A Hunts Point Childhood: Part IIA Hunts Point Education

"Right now my plan is to study math all the way, till I can’t study no more." - Phillip Bryan, Hunts Point high school student

Unfinished Business: American Urban Education

There is a jungle in the room. Generational poverty is the lion. Healthcare inequity is the chimpanzee. Political inefficiency is the gorilla, corporate imperialism is the crocodile, and spiritual poverty the bear. And then there is the elephant.

President Obama calls it the "civil rights issue of our time". Marian Wright Edelman describes it as "the unfinished and critical business before the nation, for it will determine America's future place on the global stage in a rapidly changing competitive world."

American education inequity is so vast a problem, composed of so many intricate factors so deeply embedded in the foundation of our society, and illustrated by the seemingly intensely unique stories of each child—that understanding proves elusive, solutions tend to be unrealistic, vague, or incomplete, and responsibility is chronically undefined.

Let’s break it down into more manageable chunks—let’s take a look from the lens of Hunts Point and the story of a student who has lived through it.

Meet Phillip

Phillip Bryan is the kind of guy you want on your team. That’s how it felt to meet him—and it’s not just his towering figure, his hands that swallow yours in a handshake, the way he drops his shoulders to not impose too much, the way he doesn’t look at you too hard, just enough to let you know he’s listening, the way he carefully chooses words, speaks low and well. There’s something else—a simmering, almost abrasive determination, an instinct for opportunity, the lean sharpness of a mind driven to learn. Phillip would like to be a math professor.

Phillip is a 19-year-old graduating senior high

school student from Harlem. He has attended eight public schools—seven within the New York City Department of Education—and has graciously agreed to share his story.

Starting Behind; Pre-Kindergarten

Phillip first encountered public education at age three when he joined a pre-kindergarten Head Start program in central Harlem. There, he and other students learned basic skills. “You had to read, you had to count, and you had to be polite.”

Poor urban communities rely on Head Start programs to provide critical early learning and prepare students for kindergarten. Families in these communities tend not to have the resources to do so alone. Nationwide, one third to one half of eligible children are not enrolled in Head Start, and 97% of eligible children are not enrolled in Early Head Start.

In Hunts Point, Head Start spots are especially limited. In the 2010 census, 1,054 0-5 year olds were reported to live in Hunts Point. Head Start has less than 200 spots. What happens to the majority of young children in Hunts Point is not well understood, but they are not in school. “At least half don’t go—they start behind,” said Maryann Hedaa, Founder of Hunts Point Alliance for Children. John Hughes, Principal of MS 424, the Hunts Point middle school, and former principal of PS 48, Hunts Point’s public elementary school, saw it firsthand:

“When I was the elementary school principal, kids that came into kindergarten—in other areas there’s a reasonable expectation that kids will be able to count to twenty, will be able to know their shapes, will be able to know their colors, will be able to sing the song for the alphabet. Okay, these are, you know, normal things that you would expect. You have kids who come in here and don’t have the most basic skills. And that’s where pre-K comes in, and early intervention comes in, and parent support comes in, and social services that will help to train parents, and it’s just not available. So when you start there, it’s uphill the whole way.”

Heading Uphill; Elementary School

Phillip entered his local elementary school, PS 200. He remembers the early years well—he competed in math, spelling, and science contests, was introduced to the piano, played chess, sang in a chorus: “I think I learned almost everything I know from there. Everything I know right now, from there.”

Most Hunts Point families choose between four elementary schools: the local public school, 2 lottery admission charter schools, and an application admission private Catholic school. Each school has a good reputation in the community and with parents and students. For many Hunts Point children, their first experience with formal education is a positive one, and they generally progress well in elementary school.

"Well", however, is difficult to define. There is the "well" that students and parents perceive. There is "well" according to state tests, and, recently, "well" according to federal testing. In the 2009-2010 New York State Regents Exam, for example, 76.2% of 4th graders tested proficient in reading, and 85.1% tested proficient in math. In the 2010-2011 NAEP test, known as the "nation's report card", only 35% of New York State 4th graders tested proficient in math, and only 36% tested proficient in math. Are the 40%+ of disputed students progressing "well"?

As for Phillip, elementary school didn’t end as well as it started. He began to show behavioral problems—in the spring of his fifth grade year, he broke a paperweight in class and was suspended for 30 days. He was sent to live with his father in New Jersey for the remainder of the school year.

You Lose Kids As You Go Along; Middle School

“The sad truth is that as kids get older—and, a lot of things that I say, they’re on the basis of my experience here in Hunts Point, but it’s true everywhere—you lose kids as you go along.” – John Hughes

Returning to Harlem at age 11, Phillip was set to enroll in middle school. Thurgood Marshall, a nearby middle school with a good reputation, was the choice.

“The first day of school, I went to try to go to (Thurgood Marshall) but they said you can’t just come the first day and try to get in... We went in with our book bags and stuff, sat down and... they just said no... So, I wasn’t in no school for New York City, because I left. So I had to find a school, and I went to the Board Of Education and they put me in my zone school... (my mother) was concerned about putting me in the zone school, because she knew about it, it was bad, and she didn’t want to put me there but that’s what they gave me.”

