Last month during a DOE Admissions Town Hall I listened to dozens of mostly white moms and dads advocate for the continued screening of NYC public school students, even though we have been given a unique opportunity to change course.  Their arguments were old and uninspired: our kids have been led to believe, they say, that if they worked hard, they would be rewarded with access to the best public schools in the city.  It’s not fair to change course now.  Plus, they add, screening students enables schools to develop rigorous curriculum otherwise impossible in a classroom of mixed-ability students, and these top performing kids tend to be wealthier, so they bring with them into the public schools the capital they need to stay afloat.

I want to learn from you parents.  I want to know how you’re defining “work hard,” “rigorous,” and “fair.”  We all know that most students at screened schools are not only white, but often have college-educated parents.  Is it difficult to study, concentrate, and learn under those powerful conditions?  Is it hard to develop, deliver, and digest a rigorous curriculum?

Give me the ocean with all its currents.  Give me the fluidity of an unscreened public school classroom, where squeaky desks can’t contain the talent of the bodies whose complexions compete only with their mis-matched, many-colored clothing.

What’s the worst that could happen?  Your kids have to learn in a mixed-ability classroom.  It’s a little louder, so the environment requires some proactive focus.  During one lesson, though, your son grows the courage to use his privilege to nudge his teacher: “I have a trick my tutor taught me that might help with our algebra problem.”  Maybe, even, and stay with me here, maybe he becomes friends with a boy whose parents were raised in a country he didn’t know existed and who gracefully slips between complex, satiny languages.  He learns things about geography, religion, and economics that he’d only otherwise learn years later from college textbooks.  But here, in this “mixed-ability” 9th grade classroom, he’s been given an ocean of opportunity. He learns that he is, in fact, not the sun. He is the Earth, whose tides are being forever pulled by a force invisible and certain.

Pull him back.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the worst that could happen is that contrary to all research, your child doesn’t lift expectations or bring resources as you’d assume to the classroom but instead, under-performs.  She earns a 3.0 instead of a 4.0.  Or, maybe, a 2.5.  No matter.  You schedule more tutoring; you take more trips to museums.  You make sure to talk about the complicated books you’re reading while at the dinner table, and you reach across to the bookshelf closest to you and grab one.  A 2.5 is unacceptable, you say, handing it to her for no reason other than to drive home a point.  And you talk about high expectations and opportunity and she’s lucky to reap the benefits.  She’s really listening to you now, and your husband takes the cue and leaves the room with your younger son, because he knows your argument is more likely to land when it’s just you and she.  I know that this school is different than your last, you say, and that you feel like you’ve worked too hard to end up at a school that doesn’t seem to care about you.  But your classmates have worked hard too, you tell her.  She guffaws.  You continue.  I know it’s hard for you to see right now, you say.  Trust me, even a few months ago, I felt the same way you did.  I was mad.  Livid.  But your dad and I have come to realize that education is a right, not a privilege, and you’ve got to trust yourself and rise to the occasion and we’re not going to let you fail.  Not everyone has that privilege.  Yes, some kids misbehave — they laugh when they shouldn’t and they talk back.  Your daughter hisses and looks away.  You wait.  Listen to me.  They’ve been stuck inside a system set up for their failure.  It’s got nothing to do with ability, and I’m telling you right now — are you listening to me?  Look at me.  I’m telling you right now that you are not the smartest child in that classroom.  

She looks up.  

This revelation seems to have come from nowhere, and you’re stunned.  How could she think those kids are smarter than you?  You come home to this, she’s now saying, her arm sweeping an apartment full of books and natural light.  All this power, she says, with nothing to disrupt your concentration.  You’re confused.  What in the world is your mother talking about?  You’re only 14, after all.  What does she expect?

More.  Now, she finally expects more.