After a recap of local and national education news, Leonie interviewed to two guests: First Jonathan Soto, organizer for Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who spoke about the tutoring program she has established for students in her district to make up for their need for more support during remote learning and the goal of having the federal government fund this sort of program nationally. Then she interviewed Dr. Preston Green, professor at the Univ. of Connecticut, who has co-authored a fascinating article that proposes that part of the government’s reparations to Black communities for slavery and ongoing discrimination be made in the form of increasing funding for their underfunded public schools.
Organizing Educational Mutual Aid and Researching Educational Reparations
Transcript of “Talk Out of School” podcast on February 24, 2021
Host Leonie Haimson with Jonathan Soto and Dr. Preston Green
Leonie Haimson
Hello everyone, my name is Leonie Haimson. Welcome to our show, Talk Out of School on WBAI Radio 99.5 FM, and WBAI.org where we focus on issues affecting public schools here in New York City, the state level, and nationally. Our show is also available for download as podcast. Today I have two guests: Jonathan Soto, organizer for Congressmember AOC, who will tell us about the tutoring program she's created for her district to make up for the lack of teacher support during remote learning at this time of pandemic. And then Dr. Dr. Preston Green, professor at the University of Connecticut, who's written a fascinating article proposing that reparations to black communities for slavery and discrimination be partly made in the form of government expanded funding for their public schools.
But first, some local news: tomorrow middle school buildings will reopen for the 62,000 New York City middle school students who opted into in-person learning last fall. Meanwhile, the debate rages on whether all schools should reopen at this point, what precautions should be used including social distancing and mask wearing, whether this depends on the level of community spread of COVID, and it seems like every day a new study comes out with a different result about the risk of COVID transmission in schools. Most of the studies show parents and teachers are very conflicted, which is not surprising given the confusing and often contradictory evidence. A poll was released last week that said that a majority of Americans believe that schools should not reopen to in-person learning until all teachers have been vaccinated. And while several states are giving special priority to doing just that, New York is not among them. Though teachers are on the long list of groups that are eligible for vaccination, there has been no centralized effort to make sure that they are.
In other news, late Monday the federal government announced that they would not allow states to cancel the annual standardized test this spring for grades three through eight and once in high school, even in the midst of this pandemic. Ten states, including New York, had requested waivers that were rejected. It was discouraging to say the least that even in the midst of this crisis, the government is insisting on tests that will be stressful to students, and even less reliable in their results than before, given the unequal conditions in which these tests will be given across the country. In New York, advocates will be urging parents to opt out even more than before, in a state where there's already about a 20% opt-out rate.
Also last week at a city council hearing, the New York City Department of Education announced that the police department is considering hiring 475 more school safety agents this year at a cost of $20 million, even as all high school buildings remain closed, and there's a shortage of teachers and counselors to provide the academic and emotional support that students badly need. Even though the police hire and train school safety agents, their costs come straight out of the DOE budget, as the DOE is forced to pay the police for their services, whether they want them or not at a price of about $300 million a year, and they are more agents in our schools than counselors and school psychologists and social workers combined.
Last year the Mayor promised to eventually move these agents to be hired and supervised by DOE, and allow their ranks to be diminished over time, but this hasn't happened here. Contrast this to what's happened in Los Angeles, as well as Minneapolis, Seattle, Oakland, Denver, and Portland, which according to the New York Times have begun to sever or suspend their relationships with local police departments or reduce their policing ranks. Some districts have said they're reallocating the funds to hire more social workers and mental health professionals to handle problems instead.
But now I'd like to turn to my first guest Jonathan Soto, an organizer with the Office of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, whose office has enlisted volunteer tutors to try to make up for the lack of support that too many students in her district are experiencing with remote and blended learning. We invited AOC herself, but she was understandably busy with other events. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here
Jonathan Soto
Thank you so much for having me happy to join you and your audience.
Leonie Haimson
So whose idea was this originally, to organize a tutoring program for students in AOC's district?
Jonathan Soto
So, post-pandemic the campaign operation really focused on serving mutual aid through food deliveries, mass distribution, over a million dollars raised, and we partner very closely with parents. Understandably because schools, usually serve as communal interaction spaces, where folks come for knowledge and communities and direct services at times, and during crises. In the pandemic, a lot of mutual aid networks emerged from there. So, the Congresswoman, who has an education background, particularly worked as a director of an enrichment program for career readiness. Also I am an organizing public school parent, also with a 10 year old in the school system right there.