The weight of the school selection process had fallen upon Phillip, as it does sooner or later for all New York City students. “There’s opportunity for the people whose families have the wherewithal to fill out the applications, and to go through the process and to go through the interviews, ok. For the kids whose families don’t have that type of structure, there’s nothing.”- John Hughes

Across the nation's cities, as in Phillip's experience, middle school is a significant divergence point in student educational trajectories. This is well-demonstrated in Hunts Point, where middle schoolers are largely sorted into four middle schools—a lottery admission charter school, two application admission private Catholic schools, and the local public middle school. The public school, MS 424, has a lower academic reputation than the other schools, and students do not show as strong of progress there. But MS 424 also has by far the highest number of special education students—23% in 2011-2012—and English Language Learners—21% in 2008-9. The division of Hunts Point children

into middle schools is a tricky many-tiered issue where blame is elusive. But at the end of the day, resourced, informed, and empowered Hunts Point families are increasingly motivated to avoid MS 424, and to get their kids into specialty schools more aligned to challenge the middle and upper tiers of students.

Phillip’s zone middle school was a whole new environment. Gone were the diverse enrichment opportunities, the out of school activities. “My middle school stopped—there was no more ‘this is what you can become, this is what you can do later in life’, there was no more of that, it was just, ‘this is what you don’t want to do, this is what you don’t want to become.’ ” The student community was also very different: “They had different goals. There’s not that many projects around my area. Most of us went to Head Start schools, so we were more into learning and education and stuff. But in that school, they’re more into stuff that’s around their area, stuff like gang activity and things like that.” Even the teachers seemed resigned: “Most of them didn’t really care. They just came to come, and get a paycheck. They didn’t care about students, I don’t think, in my opinion.” He didn't feel too much nostalgia at graduation: “I was just trying to get out of the school, that was my thing.”

60/40; High School

During their 8th grade year, New York City middle school students, deemed old enough to commute to school out of their neighborhood, apply to high schools across the city. Phillip describes the NYD DOE application process: “They gave me the big handbook. I didn’t know what was in the handbook. I didn’t even apply to Thurgood Marshall or FDA. I felt they were gonna say no, and I didn’t want to waste my time. I didn’t want to go to Martin Luther King or Brandeis because everyone else was going there. I used the statistics, and if there was a high chance of getting in I put that down.”

In Hunts Point, the three non-public middle schools tend to retain their students—the charter school, Hyde, extends from grades K-12, and the Catholic middle schoolers tend to attend private Catholic high schools throughout the city. Students at MS 424, like most NYC children, undergo the NYC DOE high school application process, scattering to high schools throughout the city, leaving their support networks and entering new environments, new neighborhoods, new peer groups, new influences, new expectations—starting over.

Last year, the New York City DOE announced a citywide high school graduation rate of 65.1%, the highest-ever, including 60.6% for black students and 58.2% for Hispanic students. Many of these graduates are unprepared for college—including 75% needing remedial work upon enrollment at New York City community colleges. New York City's graduation rate is not an exception—nationally, 25% of students, and 40% of minority youth, don’t graduate high school on time. In New York City, there has been a lot of attention given to school closures—targeting low-performing "dropout factory" schools to be shut down and re-open with new staff, administration, and students. The shake-

ups, while adding to the chaos of the system, seem to be working. Some "dropout factories" remain, some of the new schools do well, and some do poorly and become new "dropout factories." High school placement remains a critical factor in determining a child's life trajectory, and Hunts Point students do not tend to be placed well. Says Hughes, “If they say that in New York City, that 60% of the kids graduate high school... what do you think the number is in Hunts Point? Do you think it’s 60? No way. Think it’s closer to 30? Probably.”

Philip was placed into Life Sciences High School in East Harlem: “I just—I didn’t have fun there at all... I just passed my tests, and I thought that was ok, because that’s what I did in middle school. But I failed. Then I failed again. And I just stopped—I really stopped going.” For 2 ½ years Phillip failed every class but one. He attended just often enough that Adult and Child Services wouldn’t be notified. “I didn’t want to get my mother in trouble, or my little brothers in trouble.” He was transferred to Co-Op Tech, an auto mechanic trade school, but quickly stopped showing up there, too.

The Big Change; The Holy Grail of Urban Education

Phillip and five other students failing out of Life Sciences were enrolled at JVL Wildcat, a "last chance" charter school that works with over-age students who have failed out of other high schools.

At Wildcat, Phillip found his academic footing. He joined sports teams, took up chess again, and began, for the first time, to read books. A supportive math teacher re-ignited his interest in the subject, and set him up with Algebra 2 and Physics. He was placed in a college readiness program. He found mentors and academic engagement he had missed since elementary school. “I started coming to class more, I started paying attention, I started to ask for harder work, really demanding it, because that’s my right as a student. Not demanding it like, ‘gimme work’, but not accepting simple stuff.”

