<p>I think there are a lot of parallels w U Mich. U Mich cannot legally consider race in its admission criteria, so there are complaints about its lack of diversity. Do u think U Mich doesn’t offer a full ride to talented low-income URMs?</p>
<p>At the elite boarding schools EVERYTHING is free for the low-income outreach students who get recruited. Even clothes & airfare are provided. Why would a NYC Prep for Prep kid who has been groomed & courted throughout middle school by Exeter or Deerfield, bother w Stuyvesant or Bronx Sci?</p>
<p>I’m going to assume that the consensus by now in the topic is that they want more racial integration in these top schools. </p>
<p>The thing that’s always been weird to me, bureaucrats, administrators, and politicians always seem to want more integrated schools. I’ve never hear any ordinary actual person say they want more integrated schools specifically. Just the bureaucrats, administrators, and politicians. When I do hear what might be construed as wanting more integration (like that Brooke Kimbrough) it seems really like what they want are good schools for Blacks (or whatever group), not good integrated schools. It’s just that the easier to encourage integration than a new “Blacks-Only” school. </p>
<p>So, someone tell me, how many of you really want your/your kids’ schools to be more integrated? Because I’m wondering where the base that made this a national priority went, because I can’t see it anymore. </p>
<p>I am very happy that my daughter has always gone to integrated schools, lived in integrated neighborhoods gotten from here to there on integrated public transit, etc. Not only racially integrated but economically and socially integrated. </p>
<p>It depends on the individual student and his/her education/school cultural preferences. </p>
<p>Some reasons I’ve heard from classmates who transferred in from private K-8 is a greater emphasis on math & science, being in an environment with a critical mass of STEM nerds, and yes, preferring a more competitive hothouse environment. </p>
<p>Also, I’ve known some HS classmates and alums who turned down private schools like Exeter or Horace Mann for one of the NYC SHS. A few classmates I knew from my time there had siblings who attended such private schools with some of the parents being a bit peeved at the private school kid for failing to make the cut for our HS. And no, they weren’t Asian/Asian-Americans. </p>
<p>Why is integration a good thing? Because I think a huge part of the problem with our country is that many (white) people see people of another race as “other” and “not like me” and “not worth spending money on” and “moochers”. Rather than as a diverse set of human beings, “just like me”.</p>
<p>@cobrat,<br>
The point I seem to be making badly is that, like in college admissions, there is a limited pool of academically prepared URM kids that are being fought over by the elite seondary schools. </p>
<p>The politicians want to do the cheap & expedient thing: lower admission standards. Because doing the right thing: fixing poor K-12 education is neither cheap, easy, nor achievable in their time in office to crow about for reelection.</p>
<p>Not everyone wants to send his or his child off to a place where the parent won’t be able to see the kid on a daily basis. My own offspring attended an elite NYC public high school and there is no universe in which I would have chosen a boarding school over it. Plus, MANY poor families NEED their children to do chores like caring for younger siblings after school. I do know some Prep for Prep kids. Only one chose boarding school. The others chose independent day schools near home. </p>
<p>Plus, some families prefer to have their children socialize with others from “striver” backgrounds, especially those of the same ethnicity, rather than with classmates from more affluent families. </p>
<p>And often parents in these communities help one another. My offspring finished high school a long time ago, but even back then there was a Korean Parents Association and all official communications from the school about general matters were translated into 6 languages. </p>
<p>Many poor families have strong religious beliefs. They want their kids to participate in church (or other place of worship.) At many boarding schools, it’s hard to find a good African-American or Latino congregation the kids can attend. </p>
<p>And it’s not like one has no access to some kids from affluent and/or well-connected families from neighborhoods like the UES or Park Slope. </p>
<p>There were some classmates who were children of politicians*, local celebrities, biglaw partners, wall street execs, or show-biz folks in their own right. </p>
<ul>
<li>Jessica Schumer, Chuck Schumer’s D is an alum at Stuy, Dante di Blasio, son of the current NYC mayor attends Brooklyn Tech.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>We chose our town because of the integrated neighborhoods and the integrated schools. Currently approximate 1/3 African-American, 1/3 White, 1/3 Hispanic and a smaller Asian American group. My son feels that compared to his college classmates who went to less diverse school (especially less economically diverse ones) that he has a much better sense of what the real world is like. He has a really diverse group of friends. I am really glad that he’s met people of such different backgrounds, and I think it helped him adjust to living overseas.</p>
<p>Diversity needs may differ depending on an individual’s background, experience, and stage of development.</p>
<p>My childhood neighborhood was mostly working class Hispanic with some African-Americans and White ethnic groups(i.e. Irish, Greek). In my elementary school, I was one of only 2 Asian-American kids in the entire school dominated mostly by Hispanic students. </p>
<p>My non-neighborhood public junior high school had more Asian/Asian-Americans, but we were still a tiny minority, especially in the regular classes. </p>
<p>When I started at Stuy, it was just over half Asian/Asian-American. For someone who spent most of his life as “the visible other”, it was finally great to be in an environment where my status as a “visible minority” was no longer a factor. </p>
