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What many Americans do not realize is that the program that was dismantled had been extraordinarily successful in graduating Latino students and sending them to college. Nationally, Latino students drop out of high school at a much higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group-about 18 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Among Latinos, aged 18 to 24, 27 percent have not graduated from high school, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Nationally, the college-enrollment rate of Latinos, while at an all-time high, is only 32 percent-lower than that of other racial and ethnic groups, according to the same study. In contrast, students completing Tucson's Mexican-American studies program graduate high school and enter college at a higher rate in a district that is 60 percent Latino.

"This report shows that segregation has increased seriously across the country for Latino students, who are attending more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations.  The segregation increases have been the most dramatic in the West. The typical Latino student in the region attends a school where less than a quarter of their classmates are white; nearly two-thirds are other Latinos; and two-thirds are poor. California, New York and Texas, all states that have been profoundly altered by immigration trends over the last half-century, are among the most segregated states for Latino students along multiple dimensions."

No Chance for Latinos and Blacks. That's what came to mind for me when I first heard about NCLB, and that's what still comes to mind nearly ten years later. I'm referring in particular to at-risk Latino and African American public school students like those I taught in Chicago. And though I had few students from other ethnic/racial groups, my thoughts here certainly apply to them too. But don't get me wrong. I've never believed anyone intended to enact a law that would hurt many of the very children it purportedly helps. Too often, however, there's a difference between intent and effect, and there was no doubt in my mind that NCLB would indeed leave many kids behind.

In today's knowledge‐based economy, education-especially education beyond high school-is central to achieving the American Dream. Yet, recent research points to devastating statistics related to educational outcomes in the nation's communities of color.  For example, only 54 percent of Native American students will graduate high school on‐time. Half of today's African American and Latino eighth‐graders will drop out of high school before graduation. And, only 10 percent of African‐American and Latino eighth grade students will complete any sort of college degree. While Asian American student outcomes are seemingly high compared to other students of color, this is not true for all Asian groups. Within the Southeast Asian community, 34 percent of Laotian, 39 percent of Cambodian, and 40 percent of Hmong adults do not have a high school diploma or equivalent.

The Department of Education today released new data showing that in school districts around the country, teachers at schools with more Latino and African American enrollment are paid $2,500 less on average than teachers in the district as a whole.

Latino students in California - nearly 1.3 million of them English learners - are struggling to achieve academic success at the same level as their white peers. In "State has one of nation's highest gaps in Hispanic-white reading proficiency," Sarah Garland reports that only 12 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders in California tested proficient in reading in 2009. Nonprofits, government agencies and parents have all launched campaigns over the years to close the learning gap, but little progress has been made.

Public School 30 and Public School 179 are about as alike as two schools can be. They are two blocks apart in the South Bronx. Both are 98 percent black and Latino. At P.S. 30, 97 percent of the children qualify for subsidized lunches; at P.S. 179, 93 percent. During city quality reviews - when Education Department officials make on-site inspections - both scored "proficient." The two have received identical grades for "school environment," a rating that includes attendance and a survey of parents', teachers' and students' opinions of a school. On the state math test, P.S. 30 did better in 2011, with 41 percent of students scoring proficient - a 3 or 4 - versus 29 percent for P.S. 179. But on the state English test, P.S. 179 did better, with 36 percent of its students scoring proficient compared with 32 percent for P.S. 30. And yet, when the department calculated the most recent progress report grades, P.S. 30 received an A. And P.S. 179 received an F.

A few Saturdays ago, while taking a break from the black and Latino caucus meetings in Albany, I was eating lunch with Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters. We saw the state education commissioner, John B. King Jr., having lunch three tables away. He was on his way to a meeting, but we said hello and he stopped for a few minutes so we could talk. Leonie introduced me as a parent whose child was counseled out of Harlem Success charter following 12 days of kindergarten, after the principal told me there was something wrong with him and he needed to transfer to another school.

In an era when school reform and budget savings are championed by representatives of both major political parties, Long Island cannot economically, politically, or culturally afford to maintain small racially segregated school districts. Based on demographic data available in New York: The State of Learning, an annual statistical profile of New York State school districts, Malverne schools and schools in surrounding communities do not have to be racially segregated. In near by Rockville Centre, 80 percent of the students are white. If Malverne, Lakeview, and Rockville Centre were combined into one school district, the student population would be 53 percent white, 30 percent black, 13 percent Latino, and 4 percent Asian. If we think even more broadly and Malverne, Lakeview, Rockville Centre, West Hempstead, Lynbrook, and East Rockaway were consolidated into a manageable district with under 11,000 students, the student population would be 69 percent white, 14 percent black, 13 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian.

Speaking at a panel on big-city school reform in Washington, D.C. on March 2nd, Mayor Bloomberg repeated a claim he's made before: "We have closed the gap between black and Latino kids and white and Asian kids," he said. "We have cut it in half." It's a claim that has never held up to serious scrutiny.

The NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) under Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf is gearing up to intervene in 75 predominately Black and Latino "Priority" Schools, action that could lead to massive school closings within three years. The schools targeted by NJDOE for closure are in very poor neighborhoods across the state and have served these communities for decades. The NJDOE plan for "aggressive intervention" and potential school closures is the centerpiece of a new "accountability" initiative launched by the Christie Administration after obtaining a U.S. Department of Education waiver from certain provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2011. The waiver allows NJDOE to use test scores and graduation rates to create three new classifications of schools: "Priority," "Focus" and "Reward."

In yesterday's State of the City, Mayor Bloomberg said he would encourage Eva Moskowitz' Success Academy charter chain and KIPP to accelerate their expansion.  He may have a fight on his hands. First, see the stickers being pasted all over the glossy recruiting ads in the Williamsburg subways and bus stops for her new charter, to be co-located in MS 50.  (thanks to GothamSchools for the photo to the right.) According to many observers, Eva Moskowitz is recruiting almost exclusively in the northern, primarily white sections of Williamsburg.  (This is a practice she followed  with  the Upper West Success charter on the Upper West side, holding recruiting sessions in the Trump hi-rise condos and at the Jewish center, and producing thousands of glossy promotional flyers in English and almost none in Spanish -- despite the charter law which requires the recruitment of English language learners.)    In Williamsburg, a new coalition, called the Southside Community Schools Coalition has emerged to fight the charter, and its openly racist tactics,  including long-time educational leaders and activists like Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente,  Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, CM Diana Reyna, several local churches, and the District 14 Community Education Council.  An excerpt from their message is below

The other day, I was walking to an appointment on East 125th Street in Harlem and saw an interesting sight outside the huge new building holding Promise Academy, the central institution of Geoffrey Canada's much celebrated Harlem Children's Zone. I saw a teacher marching about 20 children from one entrance in the building to another. All twenty children were black, dressed in uniforms of white blouses with blue trousers or skirts, and they moved through the street with discipline and purpose. This was the face of one of the city's best known charter schools I could not help but contrast with the scene I regularly see outside PS 107 on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street in Park Slope when I drive by the school. There, on a typical late morning or early afternoon, I see groups of parents, virtually all white, taking their children to school or picking them up, their movements cheerful and often chaotic. The whiteness of the group never fails to stun me because in the 80's, when my friends kids went there PS 107 was one of the most multiracial schools in the city, with its student population well over 2/3 Black and Latino. This was the face of one of the city's high. performing public schools. The contrast between the two scenes struck me because of what it said about the direction of housing policy, education policy, and law enforcement in Michael Bloomberg's New York and how they contribute to maximizing segregation in the city.

There is an interesting NY Times article about the diminishing numbers of black students at Stuyvesant and other Specialized Science High Schools (SSHS) in NYC.   It includes the following statement:  Over the years, there have been a host of efforts to increase the number of black and Latino students at Stuyvesant and the other large specialized high schools in the city, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School, like making interviews and grade-point averages part of the admissions process. It is linked to an article that mentions an earlier DOE program to prep promising middle school minority students for the exam (which now has been recast as a program for economically disadvantaged students and has been heavily cut back in any case.)  But it has no info that I can see about any efforts on the part of city to change the actual admissions process which is based solely on one high-stakes exam. 

"Now we do have evidence. This is what we know: the Common Core tests cause a huge decline in test scores. Passing rates fell 30% in Kentucky and about the same in New York. What is worse is that the achievement gaps grew larger. As Carol Burris recently wrote, the test results were especially devastating for black and Latino children."

"The uproar over high-stakes testing associated with Common Core in New York State and complaints that children are being tested on things they were not taught, has obscured the deepening of racial, ethnic and class divisions in education in New York and the United States. Not only are the tests unfair, but according to a new study by the National Urban Research Group (NURG), math instruction and the educational system in the United States are deeply unfair, especially to Black and Latino students from poorer families."

"Last month saw the publication of a new report, New York State's Extreme School Segregation, produced by UCLA's highly regarded Civil Rights Project. It confirmed what New York educators have suspected for some time: our schools are now the most racially segregated schools in the United States. New York's African-American and Latino students experience "the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools (less than 10% white enrollment), the lowest exposure to white students, and the most uneven distribution with white students across schools.""

The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York's civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances.

"The powers that be in the Democratic Party, including President Obama, have made charter schools their main vehicle for educational renewal in low-income communities, and there are more than a few civil rights leaders and elected officials in black and Latino communities who view them as a chance to give families in their neighborhoods better educational opportunities. We have now had six years of strong support for charters from the Obama administration, backed up by Race to the Top money. It is time to ask some hard questions."

"New York City has seen some of the more far-reaching educational reforms over the past decade, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein set in motion an array of market-based reforms. Both Bloomberg and Klein argued vigorously that the New York City schools had substantially closed the achievement gap, pointing to a shrinking difference in the percentage of white students and Black and Latino students classified as proficient on the New York State English Language Arts and mathematics assessments administered in grades 3 to 8. Many scholars have demonstrated, however, that differences in proficiency rates are potentially misleading, and especially so if the tests have inflated scores reflecting predictable and easier questions. Has the achievement gap in New York City decreased over time? What happened to the achievement gap when the state of New York, recognizing the flaws in its testing system, raised the "cut scores" defining proficiency on its tests in 2010?"