He began quickly earning credits. He found opportunities to learn and share his learning with others: “Mr. Donald, he was covering a class one day, a math class, and he saw me helping one of the kids, and then he started to talk to me and I told him that I like helping people with learning and stuff like that, and he was like, you want to be a teacher? And I was like, no. And he was like yes you do, I can see it.” He was placed in an internship, teaching math to middle school students, and has spent the last year as a High School Explainer intern with us at Iridescent, teaching and mentoring students in science and engineering. His interest has grown into a passion:

“That’s what’s driving me right now. Maybe I won’t do it, maybe I will, but that’s my goal right now, is to learn as much as I can so I can give it back to other people.

In two years, Phillip has accumulated enough credits to graduate high school, and was recently accepted to Morehouse College. “It feels good. I went to a whole lot of their events.... just talking to the students and the alumni, it just feels wonderful. I just can’t wait to go.”

What was Phillip’s big change? What took a student from a path of educational disaster to sudden triumph? Phillip credits the teachers, mentors, and supportive and enriching environment he found at Wildcat: “One thing I like about Wildcat is that, if you like to do something, they’ll help you do it, no matter what it is... My biggest change came at Wildcat.” How can we learn from his experience—will what worked for Phillip work for others? Some parts should—finding and digging into students’ interests is critical—but each child has their own formula. The other five students who transferred to Wildcat? All have dropped out. “They all stopped going... They didn’t really change themselves.”

The Real World; College & Beyond

Phillip’s journey is far from over—neither are his challenges. Others who have overcome similar odds to get to college have failed at this next level: at 4-year public universities, only 43.3% of African American students and 47.6% of Hispanic students graduate within 6 years—more than 12% lower rates than white students. The odds are even lower for those coming from urban poverty. Success is a victory not easily won.

I only began to grasp the state of urban education when I began to work within it a couple years ago. My personal experience with middle class suburban education—a culture celebrating education, a community tightly integrating education and viewing it as a lynchpin, supportive parents, a sturdy school system, a clearly defined pathway from birth to college and beyond—quickly became theoretical, idyllic, irrelevant. My peers and I experienced the expectation of success and the support to achieve it, nothing less—failure was exceptional and not likely without concerted effort. In poor urban areas, the opposite is true.

What strikes me hardest was the confusion of it all—the cacophony of discordant initiatives and ideas, everyone with their own prescription, responsibility for the individual child’s education divided diluted handed off and excused until the only one responsible is the child him/herself. And when the critical divisions of life opportunities take place earlier and earlier, that just isn’t reasonable. How are kids to know what to do? How are they to know the steps to get to their goals? How are they to construct goals in the first place? They need support—and in poor communities where parents are over-worked, under-educated, un-informed, and dis-empowered, where degreed mentors and professional jobs are absent, and where public schools are swamped in a desperate struggle to pull kids out of a trajectory towards disaster—they don’t get enough. The weight of the world is on their shoulders too soon.

“It’s an interesting story when I look back at it. I did some weird stuff but it all worked out. I didn’t hurt nobody, I only hurt myself. But at the same time, I was growing.” - Phillip

There are success stories in Hunts Point—real, transformative success stories. Hunts Point Alliance For Children has seen excellent outcomes from their long-term support strategies—14 of the 15 girls they have supported since making up the first girls’ class at St. Ignatius middle school are now graduating high school and will be attending 4-year colleges. Sharon De La Cruz, a former ACTION youth activist at The Point, went on to graduate from Cooper Union and has now returned to become the ACTION program director. Phillip’s is a true Hollywood story—all the adversity, triumph, and life lessons you can handle. And he knows it: “You can write a book on my story.” We celebrate his success, and rightly so, because we would expect him to have failed. But I grow tired of wildly celebrating every poor kid who has overcome the odds. For every story like Phillip’s there are many sad ones.

We need to do a better job fixing things so that success is not exceptional, so kids don’t just have “a shot,” but where they are supported so that they and we can expect that they will succeed. Kids want to graduate. Kids want to learn, they want to succeed. Parents want them to succeed; teachers and administrators want them to succeed. And yet too many children are not entering the world with the skills and credentials they need.

How can we fix urban public education? Everyone has ideas, but nobody has succeeded. Joel Klein, the celebrated ex-New York City School Chancellor, in his departure from office, blamed embedded politics, teachers unions, other stakeholders for the improvements not achieved during his term: “Having spent eight years trying to ignite a revolution in New York City’s schools under Bloomberg’s leadership, I am convinced that without a major realignment of political forces, we won’t get the dramatic improvements our children need.”

Meanwhile, children like Phillip walk alone, succeeding or failing according to the whims of a broken system. Phillip, of course—the Hollywood story—can be chalked up as a success:

“What’s knowledge—once somebody told me—if you don’t give it out, if you don’t expose it. What’s the point of knowing it if you don’t let somebody else know it?” - Phillip Bryan, Hunts Point High School Student

Next: In ‘Community Transformation Through Science Education’, we learn about an initiative to build a community of interactive learners in Hunts Point.

Bryan Johnston is a writer, social entrepreneur, and engineer who has spent the past year and a half building and operating the Iridescent Hunts Point Science Studio—a science, engineering, and design education studio in Hunts Point, Bronx, New York. This is the third article in ‘A Hunts Point Childhood,’ a series inspired by experiences working with children and families to overcome the pressures directed against them.