How a Brooklyn District Tackled School Segregation

Today we’ll find out what happened when a school district in Brooklyn began an ambitious effort to better integrate its middle schools. We’ll also find out about a decision throwing out an attempt by the city to ban foie gras.

It’s been five years since District 15 in Brooklyn adopted a plan to better integrate its middle schools, which were then among the most homogenous in the city. I asked Troy Closson, who covers education for the Metro desk, to assess how the plan has worked out.

District 15 in Brooklyn dropped selective admissions and began giving every child a lottery number. What happened?

Before the pandemic, a handful of districts in New York City were thinking about disparities across schools in their areas and how they could address them through desegregation. In District 15, where that conversation had been going on for several years, parents decided to go further than anywhere else in the city, eliminating selective admissions for middle schools and setting high targets for the proportion of disadvantaged students that each school would enroll.

At the time, there was a lot of support in District 15. But there was also concern that when districts try to desegregate, they run the risk that some families will be dissatisfied and that middle-class families in particular will leave the school system.