So we partnered with schools in Corona, Throgs Neck, Parkchester, and Jackson Heights, and basically started recruiting tutors for one-to-one, volunteer tutoring, and focusing primarily on homework help. Homework help is important because obviously we don't want this to claim we're an educational program. We're really a mutual aid program, and operationally parents sent homework an hour before the meeting, they review the homework. The one-to-one interaction is so important. We're not here to supplement, rather support teachers. It's impossible I see daily remote-learning. How can you provide one-on-one attention to 30 kids simultaneously on the screen? It's a horrible situation that teachers have been placed in.
So this really is a program to supplement and support teachers as well, and try to connect a volunteer network of the Congresswoman. It's very extensive, we have 13,000 tutors signed up, which is a lot, right? And our goal is to connect to 1,000 students. So far we've signed up 400 by June, and then we want to create toolkits, that way people could learn how to do this in their own communities. This is a cooperative autonomy. We cooperate on shared kind of models, so we use Airtable, we use Slack, we use Google Sheets, and data systems that allow people to just use this and coordinate. But we then do coaching, and we want to advocate also that the federal government and also local governments think of this as potential job programs, and happy to talk more about that as well.
Leonie Haimson
So did I get these figures right you have 13,000 tutors and only 400 students. Is that right?
Jonathan Soto
So 1,300 folks that signed up to volunteer. No, 13,000, yeah it's a lot.
Leonie Haimson
13,000 tutors signed up to volunteer, but you only have 400 kids who signed up. So you're actually now probably looking for more kids than tutors, is that right?
Jonathan Soto
Correct. And what we're doing is we're going to put toolkits together so that people learn how to just, because privacy and safety is critically important. First of all, so everyone does need a background check. So we do a background check. Also ask people to submit their information and you know go through an application process because we do want to make sure that people are doing this in a safe environment. You know we have community agreements and ways that we engage, but really you've seen mutual aid networks emerge in times of crisis when the state fails to support folks with their basic needs. And this is just an interesting dynamic that we see happening in different spaces. So just for tutoring and virtual homework help it's been interesting to see it develop and blossom here.
Leonie Haimson
So how many of these 1,300 volunteers have actually been vetted and trained to do the job at this point?
Jonathan Soto
So far we have 400 for the students. We do it by the time we increase the students sign up, then we train someone, and our goal was 1,000 by the end of the year. And then create a platform for others to learn how to do them and direct the 12,500 tutors, alright here throughout the country, this is how you could do this on your own with our resources and skills.
Leonie Haimson
So what sort of help do you need for our listeners? Do you want more students to sign up, and if so, what neighborhoods are you drawing from?
Jonathan Soto
Well we're definitely focused on meeting our 1,000, and we are on track to meet that within the district. So the Congresswoman's district is East East Bronx, Queens, Corona, we're working in Jackson Heights, Parkchester, Throgs Neck, but also many people throughout the city writes on Bronx, East Brooklyn have reached out on learning how to do this so that's why we really want to develop the toolkits which will be available by the end of March, and that way people can learn how to do this in their own neighborhoods. But also having people understand that there should be an advocacy element as well, and that we should push for localities to fund this, for federal government to fund tutoring programs. Obviously we want to prioritize that Black and Brown students from directly impacted areas are prioritized. Oftentimes these programs, kind of bring in a helicoptering-in element that we want to definitely avoid and prioritize this direct investment, and potential funding and people that could serve as tutors right people so many people during the pandemic substitute teachers without work, you know, there could be something interesting here and it's interesting to see that develop.
Leonie Haimson
So in the UK there's a national funded tutoring program for students, and there are several bills in Congress right now, especially in the Senate, to expand AmeriCorps program, which I think is would be really helpful because there are a lot of young college graduates who don't have jobs, who are looking for something useful to do, to provide tutoring for schools, especially in high-needs neighborhoods. Is this something that AOC supports?
