A Brighter Choice: Building a Just School in an Unequal City

by Clara Hemphill

Overview

In cities across the United States, affluent White newcomers are moving into historically Black neighborhoods, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for public schools. In many cases, the newcomers either avoid their local schools or use their political power to push aside families who have lived in the neighborhood for years. But there’s a third possibility, one that can bring greater equity, and that’s the story of this book.

At Brighter Choice Community School, a public elementary school in Brooklyn’s rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, a group of mostly Black parents, led by PTA president Keesha Wright-Sheppard, is learning to share the space with White newcomers. Outside the school, high rates of homelessness and a global pandemic that disproportionately hit people of color make it hard for children to succeed. Inside the school, hurt feelings and misunderstandings push parents apart. But the parents, working through conflicts to build a community of mutual trust and respect, are planting the seeds of interracial solidarity to fight for better schools for all. Whether these seeds flourish and grow depends on whether parents of all races, knowing the history of injustice and inequality, can learn to come together to overcome the past.

Book Features:

• Follows a multiracial group of parents, working with an energetic principal and staff, as they learn to bridge the deep divides of race and class.
• Shows why school integration is so difficult to achieve, even in integrated neighborhoods.
• Traces the roots of inequality and the history of failed school reforms to address it.
• Incorporates social science research to show the impact of school and neighborhood conditions on academic achievement.
• Argues that socioeconomic integration offers one of the best hopes for improving schools, but only if school leaders take care not to marginalize low-income children.
• Draws on interviews with parents and staff, school visits and observations, newspaper articles, scholarly books, and policy reports on school segregation.

“A Brighter Choice masterfully chronicles one woman’s struggle to maintain a school’s mission as a bastion of hope for Black families in the face of gentrification. The story shines new light on the process of neighborhood change and provides hope that we can manage gentrification in a way that benefits us all.”
—Lance Freeman, Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

“For many years, Clara Hemphill has been one of the most astute observers of New York City’s public school system. A Brighter Choice, which is incisively reported and beautifully written, explores the efforts of a Black-majority school in Brooklyn to provide a first-rate education for all its students amid the changes of gentrification and the crisis of COVID. With an emphasis on the crucial role played by parents, Hemphill reverses the usual top-down focus on New York City’s schools, dispels much conventional wisdom, and sympathetically shows that it is possible to reconcile Black empowerment with racial and economic integration in public education. A Brighter Choice provides a new way to think about the promise and challenges of public schools today.”
—Peter Eisenstadt, author, Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing and editor, The Encyclopedia of New York State

“‘Clara Hemphill’s fascinating, stirring book, A Brighter Choice, suggests skilled and empathetic parents can help to create truly integrated schools that provide our best hope for restoring social cohesion and social mobility in America.”
—Richard D. Kahlenberg, New York City School Diversity Advisory Group executive committee member, former senior fellow, The Century Foundation

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807781548
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	03/24/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Clara Hemphill, founding editor of InsideSchools.org, is a lifelong journalist who has built a career helping New York City parents navigate a complex system of school choice. She is the author of New York City's Best Public Pre-K and Elementary Schools, New York City’s Best Public Middle Schools, and New York City's Best Public High Schools.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction 1
1. A Proudly Black School in a Gentrifying Neighborhood 5
2. The Roots of Inequality and the Struggle for Just Schools 13
3. The Deep Decline and Uneven Revival of the City’s Schools 26
4. The Promise and Pitfalls of School Choice 42
5. How Gentrification Brought Conflict 59
6. Bringing the Community Together 75
7. Problems Outside the School’s Control 86
8. COVID-19 Tests the Community 101
9. "Trust Is the Glue" 115
10. The Work Still to Be Done 129
Conclusion 139

Acknowledgments 145
Notes 147
Data Sources 157
A Word About Names 159
Index 161
About the Author 168

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A Brighter Choice masterfully chronicles one woman’s struggle to maintain a school’s mission as a bastion of hope for Black families in the face of gentrification. The story shines new light on the process of neighborhood change and provides hope that we can manage gentrification in a way that benefits us all.”
—Lance Freeman, Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

“For many years, Clara Hemphill has been one of the most astute observers of New York City’s public school system. A Brighter Choice, which is incisively reported and beautifully written, explores the efforts of a Black-majority school in Brooklyn to provide a first-rate education for all its students amid the changes of gentrification and the crisis of COVID. With an emphasis on the crucial role played by parents, Hemphill reverses the usual top-down focus on New York City’s schools, dispels much conventional wisdom, and sympathetically shows that it is possible to reconcile Black empowerment with racial and economic integration in public education. A Brighter Choice provides a new way to think about the promise and challenges of public schools today.”
—Peter Eisenstadt, author, Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing and editor, The Encyclopedia of New York State

“‘Clara Hemphill’s fascinating, stirring book, A Brighter Choice, suggests skilled and empathetic parents can help to create truly integrated schools that provide our best hope for restoring social cohesion and social mobility in America.”
—Richard D. Kahlenberg, New York City School Diversity Advisory Group executive committee member, former senior fellow, The Century Foundation