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Welcome to another edition of black man in America presented by your city station in cooperation with the thirty's Commission on Human Rights these programs are broadcast to the afternoons of five on W N Y S E F I am mighty three point nine mega cycles and use the evenings at mine W N Y C eight hundred thirty killers like holes here now to tell you more about this important series is our moderator Good evening this is what makes both and I'm here to bring you another in the series a black man in America devoted as the title state to examining the history in life of Afro Americans and the contributions they have made and are making to the material cultural and spiritual wealth of this country this includes all of living not simply the civil rights issues we see in the headlines our guest this evening is a distinguished authority on Urban Affairs Dr David Rodgers and we'll be discussing his most recent book one ten Livingston straight published by Random House Dr Rogers associate professor of sociology and management at the Graduate School of Business Administration of New York University and is I understand now working on a study of urban coalitions in several large American cities Welcome Dr Rogers to the black man in America series Thank you Bill thank you for having me here well always glad to have people of your standing on the series and certainly I think that the people of the city of New York benefit by hearing your views press releases on your recent book one time living as a straight in the case of the public education system as presently constituted has failed in educating the majority of the children in New York City why is. Well I think there are many reasons and as a researcher and as a sociologist I see complexity in the situation the city has changed a lot we're in a situation of poverty. There are many reasons we need more money in the school system but it seems to me that one of the main reasons is the structure of the bureaucracy I think it's strangled in its own red tape it's mired in inertia It's been isolated from the rest of the city it hasn't been. It has been able to transform and adapt itself to the tremendous changes that have taken place in the city over the last twenty to thirty years demographic changes technological revolution and a social revolution a revolution of rising expectations. The school system is not adapted and I think that one of the reasons is that it's been so insulated in the professionals have been so political ised inside that they've been able to resist any attempts a change any protest for change you can look back twenty thirty years ago for studies that are now gathering dust for decentralization many of the same proposals that have been put forth in the last year for a decentralization of the New York City school system was made long times a long time ago and these it was Asian is nothing new it's nothing new in terms of the proposal for reform for the New York City Board of Education in one nine hundred fifty one astray Ariadne reported a distinguished two volume report recommend a decent realisation they also recommended to change the civil service licensing procedures to make the standards more relevant for teachers and principals in the in the ghetto areas especially that means lowering standards to some people it doesn't mean lowering standards at all I think some people do feel that way I think what it means is that that standards become more relevant there are there are many people and many distinguished the black educators and white people who have a sense for conditions in the ghetto the culture of poverty and who may not have taken lots of education courses in the City College system that were required to pass the. Teacher examination of your book is almost six hundred pages and it's quite well documented with all kind of notes and footnotes shows an awful lot of research that you put into it and I think certainly that anyone who gets hold of it will have a great deal a wealth of material available in their fight to make education better in the city but it certainly has created a lot of flap around the city and a witness on our commissions hearings one of the members of the Board of Examiners said that you had done. But your lack of adequate research. Was really deplorable for this book I can't see if that's true can you well I appreciate your bringing this up and I having the opportunity to talk about it because I didn't include in my book anything that couldn't be well validated by a lot of evidence one of the charges that was made was that I had interviewed members of the Board of Examiners and therefore my assertions about the examination system were not were not correct did interview three members of the Board of Examiners and the. Did a lot of careful work on the examination and licensing system which was one of the things that came under the most attack I believe that there had been discrimination against black and Puerto Rican applicants and the New York City school system in one hundred sixty two they changed and put on the books the rule that you couldn't rule that people couldn't be a lemonade on the basis of speech patterns Southern isms in speech was a was a standard for rejecting people in the past but we know they do it with a lot of paper we have a lot of policy statements and rules on the books but that doesn't mean that they're always followed in practice I talk with with members of the board who have been concerned with this problem of of licensing and inbreeding and the extent to which there was discrimination have been concerned with this for a long time I talked with several people on the professional staff at headquarters and I've talked with many black applicants who have been turned down in. Recent years and it is my sense that until quite recently when the board of education partly in response to pressure had hired more taken on more blacks as assistant principals and the principal level until very recently there had been discrimination just as there had been a generation ago Gance the ethnic groups who came in at that time. Positions in the New York City schools follow waves of ethnic migration to the city and it's it's a historical pattern and. Just as Jews were discriminated against in the thirty's and forty's and they were for