Jonathan Soto
Yeah, we definitely want to support, and also focus on how these programs similar to programs we saw develop during times of crisis in our country's history, how it can serve as a direct infusion of direct jobs program for people locally. That's critical during the time of the pandemic, so many people have been just displaced right so maybe it's homework help for all, UBI for whoever decides to become a tutor. These are ideas that I'm sure localities can have in partnership with the federal government. But yeah, we have to be imaginative. This is also within the substructure of the general economy. You know the Congresswoman has the Green New Deal thinking about mass investment for job programs as a substructure of our economy. I think that's critical as well, and public education is just right for that very low hanging fruit and we've seen that public school stakeholders have been directly impacted. As a public school parent, I see with my daughter remote learning, it's wild what's happening. It's wild what's happening for the teachers, that they're not being prioritized for vaccines when really our economy is really shaped by our public school education. We've seen how both have not served working people's interests.
Leonie Haimson
It's amazing to me that teachers are recognized as an essential part of the economy, and they should be recognized as frontline workers with the same priority for vaccination. Several states as I mentioned earlier are actually doing this, making sure all their teachers are getting vaccinated in the next few weeks, and I just don't know why it's not happening here in New York. So how can folks support your effort in terms of helping with resources or volunteers? What should they do if they want to make sure that this program is successful and expanded?
Jonathan Soto
So we have a signup form for parents. We have a lot of tutors or volunteers that have supported so we definitely want to share their toolkit for people to learn how to do this but as of right now, we have a form that people can complete. I'm gonna spell it out quickly: bit.ly/HomeworkHelpersNYC. So the H in Homework, and the H in Helpers is capitalized, and NYC capitalized. So again, bit.ly/HomeworkHelpersNYC. That's the parent signup form, students signup form, guardian signup form, and if you're a PTA member. We have our email that you could reach out there, and we can reach out to discuss potential work.
Leonie Haimson
I will put all this on the podcast and the WBAI website for listeners to follow up on if you didn't get that URL. How about financially? Are you looking for financial support as well to help fund this?
Jonathan Soto
At this time, we are good. We have the ability to do background checks, which is great for our folks, but we will definitely let people know. Again, this is a people-powered volunteer movement, and we want to also advocate that folks should be paid. The federal government should be doing this. The governments local should be providing tutoring for all. And this could be a jobs program, so we want to advocate for on that end as well.
Leonie Haimson
Well thank you so much for being here, Jonathan. Thanks to AOC for being on the front line, and actually organizing this program which really should exist across the country and as you say should be funded by the federal government, and I hope that you and hopefully AOC could come on the show later this year and talk about her efforts in this regard.
Jonathan Soto
Thank you so much to you and for your advocacy also on your end for students, teachers, and all public education stakeholders. Take care.
Leonie Haimson
Thank you. So now I'd like to switch gears and invite onto the show Dr. Dr. Preston Green.
Dr. Preston Green
Hello there, how are you doing?
Leonie Haimson
Hi, it's so great to have you. He's an attorney and education expert who teaches at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Green welcome onto the show. You along with Bruce Baker of Rutgers co authored a fascinating article recently that I'd love you to talk about. You have this novel idea that reparations could be paid to black communities who have suffered from slavery and continuing discrimination by boosting funding in their community's public schools. Did I summarize right?
Dr. Preston Green
Yes you did, you did a great job with that.
Leonie Haimson
So, can you start off by telling us briefly about the research showing that schools in black neighborhoods are underfunded and why that is?
Dr. Preston Green
Sure, I will do that. First of all, it's important to understand that there's been underfunding since the separate-but-equal era. The famous Plessy case. And there's research showing that black schools have been historically underfunded even prior to Brown v. Board of Education. But, you know, it was hoped that once Brown occurred there at least would be equitable funding in addition to school desegregation, but that has not happened. In fact, EdBuild, which is a nonprofit entity that has been studying school funding, found that in the 2015-2016 school year there was a $23 billion differential between white and non-white school districts. This includes Black school districts. And this amounts to more than $2,200 per student. And if you were to think that this is really, maybe a poverty issue, they found that even if you control for poverty, there's a difference of poor white school districts receive $1,500 per student more than non-white school districts. So why did that occur? So in the case of Black school districts, it's important understand that a primary driver school funding is local property taxes. But Black communities tend to have lower property tax values than white communities, generally speaking. And the federal government has actually helped to contribute to this state of affairs through the process through the policy known as redlining. The Federal Federal Housing Authority in the 1930s really ramped up community building and white enclaves, segregated enclaves, provided mortgages for those enclaves, but did not provide similar funding and mortgages for Black communities that were segregated. So this really helped create this historical difference in funding or difference in housing values, which of course contributes to the disparities that we see now.
