Welcome to The New Everything Croton--a collection of all things Croton, our history, our homes, our issues, our houses of worship--in short, EVERYTHING CROTON.
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To the Editor:
Say what you mean. That was the first lesson we learned in elementary school writing class. It is also good advice for the Croton-Harmon school board. Perhaps clarity is an unreasonable expectation in a district whose motto is a lazy tautology: “Croton-Harmon. What School Can Be” (seriously, I am not making that up).
In fairness to the school board members, there are times when obfuscation is the best course of action. The “chazarding” sex curriculum is the most notorious example, but in many respects the October 2022 Bill Daggett “new vision” proposed curriculum was worse. Our school district hosted an evening with a man who cheerfully justified his hostility to intellectual inquiry (mathematics in particular) by explaining that Chat GPT had eliminated the need for Croton students to learn anything.
The new Croton “0105” policy titled “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” is standard boilerplate in school districts across the country. By now, the fad is so old that other school districts are backing away from some of the actions they had implemented under the DEI banner. Is “0105” just another instance of Croton adopting a trend after the shark has been jumped?
Even without any written policy, the school district is bound by voluminous federal and state regulations and laws. Conversely, no policy the school district implements (including 0105) can take away certain student and parental rights. Nor can any district policy violate federal anti-discrimination laws including SCOTUS case law on “reverse” discrimination (though good luck figuring out what that case law actually means nowadays).
That is not to say that community concerns in Croton are without merit. The school board has broad authority to set policy regarding employees and curriculum, and can do great damage. At some point “What School Can Be” transitions into irony, but at least they don’t have to reprint the stationery.
Anybody involved in search committees at a large corporation or academic institution knows that there are code words and ways of putting a thumb on the scale to recruit a “diverse workforce” as required by Croton’s 0105 policy. Unless somebody is really stupid, racially-based hiring can be done discreetly enough to survive legal challenge. And frankly, if a few Croton teachers are hired in part because of skin color, that is not going to crash Croton’s elite college acceptance rate.
To the extent that melanin in front of the classroom mirrors melanin in the student seats, it can make a beneficial difference in inspiring minority students who can see their future in someone who looks like them. I assume that the district already is making outreach to under-represented groups during the recruitment process, so I don’t see that 0105 is necessary for recruitment although some candidates may view a formal policy as indicative of a more welcoming workplace environment.
Croton’s 0105 policy has a line about “non-discriminatory discipline policies and practices.” This language is common in school district DEI policies. In theory, existing law (if not school policy) should currently prevent discipline being meted out based on skin color. But that is not what this line means in day-to-day student discipline. The key is discussion of “practices” coupled with “equity” requirements in DEI policies. Districts with diverse student bodies have interpreted this to mean that if X percentage of your students are white, Y percentage are black, and Z percentage are LatinX, then that XYZ percentage ratio must be found in disciplinary actions—particularly out-of-school suspensions.
However well-intentioned, this interpretation suggests to students that certain racial groups are incapable of meeting behavior norms that other groups are capable of achieving. This is not a new debate: it goes back at least to Sen. Moynihan’s Defining Deviancy Down (1993). While not perfect, Croton students tend to be well-behaved and so this does not seem to be the reason for 0105.
The requirement that Croton teachers be “fully conversant in the historical injustices and inequalities that have shaped our society” is easy to achieve. Anybody who has graduated from college with a degree in Education can expound ad nauseum on the vile and shameful history of America and how it has led to the pervasive and systemic racism which defines Croton today… well maybe not Croton, but certainly Dutchess County and northward.
However, I suspect that our school board is not concerned with ability to be conversant in the faculty lounge but rather be sufficiently conversant to mold impressionable minds. This woke language is almost always set within a hierarchy of oppression: school DEI policies are unlikely to cover Leo Frank in history class or screen Gentleman’s Agreement in film appreciation. Howard Zinn is acceptable, but nowadays a proper curriculum relies on Ibram Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones. When Croton residents read the 0105 policy language about “historical injustices and inequalities” they do so informed by news of school districts across the country who have implemented similar DEI policies.
Instilling national self-hatred is arguably a bad idea for the long-term of our country, but that is beside the point. The school board is elected by the voters of Croton, and a big part of the board’s job is to set curriculum—however ill-advised that curriculum may be. From the Pulitzer Center 1619 Curriculum to Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum, there is a range of perspectives.
School district taxpayers may take issue with the likely “progressive” path after passage of 0105 in Croton, but curriculum in any district with a strong school board reflects the values of the district voters. Not all parents may approve of a curriculum focused on “historical injustices and inequalities” but it will teach Croton students the correct viewpoints to express in a college application essay.
Buried at the end of a lengthy paragraph on page 4 of Croton’s 0105 draft is a list of measured metrics. Among those is “Advanced Placement.” While AP classes are a common metric for DEI policies, AP demographic data is often used a proxy for other classes and enrichment opportunities.
The premise is that minorities are incapable of academic achievement. This is one of those arguments which are often conducted in code language because racist educators don’t want to be called racist. It is also another argument percolating for decades. Stand and Deliver (1988) was based on a true story where an inner-city teacher taught his LatinX students AP Calculus. The company which administered the exam (ETS) in 1982 made all the teacher’s students retake the AP exam because ETS couldn’t believe that Mexicans can do calculus. All the students passed the heavily-proctored retest.
We are a long way from the time when it was considered racist to dumb-down school curriculum and test requirements. The current view is that schools must balance “equity” against rigor: DEI requirements for “equitable” outcomes in education echo Herbert Spencer more than Martin Luther King Jr.
Today the states of Washington and Oregon have eliminated the bar exam taken after graduating law school, and other states are considering dropping the requirement. The official statement from the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts said that the bar exam “disproportionately and unnecessarily blocks” marginalized groups from becoming lawyers. At the college level, pre-requisites in algebra are being eliminated and requiring calculus for certain majors is now deemed racist and a barrier to minority representation in STEM degree programs.
In 2015, California implemented anti-racist policies which led to San Francisco instituting new curriculum, including prohibiting the teaching of algebra to eighth graders. Wealthy parents paid for private tutoring, and upper income parents pushed their children to take summer school geometry and pre-calc. By the time the “math wars” subsided, racial gaps in San Francisco remained almost the same as in 2015.
If the Croton school board is passing 0105 in order to target AP and other courses, they should consider the demographics of our community. Many parents here are college graduates who have the resources to send their kids for private tutoring. They are not going to be the ones affected by the condescending paternalism of a racist DEI policy.
Throughout this 0105 adoption process, neither the Superintendent nor the board has been forthcoming as to what actual practices are being changed with the implementation of 0105. One of the problems is the customary Croton issue of a lack of viewpoint diversity on elected bodies, and to that extent it is not surprising that the school board members refuse to tell us why 0105 is necessary. The members cannot conceive that there are concerns about bias indoctrination and academic rigor. Another problem is passivity: the “chazarding” curriculum was used for some years at the high school before it became an issue. When it hit the news, people circled the partisan wagons in Croton.
“What School Can Be” is so bland that we fail to understand that the slogan is a warning. We know what Croton schools are today, and that is on balance a positive assessment. But Croton schools “can be” much worse, and Croton parents and taxpayers are right to be concerned about what Croton schools can become. The school board owes it to us to say what they mean, and why they are implementing the 0105 policy.
--Paul Steinberg, Croton-on-Hudson
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