Mya Barrie Essay Outline

Part 1/ Introduction

This essay will dive into literacy inequity in New York City while focusing on segregation, access, and funding within the public school system.

The focus, or thesis as it were, is that while New York is one of the most diverse and progressive cities in the country, it still suffers from a cycle of segregation in its public school system from child care to high school education.

I selected to focus on New York’s public school system for a few reasons. Firstly, I am here and can see firsthand the different schools, and the examples of segregation. New York is so diverse, and despite pride in that, the government agencies that run our schools fail to break a cycle of literacy inequality. Different neighborhoods in New York have their own dialects and that is a beautiful silver lining to different literary curriculums, but the fact is that access is immensely unequal. Specifically, the specialized high school system in NYC means that students are put in hyper-competitive positions to gain access to legitimately good literary education, but those students are already either advantaged or disadvantaged based on their elementary and middle school districts. Since I grew up in a small town in Wyoming, the idea of applying to public school felt alien to me when I first learned about it from friends and family in New York. In my hometown, everyone went to one public school and that worked well. I was interested to see the effects of this specialized schooling system, as well as the inequality simmering below in districting and funding. 

I began my research by looking into the DOE. Surprised by what I found, I decided to hone in on the disparities between claims of the DOE and what is true. While my research isn’t complete, I plan to continue focusing on the myriad effects of the NYC public school system and how this affects the future of literacy of black communities in New York City.

Part 2

This article explains how the specialized high school system is flawed and frankly, racist. Students are screwed by the DOE from an extremely young age so that by the time the specialized high school testing comes, they aren’t prepared. This article states that only 7 of 762 Stuyvesant High School (the best public high school in NY) admits were black.

Part 3

My project will aim to be a counter-narrative. When I researched I noticed that the first resources that come up about specialized high schools specifically are super positive. The DOE is proud of the system it runs, and many leading New York academics tout its success, but there are many elephants in the room. Namely, the fact that the DOE doesn’t give all of its students equal access to literature, equal teacher-to-student ratio, equal funding, or anything really from an extremely young age. And even when the hegemonic side acknowledges this, it almost always comes down to economics, rather than acknowledging the racial and ethnic divides in its districting.

Part 4

“With COVID-19, The African-American Literacy Crisis Will Get Much Worse”

This article, which was assigned in week 10, discusses the many ways in which Black students are at a disadvantage. The article itself focuses on how COVID made that problem even worse but also focuses on the importance of child care. Pre-K is the least equally funded element of the New York public education system and affects Black students the most. This article provides evidence of how the cycle is perpetuated and Black students don’t find themselves with the resources to succeed down the line. Hence performing poorly on specialized high school entrance exams.

Part 5

Everyone should care about this if they want NYC to live up to its hype as a diverse, progressive city where anyone can make it. As long as there is segregation and inequitable funding in our schools the problems only get worse. For one of the most diverse cities in the world, New York forgets about many of its own based on where they grew up, which usually means, based on their race.