Leonie Haimson
And of course there were lots of communities, suburban communities which completely locked out Blacks from buying houses in their midst.
Dr. Preston Green
That's also correct. That's also right as well. And we also have to talk about the designing of school districts. This school districts and that school district boundaries, there's also a really, really sordid history about race driving school district boundaries. So you combine all that, in addition to this, you have the Supreme Court in a trio of decisions, also creating the situation that we see in the present time. Here's the 1973 Rodriguez decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that school funding disparities based on local property taxation was constitutional. Now even though this is seen as a wealth based disparity case, one scholar has stated that race was the elephant in the room. That this affected Mexican-American students. And you also were fully aware that the impact this would have on black students as well. But after Rodriguez, you had dual decisions Milliken v Bradley in 1974, where the court held that you could not include suburban school districts in a metropolitan desegregation remedy. And this kind of throws in these disparities.
Leonie Haimson
You mean even if those local districts or states wanted to broaden the boundaries of where kids could attend school, they couldn't do it?
Dr. Preston Green
No that,s a little later. In the 1970s, we're still in the process of court mandated desegregation. But during that time the courts were involved in addressing these disparities in part because legislatures at that time were not. So the courts had taken that role, but the Milliken decision signaled a real sort of moving away from court mandated desegregation. And there were a number of cases that followed.
Leonie Haimson
And what year was that?
Dr. Preston Green
This was in 1974. So this kind of baked in these Black school districts that were unequally funded. Now, three years later, in a case that is popularly known as Milliken II, it's also Millikan v. Bradley, the Supreme Court did find that the Court could mandate funding, could provide additional funding, compensatory funding, to these urban districts. And indeed this has been referred to as a limited reparations plan. But the problem with that plan, with these sorts of programs was that they were limited in scope. They didn't actually address the local property taxation problems and school funding problems that are historically in place. And it was also for a limited amount of time. So, because there was a chance we were hopeful that maybe Milliken II could have led to some addressing of these disparities, but it did not. And that is, in part, what we laid out is the big reason why we are in the place that we are today.
Leonie Haimson
So the research is strong, and you go over some of that in your article about how more funding is linked to more opportunity, more learning, better student outcomes, and that schools with high concentrations of minority students are less likely to have experienced teachers, fewer advanced courses, buildings which lack updated ventilation, and heating systems, and yet so far court cases have not been effective in equalizing funding within states. Here in New York City we have something called the Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit which we won in the state's highest court more than a decade ago. And there was a settlement that was agreed to by then the governor Spitzer, which Governor Cuomo has refused to fund, so we are still waiting on equitable funding for our schools here in New York City. Instead, use you and Bruce Baker say that more equitable funding could be driven via a system of state reparations. Can you explain how that would work?
Dr. Preston Green
Yes, yes. Well we've identified really, kind of like a four-pronged strategy that states could use in a reparations program. And they would first of all call for compensation to school districts, compensation to school districts that have been underfunded because of their Black student population. So throughout the school districts, there would be makeup for additional cost and additional funding for those Black students in every school district. Secondly, we call for rebates to Black taxpayers. As we lay out in our article, there's been this historic underfunding and undervaluation of black property. And so this would be a way of kind of addressing that historical harm. Thirdly, we call for increased funding to school districts that are racially isolated. Research has shown, and research in fact that Bruce Baker and I have actually conducted, has shown that additional funding will be necessary to provide greater outcomes for racially isolated school districts. And then finally we call for redistribution of funding caused by systemic policies that have led to the underfunding of Black school districts. We call for a redistribution of that funding that has gone to these white school districts to be brought to Black school districts. So those are the four prongs that we call in our reparations plan.
Leonie Haimson
So a couple questions. Why would states that have refused to fund their schools equitably in the first place agree to any of these specific ideas you have for making school funding more equitable?