Brooklynese and other ethnic speech patterns that may have been characteristic of their group so have black people been discriminated in the New York City schools in the fifty's and early sixty's Well there has been some correction in that question of Southernism is another speech patterns being used against people who are applicants for teachers and you say that Justin one hundred sixty two there has been some correction in the last few years right and there are more than a girl supervises than they were before but take a look at the figures they're roughly about four percent or five percent if you look at Puerto Rican supervisors there was only one principal Louis Fuentes and he wouldn't spend He's been suspended right are we headed for more school strikes more boycotts more disruptions in our children's education before education gets better I hate to be a harbinger of doom on this thing but I really think we are think we're probably headed for many more confrontations and strikes and boycotts and I hope that the. You know the conflict doesn't escalate too much to tear the whole city apart in the future as it threatened to do this year but I think it's it's better than it was but I think that yes there is there will be this kind of escalation of conflict periodically because I think that that the professionals are pretty dug in and pretty convinced of their views which are that the school system is really quite good it's just that we've had a lot of changes in population in the schools can't teach youngsters who come from. So-called deprived or disadvantaged homes and backgrounds are saying they're getting poor material they're getting poor material as their view but if you look out at the middle class areas and Douglas than mid-water other middle class areas around the city of Forest Hills you'll find that the education is quite good not shows that the school system is very good it was quite. But in the past they point to the Westinghouse scholars and many of the people who went to the Ivy League schools and MIT and. Their feeling is that the school system is the jury rated mainly because of the population change and it's not their fault they're trying they're pouring in money. They have a strong sense of social conscience and progressive attitudes characteristic of New York City generally and can't use them as the sole scapegoat for the problems of the public school isn't it true also that there is family disruption in the wealthier areas and there are social problems in the wealthier areas that harm children and their education and yet they still get good education that's right and you find out why they get good education and there are a number of reasons the one is that the best trained and experienced teachers are located in those middle class areas and the ghetto areas get the young teachers who just got out of City College and are dumped in there and and really had no past experience or before they went to these colleges nor do they have they had any relevant teacher training experience you do cite some statistics about this about for example comparative age of school buildings in so-called deprived areas as against the newness of buildings in the richer areas right if you were to do a comparison of the resources that the board pumps into the ghetto areas as compared with the middle class areas age of the buildings the extent of overcrowding the experience of the teachers extent to which the schools open after hours you will find. As you will find the that the ghetto areas are still discriminated against you will also find it in the poor white areas in the Northeast Bronx and Staten Island if you look at these data and they don't per pupil expenditures now we've been living with the myth in New York City for a long long time that the Board of Education has compensated for any qualities it says on the books that they spend one hundred two hundred fifty dollars more per pupil in the ghetto elementary schools as compared with the middle class elementary schools and that is a myth and that is a myth. And the per pupil expenditures is determined largely by the by the salary of the teachers and supervisors and it's much lower because they're less experienced and in many cases less competent and they get more they get less money if they are less experienced they get less money they have more acting principals and supervisors in the ghetto aren't getting the principal's money at all getting teachers money that's right and so therefore the amount of money that's actually spent in the getaway area is less than the amount spent in the white area that's right even on the question of a class that's right on the question of class size which the board claims it's cut down and get away areas as compared with the others class size is no different in Harlem was sold Bronx as compared with Riverdale or. Or some other now of course or. Paraphrasing or one of our advertisers that we hear around New York City which says progress is our most important product children are our most important product and here we're talking about the doom of children in the public school system we're talking about one million two hundred thousand children in the public school system who are not getting a good education. This is our future and leaving our futures that bleak and I painted and I think our future is that bleak as I've painted it and I don't see any immediate hope on the horizon I hope there will be but it's the only way out of the ghetto into an increasingly automated and complex economy it's not like forty or fifty years ago and ethnic groups came in and there were other kinds of unskilled and semi-skilled job opportunities are opportunities in small business. Today education is essential and the future of the city is wrapped up in the public school system as it is with every big city isn't this really part of a larger social problem and how it certainly is and I don't think we've dealt with it adequately now part of the problem is money and the city needs more money but you know I'm really quite concerned if we poured in a lot of money to this school system with this structure and with this inbreeding and incompetence at many levels and insulation I'm concerned that that money would be absorbed and diluted and not well spent we have a lot of money in New York for many programs. And I'm not sure