A unique blend of natural and man-made resources and amenities give Rochester a quality of life that is second to none. Straddling the Genesee River between the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario, Rochester offers a natural beauty that is easily accessible by a network of parks, trails, boat launches and scenic overlooks. The city is divided into dozens of distinct neighborhoods and urban villages supported by an eclectic mix of stores and restaurants. Quality housing available at reasonable prices . . .

And so forth.

Rochester was once the Silicon Valley of the American Industrial Revolution; the city where technological invention took place and was applied to advanced products distributed around the world.  Think of Kodak.  Think of Xerox. And today we think of it as a city where “quality housing [is] available at reasonable prices,” where generation after generation of children are pushed through their schools years, uneducated, with little chance of entering adulthood “college and career ready.”

The results of recent New York State tests show that the district is not doing its job.  The local newspaper, The Democrat and Chronicle, noted that “In Rochester, 7.2 percent of students were judged proficient in math and 6.7 percent were judged proficient in English, both the lowest marks among the Big Five,” the five largest school districts in New York State.  The newspaper went on to report that the Rochester City School District results were also outliers among surrounding districts, where proficiency rates were as high as 73 percent and averaged seven or eight times that of Rochester.

The most sensitive indicator of the success of an education system is what it does for Black male students.  If they are doing well, it is most likely that others will also be doing well.  In Rochester, they are not doing well.

According to the New York State Education Department, at grade three, just 17 (three percent) of 653 male Black students tested were proficient (levels 3 and 4) in reading.  Of these, none reached level 4. Six percent of 327 Hispanic males were proficient, only one reaching level 4.

The Rochester City School District has failed to teach 83 percent of the male Black third-graders in its care how to read as well as they should at that point and none to read as fluently as would lead later to success in school.

That is the record of early childhood education in Rochester.  There is also now on record how little the district does for these children as they “progress” through the later grades.  At grade eight, 12 (again, three percent) of 435 male Black students tested were proficient (levels 3 and 4) in reading.  Of these, just one reached level 4.  Five percent of 220 Hispanic males were proficient, none reaching level 4.

In other words, according to the tests given by the New York State Education Department, 97 percent of male Black students and 94 percent of male Hispanic students cannot read at grade level in grade 8, unchanged from grade 3 for Black students and showing declines for Hispanic students.  Such is the value added by five years of schooling in Rochester.

These results can be compared to those for New York City, where 24 percent of male Black students and 25 percent of male Hispanic students scored proficient in grade 8 reading, or they can be compared to the statewide averages: 21 percent of male Black students and 24 percent of male Hispanic students reading at the proficient level in eighth grade.

One could speculate that if Rochester’s male Black students moved to New York City (preferably to eastern Queens, but whatever) eight times as many would learn to read at grade level, as would four times as many of the male Hispanics and twice as many of the male White.  Note that such a move would be four times as effective for the Black as for the White students.

New York City is not a model school system for Black students, but, by comparison to Rochester’s, it is Phillips Exeter or Eton.

For young black and Latino men in Rochester schools such as School 9, the district is toxic to their futures.

There are just shy of 700 male Black eighth graders in the Rochester schools.  There are over 1100 male Black students in grade nine: more than half of those male Black eighth graders are held back.  Fewer than half of those male Black eighth graders, 97 percent of whom have not been taught to read well, eventually graduate.

The graduation rate for male Black students in the Rochester City Schools for 2015 was 44 percent, of whom just 3 percent had Regents diplomas, as compared to the 8 percent statewide average for the group.  If 97 percent of Rochester’s male Black students cannot read at grade level in grade 8, how is it that 44 percent are given diplomas?  Or is it that only those receiving Regents diplomas are actually “career and college ready” and the other 41 percent have received pieces of embossed paper with which to join in the streets the 56 percent who did not graduate at all?

As Dropout Nation readers already know from my last analysis of Rochester’s schools, none of this is surprising. The district’s failure to provide high-quality education to any of its children, especially young black men, is one reason why 14 of its schools are now under state receivership (and 14 more may end up in that status).

But what about the college readiness of male Black Rochester high school graduates? This can be estimated from the records of the local colleges.

We might first look at Monroe Community College, the two-year postsecondary institution attended by high school graduates in the area who do not feel that they are ready for the university. The U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) counted 4,089 first-time students at Monroe Community College in fall 2012, 860 of whom were Black; 387 were Black men. Completers within 150 percent of normal time (2015) totaled 881; 62 of whom were Black. Twenty-two of those were men. Approximately seven percent of Black students enrolling in Monroe Community College and six percent of Black men graduated within 150 percent of normal time.

As noted, not all of those graduates attended Rochester city schools. Many may have come from the surrounding suburban districts, such as that of Greece, where the new Rochester Superintendent, Barbara Deane-Williams had been Superintendent.  Shall we estimate that half of those 22 Black men graduating with Associates degrees from Monroe Community College had graduated from the Rochester City schools three years earlier? Eleven of the 690 who had been in grade 8 five (or six) years before that?