Dr. Preston Green
Yeah, I mean, I think that we may be at a time. There are always periods in time where we start talking about reparations. And I think that right now we are in such a time where we can start pushing for them. I mean there is greater acknowledgement I think in policy among policymakers that there are historic racial funding disparities. And we've also noted that 10 cities have supported the idea of H.B.40, introduced by late-House Representative Conyers, that would actually explore the idea of reparations. So we're starting to see I think an understanding of this possibility and so what we decided to do in our article was to center school funding as an important aspect of a reparations plan. There has been talk about funding and about the disparities that that Black students and families have experienced, but there's really been no kind of real laying out of how school funding can be addressed and so that's what we tried to do in our article.
Leonie Haimson
So there is at least one state that does have its own reparation system, Virginia. I was really fascinated to read about that. Can you explain what that's all about?
Dr. Preston Green
I'd be very happy to, and full disclosure I am a Virginian.
Leonie Haimson
Did you have anything to do with the establishment of that?
Dr. Preston Green
No, they didn't consult me about this, but I'm happy to see that this has happened. So, Virginia, like many southern states after the Brown v. Board decision in 1954, a number of southern states including Virginia engaged in a practice of massive resistance. And massive resistance was really just a variety of strategies that states use to circumvent the Supreme Court's statement in Brown v. Board of Education that school districts would have to desegregate. And in round two the court said desegregation "with all deliberate speed." So all deliberate speed the south meant not at all. And so Virginia, engaged to a ten year period from 1954 to 1964, where the state engaged in a number of practices, including providing vouchers to white students to attend segregation academies. And, indeed, one county Prince George's County closed for five years.
Leonie Haimson
All their public schools closed for five years, and the white students went to private schools and the Black students had no schools whatsoever to go to is that right?
Dr. Preston Green
That's exactly what happened. In the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Griffin v. County School Board said that was unconstitutional, but there was a lot of harm done. Many people did not go back to school. They just lost ground and it wasn't just this county, it was throughout the state. And so what the state did in the early 2000s was passed the Brown Fund Act, which actually provided funding to Virginia residents who were denied an education during that ten year period. They could then receive funding to attend to get their GED, maybe attend public or private schools of higher education, even to the point of getting a doctorate. So this is a great example, really of how states can do right by their Black citizens who suffered and who were denied education. And so what we've argued is that not only is school desegregation a prime area for this, but school finances as well.
Leonie Haimson
So your article also contains some fascinating history of several different federal reparations programs that were established starting right after the Civil War was over. Can you describe some of those programs and what the results were?
Dr. Preston Green
Yes, I would be glad to do that. We do go into sort of that fascinating history of reparations, or in the case of Black Americans the failure to provide reparations, and starting with the really famous reparations Field Order #15 proposed by General Sherman, which promised are 40 acres and a mule. I know people might have heard of Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule. Where did that come from? It comes from Field Order #15. And it was promising, but then, you know...
Leonie Haimson
So every slave or every male adult slave or former slave. Is that how it worked?
Dr. Preston Green
Yeah, every former male adult slave would receive 40 acres. But then Andrew Johnson President Johnson, who came in after Lincoln's assassination, did not support that and so that bill then died. And in 1867, there was a bill for reparations for slavery that Congress, for farmers, for the former enslaved that was introduced by Congress and also failed. So you know, there was a chance to make things right right after the Civil War that the Union just passed on. But by contrast, we do see remedies for Native Americans. There was a 1946 act for Native American tribes for lands taken. There was also one for the Alaska Native Claims Act of 1971, and most recently in 1988, there was a reparations for Japanese-Americans who experienced the internment camps during World War II. But what was really interesting about this act was that it was limited to people who were alive at the time, so as not to provide fuel for a reparations bill for African Americans. So that was very concerning. And it also shows that there was awareness of harm that had been done to African Americans as a result of being enslaved.
Leonie Haimson
So in other words, if you were a child alive at that time, and your parents property was taken away from you, but your parents were no longer living, you couldn't receive any of those funds. Is that right? And it was purposely done in order not to provide any sort of precedent for reparations to Black Americans for slavery?
Dr. Preston Green
Right, to avoid the multi-generational harm that we realized that slavery has caused him to Black African Americans, yes.
