A town hall meeting on October 20 featured Nikole Hannah-Jones questioning Chancellor of New York City Public Schools Kamar Samuels about his vision for the city’s schools. Hannah-Jones suggested implementing a plan that had recently been repealed in San Francisco due to 15 years of community dissatisfaction and poor results.
The plan in question involved getting rid of schools that consider grades or test scores for admissions and redrawing or eliminating residential school zones. Samuels pointed to Manhattan’s District 3, where he had previously done away with middle school screening, despite local families being against the move.
Integration Efforts in NYC Schools
In 2016, District 3 rezoned three elementary schools in an effort to increase integration. The high-performing PS 452 was moved into the building that housed the low-performing PS 191, and PS 191 received a new building to attract more families. However, the results showed that the ranking of PS 452 slipped 9 percentile points over the past decade, while PS 191 remained “well below” average.
A similar effort in Manhattan’s District 1, where all elementary schools were unzoned in 1989, also failed to produce the desired results. At PS 19, 81% of students are performing at grade level in math and reading, but at Earth School, only 42% are at grade level in math. At PS 134, where 100% of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals, only a quarter of students are performing at grade level in either subject.
These examples suggest that integration through rezoning or unzoning may not be the solution to lagging student achievement that its supporters claim. In fact, the students who continued to perform well were those whose families could afford to pay for test preparation, while those who couldn’t mostly didn’t perform well.
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San Francisco’s Experience with Integration
San Francisco’s experience with a citywide choice lottery, which was implemented in 2011, also failed to produce the desired results. The system was designed to increase integration and raise student achievement, but it ultimately favored families with the time, language access, and resources to access the complicated process. As a result, the San Francisco Unified School District voted to scrap the system and return to a system of residential zones with options to apply to specialized programs.
According to SFSUD Superintendent Maria Su, the current system “has not worked equally for everyone.” Many families who do not feel confident in their neighborhood school choose to go elsewhere, leaving those schools with fewer students and resources. The test scores for the neediest students demonstrate them falling further behind, with 30% of San Francisco children attending private schools, far exceeding the California state average.
Samuels’ experience in Manhattan’s District 3 has led him to reconsider his approach to integration. He now advocates for soliciting stakeholder buy-in instead of dictating top-down policies. This shift in approach may be a response to the backlash he faced from local families when he eliminated middle school screening in District 3.
The failure of integration efforts in District 3 and District 1 has significant implications for the city’s education policy. The fact that high-performing schools like PS 452 and PS 199 saw their rankings slip after rezoning suggests that integration alone is not enough to improve student achievement. Instead, policymakers may need to focus on addressing the underlying issues that affect student performance, such as access to resources and test preparation.
Lessons from San Francisco
The San Francisco Unified School District’s decision to scrap its citywide choice lottery system is a significant development in the debate over integration. Superintendent Maria Su’s explanation for the change highlights the challenges of creating a system that works for all families. The fact that 30% of San Francisco children attend private schools, far exceeding the California state average, is a stark reminder of the challenges that need to be addressed.
