Racial Inequality in Bloomberg's Schools

By Nat Hentoff Wednesday, Jan 19 2011

“You can’t separate a 28 percent graduate rate in New York City of black males with the fact that 50 percent of black males in New York City are unemployed.” That’s what John Jackson, president of the Cambridge-based Schott Foundation for Public Education said at the 54th annual Conference of the Council of the Great City Schools last year.

Added James Williams, superintendent of Buffalo public schools: “Our public education system was not geared to educate all children. Blacks were not in the equation.” Even Arick West, president of the Kansas City, Missouri, School Board, grimly noted that the unemployment rate for black men in his community is double the rate of everyone else and that college is not seen as an option for many black youths (Urban Educator, November/December 2010).

In the parlance of education reformers, this is known as “the racial gap” in public education, which has continued in New York City throughout the control of the schools by the Education Mayor and former chancellor Joel Klein. After his successor, Cathie Black, completed her listening tour of some schools, she was challenged by Ernie Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators: “We need to have a serious attempt to address the fact that we have not closed [the achievement gap] between males of color and the rest of the kids in the system” (New York Post, January 3).

See full article at:

www.villagevoice.com/2011-01-19/columns/racial-inequality-in-bloomberg-s-schools/