about 1/3 of black employment.
No, you won’t find that, because it isn’t true. Blacks constitute 12% of the working population. The industries which are in the public sector by definition or have extensive intersection with the public sector have workforces in which blacks have the following shares:
Public administration: 16.9%
Social assistance: 19.5%
Educational services: 11.5%
Utilities: 9%
Transportation: 21%
Collectively, these sectors encompass 27% of the black workforce. However, there are scads of private sector employees in these sectors and blacks employed in public administration account for just 6.6% of the black workforce.
The only discrete occupations where black workers make up more than a quarter of the total are slaughterhouse employees (25.5%), bus and urban transit employees (35.6%), taxi and limousine service employees (30.2%), postal workers (28.6%), car rental employees (25.8%), security guards (27%), home health aides (26.1%), nursing home employees (28.6%), residential care employees (ex nursing homes) (26.3%), and barbers (30.8%). (About 2% of all black employees work for the postal service or local transit services).
Addendum, the workforce of the Community and Social Service sector is about 20.4% black and accounts for about 3% of the black workforce.
The purpose of public schools is not to educate. The purpose of public schools is to keep kids off the street and employ Democrat voters.
Mac,
I’d love to know the name of that ‘condition’. That must be what my husband and son have and why I am forbidden to eat carrots around them!