{"id":374703,"date":"2026-10-16T11:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T11:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374703\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T11:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T11:14:15","slug":"integration-is-a-fake-fix-for-nycs-failing-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374703\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Integration’ is a fake fix for NYC’s failing schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the sudden noise about \u201cintegration\u201d as the fix for New York City\u2019s failing schools<\/a> may be the most shameful red herring ever \u2014 a blatant bid to distract from the system\u2019s real, blindingly obvious problems.<\/p>\n

The proximate cause is New York Times fabulist Nikole Hannah-Jones\u2019 quasi-confession last month<\/a> about the mis-education she chose for her daughter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NHJ\u2019s account laid bare a lot of ugly truths behind failing schools \u2014 low expectations, rampant absenteeism, cafeteria chaos, checked-out teachers and absentee administrators \u2014 only to absurdly claim the root causes are inadequate funding and segregation.<\/p>\n

Of course the city spends markedly more per student on its worst public schools than on its best, and vastly more than any other system in the world; only a villain or a fool can pretend that\u2019s the issue. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s as absurd to point to a school\u2019s racial or ethnic mix as in any way relevant.<\/p>\n

The classic argument for desegregation turned on resources: \u201cSeparate but equal\u201d was a lie, because minority schools didn\u2019t remotely get equal funding or other support.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s plainly irrelevant here, because the whole system is swimming in cash. <\/p>\n

So how does an uneven racial mix make a school fail?<\/p>\n

It can\u2019t be that black kids can\u2019t learn unless enough white ones are in the classroom, too, so what is it?.<\/p>\n

Not even Nikole Hannah-Jones can seriously argue that racists are secretly manipulating the system to deny black students a proper educational experience: No cabal of \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d could operate under the noses of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Chancellor Kamar Samuels and all the other lefty and liberal leaders of all races who\u2019ve controlled the Department of Education for decades.<\/p>\n

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Please also explain why the city\u2019s best-performing public schools, the Success Academy charter schools, manage to excel<\/a> with overwhelming black and Hispanic student bodies.<\/p>\n

Of course, Hannah-Jones & Co. despise the SA network because . . . well, because it defies every other progressive educational nostrum, and keeps on succeeding. <\/p>\n

Note, too, that NHJ had the same prescriptions long before she (basically) admitted her prescriptions had failed her daughter: She\u2019s called for scrapping Gifted & Talented programs, ending middle-school screening and axing the test-only entry requirement for the best high schools \u2014 all steps that only discourage excellence without helping anyone, which is somehow supposed to promote \u201cequity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progressives have also gutted school discipline in the name of racial equity, a push that began nationally under President Barack Obama and went into high gear in the city under Chancellor Carmen Fari\u00f1a; the no-sticks \u201crestorative justice\u201d approach has proved a total bust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than half the city\u2019s public schools are blatant failures<\/a>, but progressives keep pushing the same worse-than-failed prescriptions because they refuse to take off their ideological blinkers.<\/p>\n

The true villains \u2014 the toxic teachers union<\/a> and the fail-your-way-upward <\/a>DOE bureaucracy \u2014 are happy to nod along, and the progs don\u2019t even realize (or care?) that they\u2019re being conned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All the sudden noise about \u201cintegration\u201d as the fix for New York City\u2019s failing schools may be the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4337,304,41579,9,24,55,54,56,63,299,209,14509,82],"class_list":["post-374703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-department-of-education","tag-editorial","tag-kamar-samuels","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-public-schools","tag-race","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}