There are two research universities in Rochester. At the University of Rochester, we find that in 2010 there were 1,308 first-time, undergraduate, degree-seeking students, 55 of whom were Black, 22 (two percent) of whom were Black men. In 2014, 1,076 undergraduates completed their degrees within 150 percent of normal time, 41 of whom were Black, 17 of whom were Black men. At the Rochester Institute of Technology, we find that in 2010 there were 2,606 first-time, undergraduate, degree-seeking students, 133 of whom were Black, 74 of whom were Black men. In 2014, 1,622 undergraduates completed their degrees within 150 percent of normal time, 78 of whom were Black, 42 of whom were Black men.

Some of these 116 Black men with local four-year college degrees may have attended Rochester City schools.  How many?  It is hard to tell, but as a matter of fact, the “Rochester Promise,” which gives generous support to graduates of Rochester schools for study at the University of Rochester awarded two scholarships this year.  That is an improvement over previous years, in which no Rochester Promise scholarships were awarded.  We know then that those two male Black students, of an eighth-grade class of 690, eventually received degrees from the University of Rochester.  Perhaps as many did so from the Rochester Institute of Technology.  Or maybe the number in each case was four.  Eight?

Given these results, especially after test data released this July, the Rochester district boasted to the Democrat and Chronicle and other media outlets that: “We have increased investments in prekindergarten, special education, a new K-2 English curriculum developed by District teachers and many other services to help close that gap… Working together with our families and the community, the district is committed to accelerating achievement for Rochester students.”

All to the good. But the Rochester district has spent decades failing to educate the children whose parents have entrusted it with their futures. It has betrayed that trust. It is time, well past time, for the state to act.

The Democratic Party chose Philadelphia and the Republican Party chose Cleveland, for their respective conventions this year. We will hear much about the Constitution, American democracy and Benjamin Franklin from Philadelphia; much about making Cleveland great again, about the huge wall that will be built to protect it from Mexican invaders.

It is unlikely that we will hear much about income and wealth inequality in those cities, nor much about their school systems. The Economic Policy Institute tells us that the average income of the top one percent in the Philadelphia metropolitan area is $1.1 million; that of the rest of the population is $54,000.  Cleveland is poorer at both ends of the income distribution.  The top one percent of the Cleveland metropolitan area has an average income of only $895,000; the rest lives on an average of $44,000—again about 1/20^th that of their richer neighbors, despite the comparatively modest incomes of the latter.

In Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, the rich are richer, with an average income of $959,000, and the poor are poorer, with an average income of $41,000.  In Philadelphia County, the average income of the bottom 99 percent–that is, practically everyone, is $32,000, slightly under the Medicaid eligibility level for a family of four.  Almost 40 percent of Black families with children under 18 years of age in Philadelphia County live in poverty.  The average Black family in Cuyahoga County has an income of also $32,000; 44 percent of Black families with children in Cuyahoga County live in poverty.

In order for Cleveland to be great again, it will need a well-educated workforce.  A good measure of educational achievement is the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ eighth grade reading test.  If children cannot read well by then, they are unlikely to earn a meaningful high school diploma, unlikely to go to college, unlikely to earn an above average income, and, if they are Black males, very likely to spend time in prison.  Unfortunately, four out of five White students in Cleveland are below grade level in eighth grade reading.  Catastrophically, 92 percent of Black students in the city’s public schools cannot read at grade level when they reach eighth grade.  This is obviously an emergency and we can anticipate a wonderful plan to emerge to make the Cleveland schools great again.

In Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party will be ignoring the city’s educational woes (as well as ditching systemic reform).

Which brings us to Philadelphia, cradle of the Constitution, home of the Liberty Bell, and so forth.  Same thing: 74 percent of White students in grade eight cannot read proficiently, neither can 91 percent of Black students. Meanwhile the district itself is in total disarray, the result of decades of mismanagement at all levels and in all areas.

Just six percent of male Black eighth-grade students in Philadelphia can read at grade level, just seven percent in Cleveland.  The central offices of their school districts no doubt know who they are.  As for the rest, the local criminal justice systems are probably working out their hiring plans and jail accommodation budgets appropriately.  They will, of course, have to take into account a deduction based on ProPublica’s analysis that Black teens are 21 times as likely as white teens to be shot and killed by police. After all, Cleveland is the home of Tamir Rice, whose murder at the hand of a cop has never been adjudicated, while Philadelphia has long  had a reputation for brutal policing.

The choice of these cities as sites for their national conventions by our two great political parties is a wonderful opportunity to shine a light on these matters and remedy the problems that light will reveal.  We hope the outcome will be measures to lessen income inequality, to improve the schools, to eliminate police shootings of Black children.  We can always hope.

How hard is the New York City government trying to increase inequality and inter-generational poverty? Very hard indeed and quite successfully, thank you.