<p>One high school buddy joked quite correctly “Unlike many NYC area schools, no one would be dumb enough to yell anti-Chinese/Asian racial epithets at Stuy. If they are dumb enough to do that, at least half the school will come down on him hard and it’ll be well-deserved.”</p>
<p>I would hazard to guess that in poorly-performing public schools in black neighborhoods, getting more white kids into the school is proabably not a high priority for the local parents. The parents just want a better school.</p>
<p>Prep for Prep sends kids to NYC day schools too, like Trinity, Spence, Chapin, HoraceM, etc. The choice is not just boarding school. The boarding school names just popped up first in my head. These prep schools are picking off the talented URMs and the kids don’t even need to score all that well on the SSAT/ISEE. I have seen some of their self-reported scores on the Prep School forum.</p>
<p>I went to a middle school something like this. To hazard a guess, 40% White, 30% Black, 20% Hispanic, 10% Indian/Paki and Middle Eastern (a noticeably very large number, usually at least a couple in every class). No Asians I ever saw. It was not my experience that Whites and Blacks were ever friends. If you went to the cafeteria you’d see this pretty clearly. It never seemed that Whites and Blacks ever wanted to be friends, and if anything the integrated school seemed to cause more racial animosity than actual integration between students of different races. It wasn’t unusual for Whites and Indians to be friends, but I never saw any clique that ever had both a Black kid and a White kid. And it was very conscious thing. Whites did not like Blacks and Blacks did not like Whites, and neither liked the presence of the other. This seemed to be understood and accepted by everybody.</p>
<p>In comparison, I went to a high school which I would roughly guess was 65% White, 15% Asian, 10% Black, 10% everyone else. Seemed much more… peaceful. There’s obviously some self segregation between students, but it was never conscious to the level that it was in my middle school. It would not have been out of place to see a Black kid and a White kid socializing. </p>
<p>The conclusion I draw is that integration did my middle school no good, while my high school being dominated by 1 race did a lot more for it. Maybe it was just a factor of age, I don’t know. The high school was obviously in a wealthier area, but not a tremendous difference. But integration never did any apparent favors for the school or the students as far as I could see. </p>
<p>What was your kids’ experience in terms of this going from Middle School to High School to College? </p>
<p>Diversity – ethnic and socio-economic – is absolutely important to me as to the schools my children attend. I am a UCLA professor, my dad was a machinist. I was bussed for integration in 1970, and that was actually not a good experience (I was bussed to a “White” school) but, putting aside forced integration, an ideal school would have excellent instruction and the students would come from a broad range of backgrounds as to wealth and ethnicity.</p>
<p>We sent our kids to a private Montessori and one of the best benefits was that it was the diverse student, teacher and parent populations. I can’t even guess at percentages or proportions of individual races. (Not only were some kids of mixed races, one parent or the other was often mixed as well) The great thing about the school and the way it was run, is that everyone begins to ignore racial preconceptions. In the case of young students, they don’t learn the societal biases (e.g. blacks = poor, uneducated versus whites, Asians = smart, successful). There are millionaire parents in all races and ethnicities; there were less powerful and lower income families in all races and ethnicities; ditto for the exceptional students, class clowns, athletes, etc. In the end, kids can be themselves because everyone is so different and yet the same. The main downfall is the decreasing diversity in economic levels due to rising tuition. There used to be working class families.</p>
<p>If students aren’t making friends across races and ethnicities, there’s probably something the administration is doing or not doing. I suspect the students are being tracked along the same tired racial stereotypes. </p>
<p>Our kids experience was good - my younger son had a more diverse group of friends than his older brother who only had STEM interests. Sports and music and the arts in particular brought kids together. That said, I’m not advocating for the exam schools to lower their standards. I think NYC needs to work harder on the K-8 schools. I also understand that Prep for Prep could well be siphoning off top students - and have no solution for that since I think it’s a valuable program both for the kids who get the free rides to private schools and for the more privileged kids in those schools.</p>
<p>Why bother “bother w Stuyvesant or Bronx Sci”?
-It must be a joke. Stuyvesant is free. I am very proud that my GrandD. is at Stuyvesant and hope that her Bro will follow her or end up at Brooklyn Tech (currently this one is his goal). nope, kids were not groomed for anything, GrandD. jsut decide to take a test and score was good enough for Stuyvesant. Nope, it is NOT diverse at all. 72% are Chinese and 20% of caucasian kids are Russian jews. Who cares about diversity? We certainly do not. My kids are very outgoing and accepting, GrandD has friends among every group and Chinese parents actually allow their kids to be with her despite of their general restriction towards caucasion kids because they think of them as lazy. This is the fact, I have nothing to do with it, so do not blame it on me anyhow. How you can go wrong with the school that had 33 applicants to each spot and select them strictly on their ability and nothing else. That insures the intellectual level, however, there ia no diversity in terms of personalities. Actually GrandD. had a hard time looking for more laid back kids and said that she is stuck doing gymnastics, since this is a more relaxed group of kids. But she is in everything else, you name it and she is doing it. Very hard working kid… </p>