Daily Stream: Nice White Parents

"Virtual learning shined a bright light on the disparities in our community with respect to education," Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther noted in a July announcement that Columbus City Schools would buy 20,000 laptops for students in need. While this is an essential step in the school system's move to online-only learning for the beginning of the academic year, computer access is just one part of the thorny problem of inequity in public schools. Another is addressed in a new podcast series from the New York Times and the creators of Serial, Nice White Parents. The first two episodes are currently available to stream; the remaining three in the series will roll out on Thursdays.

Peabody Award-winning producer and parent Chana Joffe-Walt spent five years focused on one institution, the School for International Studies in Brooklyn, aka IS-293. In it, she finds a case study in how well-meaning white parents can and have wielded extraordinary power—and unintentionally used it to exacerbate educational disparities and segregation.

When Joffe-Walt begins her reporting the school, which had been predominantly populated by low-income students of color, had recently seen a shift away from shrinking enrollment. There was an influx of new students, most of them white, many from families with a greater economic advantage than the existing students.

Through PTA meetings in which existing members are sidelined by a new fundraising committee of white parents, conversations with parents involved in the school now, reflections from parents whose involvement with IS-293 goes back 50 years, and research on the history of public school desegregation, Joffe-Walt highlights challenges that exist on a national level as well as in this one particular school, particularly the vastly different perspectives of the parents and kids involved. As she explains, "In order to address inequality in our public schools, we are going to need a shared sense of reality. At least it's a place to start." So let's get started.

Listen to Nice White Parents on Spotify (also streaming via Stitcher and Apple Podcasts).