They are doing this by means of the schools.  They,” rather than “it,” because this situation is the result of decisions by individuals, decisions made everyday in dozens if not hundreds of meetings, expressed in hundreds, if not thousands, of documents.  It is the responsibility of those individuals (you know who you are), not of abstractions like “institutional racism,” “budgetary constraints,” “and bureaucracy”. They may say they are not intentionally increasing inequality, but if, over time, their actions do so that effect is best understood as identical with the objective intention.

As you might recall, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education  that “Segregation . . . deprive[s] [Black children] of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.” The benefits in question, not to put too fine a point on it, are those of a good education: higher incomes, longer lives, a better start in life for themselves and their children.

There is a difference between families choosing schools that aren’t integrated of their own accord – charter schools, for instance – and being forced by traditional districts to attend schools that are deliberately segregated. But as we already know, most children and families do not choose the schools they attend, and have little political power within school districts to even have choice. Especially in New York City. Just 7.9 percent of children in New York attend charter schools; the rest are in the district. So when we talk about segregation in New York City, we are talking about what people who run the New York City Department of Education are doing to restrict opportunities for high-quality education to Black and Latino children.

In its new report, Brown at 62: School Segregation by Race, Poverty and State, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that New York is the most segregated state for Black students, much more segregated than, for example, Mississippi.  Two-thirds of the state’s Black students are in schools that are 90 percent of more non-White and non-Latino. This is astounding because black children account for just 18 percent of students in the Empire State, compared to 50 percent of students in Mississippi, where fewer than half of Black students are in those extremely segregated schools. Latino students in New York State are nearly as isolated from their White, non-Hispanic, peers, with 57 percent in extremely segregated schools.  The Civil Rights Project report also points to the increasing economic segregation of Black and Latino students, nationally; today the average Black and Latino student attends a school where two-thirds of the students are from low-income families.

The Social Science Research Council’s Measure of America project has also recently released a report, this bringing the issues for New York City into sharper focus.  According to High School Graduation in New York City: Is Neighborhood Still Destiny?, there is a 34 percent disparity in high school graduation rates between the best- and worst-performing of the city’s 59 community districts. Or, to be specific: Ninety-five percent of the high school students graduate on time in the wealthy Manhattan Community Districts 1 and 2, where virtually no Black or Latino families live. In the nearly all-black and Latino neighborhoods of Brownsville and Ocean Hill in Brooklyn, and Morris Heights, Fordham South, and the ironically named Mount Hope in the Bronx, only 61 percent of high school students graduate on time.

Using hundreds of statistical indicators, the authors of this report find that there is a direct relationship between on-time high school graduation in New York City and family income and education levels. Rich kids with highly educated parents graduate on time; poor kids with poorly educated parents don’t. Children from economically impoverished families are doubly disadvantaged: poverty at home and inferior, less well-funded, schools down the street. “In Queens, for example, a poor school gets 29 percent less money than a wealthy school nearby,” according to U.S. Secretary of Education John King.

Admittedly, in some ways, New York City’s traditional public schools are better than they were two decades ago. But that’s not saying much. For black and Latino children, who went to schools that were worse than those in the rest of the city, that’s saying nothing at all.

This situation is aggravated, not alleviated, by the city’s secondary school choice program. Faced with a scarcity situation—not enough good schools—“the city,” that is, those people who make decisions for others, put in place a system that in the final analysis distributes those scarce good schools by parental income and education. Families, the SSRC report finds, choose high schools on the basis of discussions with their friends and neighbors. Because of the city’s segregation and the lack of high-quality data on school performance, poor families tend to get their information from other poor families, and miss out on getting into the best-performing schools that wealthier families learn about through their well-heeled social networks.

There is also the crucial matter is the “tax” on families required by the city’s secondary high school “choice” system. [It hardly deserves the name, actually.] It requires as much as a working week or two of family time to struggle through the required paperwork and other hoops.  This is not anything like something an average family in the Bronx or central Brooklyn can afford. And as we know, access to good schools in New York City is grotesquely even more inequitable in regard to the city’s few “selective” high schools.

There are solutions to this problem. Here is one proposed by those who don’t want to anything: If “those children” simply had better educated, wealthier, parents and lived in neighborhoods with very good preschools, elementary and middle schools, they wouldn’t have a problem, would they?

Another solution would be to eliminate education scarcity. This includes making all New York City traditional public schools equally good, and making those in neighborhoods characterized by concentrated poverty more than equally good. How could that be done and who could do it?  It has been done in some places, for example, in the United Kingdom and much of Europe through various national government policies.  Canada has done this through its decentralized systems of traditional public schools and school choice. Montgomery County, Md., had some success doing this some years ago by more-effectively allocating resources – especially high-quality teachers. In some cases budget categories were reallocated: landscaping funding was reduced; early childhood education funding was increased. Outcomes were then closely examined and the resource mix adjusted.

Good schools for all children may be costly, but not nearly as costly, in a wider sense, than the present situation in New York City, with good schools only for those who can afford them.