Nice White Parents

Great podcast! I “pushed” my kids through the NYC PS high-performing schools education track. (And I refer to it as the Asian track because those are the parents I followed and emulated, including sending my kids to Korean after school prep). I wanted diversity for my kids, and did get it because they were always in the minority, but the majority was East and Southeast Asian. Some Latinos but almost no Black students. Racism is a huge problem. Anyway, thanks for the reporting. Absolutely fascinating.

God, where do I begin. A journalist who signs up her 4-year-old for an IQ test, clearly feels guilty about enrolling her child in a gifted and talented program, did not grow up in NYC and seems to know nothing about it, parachutes into a community to exorcise her bougie guilt by embarrassing other bougie people who clearly volunteer at school more than she does. There are so many cringe moments. A subtle one is when she shows up to the public housing project and gets the most non-specific, empty interviews because she probably had met these people for all of 90 seconds before she started taping. I wonder if Sarah Koenig had to tell her, you need to actually talk to non-rich people. The little that these people very gently, politely reveal (why would they talk to this strange woman???) actually goes against the journalist’s narrative. Wow, poor people actually want a rigorous education, who knew? This is what happens when a journalist wants to capitalize on the zeitgeist but has zero relationships in the community she’s reporting on. If you want deep reporting from knowledgeable people, listen to School Colors instead. (Unfortunately, SC left their neighborhood in Season 2, didn’t have the relationships, and botched that much like this series did.) Oh, and I’m sorry but the premise of the whole show is absolutely ludicrous. A bunch of Quakers wrote letters to the DOE and got a school moved? Your evidence of this is what now? You found some letters in an archive? You think this is how a bureaucracy of this size functions? This whole show is so embarrassing.

What are they doing with the future education system? Are they focused on the wrong things and changing the curriculum too often to see the results? It’s a mess in one district and another it’s very polished. School is a building where students learn and teachers teach can they get back to the basics.

You lost me only focusing on one skin color. This is the worst, biased reporting. It's called propaganda when you present it this way.