Leonie Haimson
But the Native American reparations acts did obviously provide multi-generational payments to the descendants of those Native Americans whose land was taken away from them. Is that right?
Dr. Preston Green
That is true. Yeah, so as I read this I'm trying not to get too angry at the moment, but you know it's hard at times. But there's always a chance to do right thing. We're thinking this may be the chance and so we just keep pushing forward, making the argument, hoping that this time will be the time that we catch lightning. And that's what we're trying to do right now.
Leonie Haimson
And as you mentioned very briefly before, there's a bill that was introduced in Congress started by John Conyers in 1989, but reintroduced every single year since then, to create a commission to look at the issue of reparations for slavery and ongoing discrimination, and 10 cities actually have passed resolutions, supporting this, but not New York City. Is that right?
Dr. Preston Green
I believe not New York City, but maybe this will happen. But again, I think this is a chance now. I think that we may start seeing - I'm always an eternal optimist, so we may start seeing more cities, more towns start building toward recognition that this needs to be studied. And H.B. 40 only calls for study. It only calls for study and from there, states and cities can decide for themselves how they would address the issue.
Leonie Haimson
I think I've heard more about reparations in the last year, partly as a result of Black Lives Matters movement and everything else than I've ever heard about it during my adult life, so I think it is a matter of great concern and conversation that's going on. Now I'm really interested in the practical application or implications of this. Now, if you could design the perfect reparations bill: Congress called on you and Bruce Baker to actually write the bill or write the outline of a bill. How would you define those schools or districts that would receive more funding, based upon their Black population? Because as you know there are many many school districts, including New York City, where we have lots of schools that are both Black and Latinx, and then other schools that are primarily white. Would New York City, the district as a whole, get money and then divvy up that money to only schools that were predominantly Black as opposed to, predominantly children of color or how would that work?
Dr. Preston Green
Let me first back up and say that Bruce Baker and I have also written an article looking at school funding disparities for the Latinx population as well, so we actually have addressed this issue. So the reparations bill is at the reparations article that we written is part of a series of articles that we have used to kind of identify groups that have been historically underfunded. So I just want to first of all say that we do address under funding for Latinx populations as well in our in our research.
Leonie Haimson
But not in the form of reparations per se?
Dr. Preston Green
Not in the form of reparations. So what I would call for is for cities actually to do studies, for states to do studies to actually explore how the actual practices have created funding disparities for African Americans. So they would first of all do that. And once you've kind of identified where their practices and federal practices have created these disparities, then they would design a program that would target the harm that has been done to this population. Now, this doesn't stop them from doing the same thing for other populations, if they so desire.
So each state would do its own study or the federal government would do a study or who would be actually in charge of doing this study?
What we would say is that in our article we have laid out roles that states can play in providing for reparations, but we also talk about the role that the federal government has played as well. And so in the late part of the paper, we actually identified a number of policies that Congress could pursue. And this could include, among other things, funding to address state Black/white funding disparities, and also an education fund for communities that have experienced funding disparities that the government contributed to or caused. So there would be studies both at the federal level and also the state level that would be targeted to the role that each had played to create these disparities. And we point this out also because, without getting too much in the legal weeds about this, there could be the danger of creating a policy that is just too broad and not sufficiently tailored to address the specific harm done. So that is why it's really important for these various governmental entities to do studies identifying how they created this harm in each of these areas, and then also how they can then provide funding to correct that problem.
Leonie Haimson
So you guys have no proposed specific rubric about what population, what percentage population Black students should go to. You think that it should be up to further study by states and/or the federal government to determine the allocation of additional funds. Is it okay with you if we take some calls because we have a little bit of time and I think people might really want to call.
Dr. Preston Green
That would be great, I would love to.
Leonie Haimson
Okay callers, if you have questions for Dr. Green, or thoughts about reparations and how they might be partly paid through the increased funding to primarily Black schools, please call us at 212-209-2877. That's 212-209-2877. Now, as you I'm sure you know President Biden has proposed that Title I funds be tripled to schools. We don't know whether that's going to happen or not. Obviously there's a divided Congress, but that would surely help support a lot of the schools that Black students go to. So, would you support that in addition? And how does that sort of align with this idea or not align with this idea of reparations?