it's always spent well at all one of your chapters is titled The failure of desegregation What do you mean by that and where does it blame lying if when you are as well all of these things are complex but I think you can and you can place the blame on the Board of Education on desegregation we had twelve years of unimplemented policy statements and the segregation the New York City school system started before any other school system in the country in reacting to the desegregation problem partly as a result of some early statements an increase by cancer. CLARK In early one nine hundred fifty four actually before the Brown decision and then we had twelve years of advance policy statements well written agree with appropriate expressions of social conscience and very little if any implementation we've had a history of opportunities lost in New York City out in your borough of Queens until quite recently the white and Roman in the public schools was up toward eighty percent or more in the housing patterns were not fixed and we had all kinds of opportunities to desegregate I understand the pressures against the board from real estate homeowner groups and white citizen groups taxpayer groups but they showed no leadership at the P.T. organization what's happened to it where has it gone now well they're no longer concerned about desegregation because they feel that they brought the board of education to its knees the Board of Education responded to their protests and police and so they don't have to be be concerned about that I guess on the community control and decentralization problem some of them their leaders are interested in a five borrow system I heard of that. And they're just no longer concerned about the the integration I know this is gunning embraced a royalist is planned for separate Harlem school system at a meeting last year and. We also put some money issues alleged to put some money into Dr Tom Matthews out that also in the interracial hospital. I think that's an adjective of some women out there too she's made her point I suppose what happened though to the civil rights organizations you're you talk of them as if for the fact that the P eighty group and others existed pointed out the weaknesses of the civil rights organizations. Well I don't really think that even if the civil rights organizations had more money and were more united at that time in the peak of the immigration fight sixty three and sixty four. They would have been that successful I think the forces for the status quo were so strong inside the school system the principals associations the district superintendents and various groups at headquarters they were largely the ones who were along with Ph D. successful in sabotaging the subverting integration if you look at every plan that came down from open enrollment to the Yellen plan before for plan you will find that the educators were able to subvert this in fact on the integration thing was really just a special case of a more general. Situation in the New York City schools where the professionals are able to subvert innovation if we had other innovation you mean to say that policy is made by the full board of education but then it's not carried out by the. People the staff they act as though they act as though the Board of Education has no legal authority and power that's right and then as though the superintendent doesn't either for example on open enrollment which was which I hope for a while from one hundred sixty to sixty six we had we had open enrollment I spent a lot of time talking with parents and school people and teachers and principals and I found a fairly widespread pattern of sabotage by the principals and and other school officials and ricin sending and receiving school actual SAP actual sabotage Now you might want to use a more euphemistic phrase to characterize it but you've got actual evidence of this I've got actual evidence you could call it noncompliance or you could say as professionals they were redefining headquarters directives to meet their local needs but Loney they were sabotaging this thing and there were studies actually by the Urban League and the Commission on Human Rights as well as my own that indicate this for example in sending schools a principals would not inform parents of the plan of the transfer plan finally the central zoning unit realized this and. And took over the function of trying to communicate to the news bigger better relations division in the Board of Education did that have any effect in this particular instance no they didn't they were emasculated by the professional bureaucracy at headquarters and they didn't have much effect it was really quite tragic there were people from the human relations unit who used to go out in the school community controversies over integration in the pad areas and try to talk with the parents they would represent board policy then there would be board policy as it were for desegregation and there are a number of plans and we're going to try them out then there would be a call from a pat person back at headquarters perhaps the director of the human relations unit and up to the superintendent and a member of the human relations unit who was acting in good faith representing the board and its policy statements out to the community would be called down. Because you have to be careful and this is a highly political thing and you know I supposed to do that so it went and I'm a member former member of the local school board in District fifty Queens I was a member for fifteen years and I was chairman for part of the time and I felt that the local school board at that time had no power at all that's right that it was really a patsy of the local district superintendent has it been any change in this well we hope there will be now under some kind of decentralization plan but as of quite up till now there's no change not a lot of change no I've talk with this matter fact I was in a meeting last week with one of the local school board chairman and he described the situation and I've heard it described by many people aboard an interim plan when they delegated some powers to the local boards over this this year but they haven't they haven't received any more powers than they had before you speak of the role of the so-called white liberal in this school fight throughout the years what has