5: ‘We Know It When We See It’

Chana has traced the history of the school from its founding and come to the present. But now: One unexpected last chapter. Last year, the school district for BHS mandated a change in the zoning process to ensure all middle schools would be racially integrated. No longer can whit ... Show More

Chana Joffe-Walt explores how white parents can shape a school — even when they aren’t there. She traces the history of I.S. 293, now the Boerum Hill School for International Studies, from the 1980s through the modern education reforms of the 2000s. In the process, Chana talks to ... Show More

When the District 28 diversity planning process came around, many Chinese parents had already been activated a year earlier by the fight to defend the Specialized High School Admissions Test.In this episode, we ask why gifted education gets so much attention, even though it affec ... Show More

Chana Joffe-Walt searches the New York City Board of Education archives for more information about the School for International Studies, which was originally called I.S. 293. In the process, she finds a folder of letters written in 1963 by mostly white families in Cobble Hill, Br ... Show More

Public schools are inequitable because the school systems are maniacally loyal to white families. We can’t have equitable public education unless schools limit the disproportionate power of white parents. But is that even possible? Chana finds two schools that are trying to do ju ... Show More

Over the course of this season, we've explored a rich history and complicated present, but what about the future? In the final episode, we catch up with parents who became activated on both sides of the debate over the diversity plan. And, since the diversity plan never came to f ... Show More

Though a lot of parents and educators agree there needs to be some change in District 28, the question remains: what kind of change? When we asked around, more diversity wasn't necessarily at the top of everybody's list. In fact, from the north and south, we heard a lot of the sa ... Show More

It’s 2015 and one Brooklyn middle school is about to receive a huge influx of new students.Reporter Chana Joffe Walt follows what happens when the School for International Studies’s 6th grade class swells from 30 mostly Latino, Black and Middle Eastern students, to a class of 103 ... Show More

This Juneteenth, we’re sharing an episode of The Weeds, a Vox Media podcast where host Jonquilyn Hill breaks down the policies that shape our lives. This episode digs into school discipline and the achievement gap with Francis Pearman of Stanford University’s Graduate School of E ... Show More

It’s been over 60 years since the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But in 2020, some classrooms are still pretty segregated. Don reflects on his own educational journey and speaks with Michigan State University’s Professor Shenek ... Show More