Dr. Preston Green
I would support it. I think that there were parts of the Biden proposal that I was certainly pleased about. One was that there was certainly this increase in funding much larger than it's gone before. $130 billion is quite a bit.
Leonie Haimson
Sorry to interrupt you, but for our listeners, Title I means that schools that have a lot of poor kids, and the proportion is different in different areas, but I think in New York City it's something like 80% of kids and families under the poverty line, do get extra federal funds. Unfortunately it's not often enough to make up for the disadvantages that they experienced, so sorry go on.
Dr. Preston Green
No problem at all. I think that is actually a good thing. The major problem that I see here is that, at least in the Biden proposal is that there will be funding, at least protection, to ensure that in the next two years, that if there are any cuts that come forward that the high poverty school districts are not the ones that are adversely affected. So there are things in this policy that I think are pretty good. The problem though, with just Title I funding in general, that I see is that it doesn't target these sorts of historic funding disparities that you know that result in states with Black students receiving this disparate funding. And I think that it actually has the same sort of problem that Milliken II funding had back in the mid 1970s, and that is additional funding to kind of provide compensatory education, but nothing that actually addresses the historic funding disparities. So what I'm saying is that this is a good, but what I would like to see is additional steps to ensure that these historic funding disparities that Black school districts have experienced are addressed. And also that the Biden Administration take the lead on actually maybe stepping in and identifying and requiring states that have policies that lead to this historic underfunding of Black school districts to actually correct them. Indeed, in our article we talk about how there have been these Dear Colleague letters, where the US Department of Education states that, you know, policies are things that they wish to address, and they actually have identified school funding ratio school funding disparities as something that needs to be addressed, but they've never really taken any action to do anything about this. And so that's something that I would love to see going forward from the Biden Administration.
Leonie Haimson
Well actually we saw something really bad happened in New York State when schools were allocated millions of dollars in extra CARES funds to address the COVID emergency. And what happened was our Governor cut all the districts, and it was allocated basically on the basis of Title I, and the Governor cut New York City's funding and other high needs districts by exactly the same amount as we got extra from the federal government, which meant that we were no further ahead at all. And in fact it was worse, and this is a little bit in the weeds, but I think it's really interesting, because the federal government required districts to give part of those funds to private schools with poor kids. And so we ended up in New York City with less funds than we would have if we'd never been allocated federal funds in the first place.
Something that about the Title I funds - that we do have to call so I just wanted to say one more thing about Title I, which is the idea of integration, obviously is a huge issue in New York City, we have very segregated schools. But a lot of the schools where the administration and even parents were pushing for more integration, some of the parents and those predominantly Black schools were very worried because they knew they would lose Title I funds, and those Title I funds were extremely important to keeping class sizes small and lots of extra services to kids. And so this is an ongoing debate in New York City, but one that is rarely covered in all the news stories about integration, the legitimate fears of Black and Latinx parents that their schools will get less funds once white kids start moving into their enrollment district.
Dr. Preston Green
And what Bruce Baker and I are calling for works in tandem with desegregation plans. And I just want to say that historically what has been one problem that we've seen in our own research about school funding disparities, is that in efforts to desegregate, these funding disparities that we've written about over the years have been allowed to remain. So we've been calling for is to, in addition to school desegregation, we want to make sure that black communities are not underfunded as a result, so it's a two pronged strategy.
Leonie Haimson
It's complicated though because as you get more integrated schools, then they will be less predominantly Black and depending on the formula for reparations, then possibly those schools would lose some of those funds so, you know, these are complicated issues, obviously. We do have a caller on the line. Please could you state your name, where you're from, and what your question is for Dr. Green.
Edward
Are you talking to me? I'm sorry.
Leonie Haimson
I am talking to you! Hello, what's your name?
Edward
My name is Edward. I understand, a lot of what was said, and I find that the whole thing of segregated schools in New York, very personally. As my daughter went to a school on the Lower East Side. And even though the school was in a community that was 70% Black and Hispanic, the school was over 80% Asian, and it was an active underground program say to get rid of those students who were in the school who weren't Black or Hispanic and most of them left. My daughter was in a class, you know she lost, by the time I think she got to fifth grade, she was the only Black student in the class.