been their role and what has happened to Jewish Negro relations right well I think that some of the group organizations like the American Jewish Congress played a very favorable roles in our fact the American Jewish Congress was was in the fourth. Run in the integration fight as was the American Jewish Committee. And they tried hard for a while the push for the segregation the American Jewish Congress had a revolt from their constituents from their local congress chapters around the Senate leadership way out ahead in the American Jewish Committee for a while was the flight entirely I think that the problem was that the white liberals got caught and they were ambivalent between their desire for equality and their desire to maintain quality in the middle class schools around the city and they got stuck on that United Parents Association which represents a lot of white liberal interest me represents many four hundred thousand parents predominantly middle class and predominately white though they're more black than they used to be but they straddle the fence they were the Mugwumps sat on the fence on open enrollment other integration plans they would always or educational complexes or parks or any other technique that was discussed zoning or site selection for schools they would say well we're in favor of the of the concept but and then they would have a whole series of issues but were against long distance mandatory bussing will long distance mandatory busing wasn't really the issue that was proposed never was proposed and that's right on pairings in the involve that it all now the United parent's associations to was successful in wiping from the books sixteen of twenty proposed pairings they didn't involve busing they were white and black schools and contiguous located in a contiguous way so that you know youngsters could almost what they were on either side of the racial frontier kind of dividing line between the black in the white middle and junction Boulevard out in Corona was the classic. Dividing line between the two schools one ninety two or ninety two and one hundred seven I think was right and it was a classic pairing that really worked by the way to yes it did. This too bad that those schools were dropped many of them. I think that the. I believe in coalition politics and I think it's important. For the white and black and Puerto Rican groups of the city to get together and push for reform and improving conditions social programs in the city but it was very hard we had two major coalitions around the in school integration fight. Conference for quality integrated education and a group Committee and both of them. Fell by the wayside after why couldn't get consensus. I hope that I think that. On the on the Jewish Negro problem I think that the anti-Semitism has been has been over. Over dramatized in many areas for my sense of it you do get a few nuts and a few people here and there who run off this literature and it's it's it's smut literature I don't like it nobody likes it but I don't think that represents the sentiments of ocean in Brownsville or I us to all one of most of the ghetto areas matter fact there was a big survey done by Gary Marx a sociologist by addressed and wrote the introduction for it indicating that there's less anti-Semitism among blacks and there is among whites at the same economic level and I think there may have been some increase a little last year or two in New York over the school question but I don't think that's really the major issue I think the major issue is the schools have failed so a lot of other institutions in the schools and not been accountable especially to poor people who have been so powerless. No there's no avenue of redress is no place to go you go to the teacher the principal the district office the local school board you go downtown for one bureau to another and you don't get any answer they pass the buck they're there artists passing the buck it's almost impossible how are they able to do this and how they able to continue this kind of thing in spite of the fact we've got a democratic form of government well they are so inefficient that it's unclear as to who has what authority within the bureaucracy so you can say well he's responsible for this class of decisions so we're going to make him accountable they they don't this is not that clear at all for them or they committee eyes decisions so you get a bunch of guys making a decision and then they pass it around from one office to another they have a plan for an educational park and thirty different offices have to pass on particular parts of it it's impossible to make any decision does that mean that the people of the city have to become aroused and then there'll be some change that's right that's the exactly what I mean that's the only way the democratic process can really work that's right and I feel that to some small degree my book is a kind of has an ombudsman function for a lot of the people in the city to point out and make more visible and dramatic the inefficiencies in the insulation of this bureaucracy David Rogers you know book one ten Livingston Street certainly does go into the politics and bureaucracy of the New York City school system to a great extent but how do you personally feel about the present situation at the Coleman Jr High School over in Brooklyn and P.S. thirty nine in Manhattan you know common is that school a call to someone right I haven't been as close to those situations as before but from what I see from conversations with people who are there and what I'm able to pick up. I think that in the in the ocean Hill situation I think both on an issue we were. Both of them were initially would be almost designed to fail because there were no clear guidelines and so the teachers and the local governing board and the United minister ater with thrown into an impossible situation the main victims of the system thrown against each other as they're straining to define what their powers may be I think you notion here Brownsville we have an example of for the first time in ghetto schools in New York some education going on in the most of the people who've gone there and visited and walked through the classrooms are tremendously impressed the sense of pride in the morale of the people there and then the quiet in the halls not forcibly imposed by any kind of militaristic discipline or anything just a deep sense of pride and a sense of concern on the part of many of the teachers who are in there I don't think that the Mr From minister has talked for a minute is probably handle the situation in a very adequate way at all and. In the sense of than forcing an agreement that was made without consulting the local groups. Reading Glamour's I would very strongly join Reverend glance in and can't Clark any others who have spoken out on this point I think that in two zero one and junior highs in P.S. thirty nine there. I guess in many of the same problems of taken place I think that. That situation is one where the unit administrator should be given the authority to make decisions affecting Nations in his area as to whether the school be open or not open they were open all through the strike and I think that this is a confrontation that is probably necessary at this stage of social change where so much of the power has been in the hands of the Union we're going to have continued tests of this kind. It is my sense that if Mr Wilson Mr Spencer decided that they wanted the schools closed. On hours of the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving that. Is a decentralization experiment or not I mean of course there are those who say that Mr Wilson the unit administrator had disobeyed orders from the Central Board of Education Mr Wilson feels that this kind of top down management where you make decisions and make pacts and agreements without consulting the community is not in the spirit or any other sense of the centralization of community control. I'm on Mr Wilson side on this if you had any advice in the education field to give us as the Commission on Human Rights in the next two minutes what would you say I would say one of the big things that should be done is a problem is political mobilisation that is I think that the commission current along with the mayor and other agencies of city government point out to a lot of institutions that haven't been they've been sitting on the sidelines for too long how sick the school system is how sick the bureaucracy is that isn't to say that we don't have many good educators many Koppen and ex educators because I think we do but they're sick I mean if they become open up the system open to the public view what's happening open up to public view conduct a public persuasion campaign tell the people on Wall Street and in the universities how important it is for them to become involved in the. New York City school struggle it affects them if we have if the city is torn apart businesses can can't survive in function well the social climate of the city is important for business Furthermore it's manpower needs aren't being met but I haven't seen that much participation by big business in New York City education reform the last year the begin the beginnings of that through the urban coalition of the Citizens Committee for school decentralization just the bare beginnings and what they do on Wall Street they have their own school system they are fed up with trying to deal with the superintendent headquarters in the high school division to improve the programs for the ghetto youngsters they take the cripples of the ghetto schools and they train them in literacy I think somehow we have to conduct a campaign in the city in a collective way. To mobilize all those resources and all those institutions that have sat on the sidelines before and that would be a vital third force foundations universities business and some people labor movement I've been accused of being naive in assuming that the labor movement could join a coalition but I've talked with some labor leaders many of them with large black constituencies or Puerto Rican constituencies and they're terribly concerned about this they're concerned about the underclass as in New York City and doing something to improve their situation I think certainly I'm glad you made that suggestion to us to have a public persuasion campaign underway and I think that the hearings we recently completed the two weeks of hearings will be a small step along that way because what we did was to gather together the views of many people of all kinds and all types of organizations into one place where we can issue to the public and then the public will be able to follow what goes on in the state legislature so that's a part of I guess I think those hearings were a great service and there was some publicity about them as I read in The Times and I think that's terribly important I think the problem in New York is it's so big we're in a situation of pluralism run while we have power to dispersed across too many institutions. If we could coalesce them around a problem that is really a vital concern to all of them and to the city and I think it might be possible we've got to make people realize that they have a self interest in this school system and in the fight that we're looking at right and when they realize they've got a self-interest then maybe they'll do something about it I hope so the aroused public we're talking about so it's not all pessimistic as we started off no I think there may be some hope to get some reform going yes but only if we can arouse the public that's right the public has to be around certainly I think David Rogers you've added a great deal of light and I hope that there are enough people listening and who will make their views known will write to their legislators write to the Board of Education write to the mayor let everybody know what they believe about the system and about what your deals are on it thank you thank you David Rogers for being with us in the black man in America and talking about one ten living just great published by Random House please it would be with us again next week and we'll have another distinguished guest in a series author Blaustein coeditor of man against poverty World War three till then it's Bill Bill thing good night we welcome your comments on these programs send your cards and letters to black man in America W. N.Y.C. in New York one hundred zero seven I'm join us again next Tuesday afternoon at five on W. N.Y.C. F.M. or next Tuesday evening at nine on W. N.Y.C. black man in America is a feature presentation of your city's station broadcast in cooperation with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.