And complicated on top of this, it was found that the principal had been guilty of taking funds that she wasn't supposed to take. And what annoys me is that the deal was they removed her from school, but they never removed her from education. And now she is still in another school, affecting children. And I find that the problem has to be that the whole thing has to be shaken up from the roots because cosmetic surgery doesn't work. And it's just a feeling. I sent you on messenger, Leonie, and I don't know if you looked at it, but I really wish that you would because there's documents, there's court orders, and for five years my daughter and I went through hell, and nobody seems to want to look at it.
Leonie Haimson
Did you say your name was Edward?
Edward
Yes, it is.
Leonie Haimson
I will look back at my messages. Facebook is not the best way to reach me. If you want to reach me, you can email me at leoniehaimson@gmail.com. I'm not that great at Facebook. But I will look back at your Messenger and I will make sure to get in touch with you. And if I don't please email me at my first last name at gmail so we can discuss this. There's so many problems with the New York City public schools we can't really get into them all now. One of the problems is the principals. We've had corrupt principals.
Part of that is not their fault because they've been driven to try to increase test scores over the years, especially when Mayor Bloomberg was our mayor because principals were afraid that their schools would be shut if they didn't increase test scores. There is still test score pressure on principals because when test scores come out if they don't have high test scores parents tend to leave the school for other schools. And so high stakes testing is a huge problem in New York City and elsewhere. That's part of what drives the principals to unfortunately and illegally push out kids. We also see this, among many charter schools, but you know integration. Obviously, we need to have a more holistic notion of what is a good school, rather than simply on base it on high stakes tests. And part of what we should be looking at for good schools, is how integrated they are and how well they meet all students needs, no matter whether there are high test takers, you know get high test scores or not. Do you have anything to add on that Dr. Green?
Dr. Preston Green
I think he actually really did kind of highlight the sort of things that I would talk about, you definitely do need a holistic approach. And, you know, one that I think one will, really my heart goes out to the caller. I mean one that make sure that we value all students, and make sure that all students needs are met and that they all feel that they belong. So I really hope that the caller gets the redress that he's seeking.
Leonie Haimson
Absolutely/ We have another caller on the line. Hello, what's your name and what's your question or concern on this issue of reparations?
Peter
Good morning. This is Peter calling from the Bronx. First I'm trying to understand is this, are we really talking about reparations or are we talking about schools?
Dr. Preston Green
Both, I think Dr. Green?
Reparations for schools.
Peter
This is the way I get confused because I've heard this before. So, out of all the other cultures that have had to get reparations due to society abusing them, I'm not even going to get into the point that we are last, because we're always last, but my question is, why is it geared towards schools, in general? Why is it is not generally thought of as with everybody else? I mean like you spoke with the Japanese internment, the Jewish Holocaust, even the American indigenous people. It was, okay, you get the money, but you only get it for this. So I'm always a little disturbed when it's like a caveat attached to this.
Leonie Haimson
Two minutes, so please please. Dr. Green, we have to wrap up.
Dr. Preston Green
I'll be quick about it. The way to view our article is that this talks about how school funding can fit into a reparations program. So this is not exactly just the one-off. People who write about reparations talk about a wide variety of reparations. They talk about in terms of housing. They talk about in terms of environmental justice. They talk about it in a wide variety of ways. And they also mention education is one of those areas that need to be addressed. It's just that what we have found is that at the K through 12 level, elementary, secondary school level, there really has not been any spelling out about how to address the historic funding disparities that Black communities have experienced. So what we tried to do in our article was to fill that gap in the reparations discussion. So view this as part of a whole, not just not just the single thing.
Leonie Haimson
Thank you so much Dr. Green. I think it's a fascinating idea, and I hope it really sparks a lot of conversations and debate in Congress and elsewhere, about the need for reparations and how part of those reparations could be devoted to increasing opportunities for Black students by increasing funding to their schools. This is Leonie Haimson, host of Talk Out of School on WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio. I'm going to put a link to Dr. Green's article in the resources part of our website and our podcast. Our show is also available as a podcast if you missed the live version. If you hear it through Apple, please leave a review. Also please consider becoming a WBAI buddy to Talk Out of School by logging in to givetowbai.org or calling 516-620-3602. I'll be back soon with another episode of Talk Out of School. Until then, be careful and be safe, thanks so much for listening.