Chancellor Richard A. Carranza

My Mom sent me to Glendale, Queens, all the way from Bed-Stuy, Bklyn, with the hopes that I might be educated differently. I was the only Black student in my class until 4th grade. Integration helps. I learned quickly, that I began to want to be just as well read as my classmates

I'd go back to the projects every evening, and realize I spoke differently than my neighbors. I played an instrument. Most children in my neighborhood had never even seen a clarinet. I have two degrees now, and I truly believe diversity in education helps.

Also, my elementary school classmates and I, are still friends to this day. My classmates were Ukranian, Polish, German, Italian, Jewish, and Catholic. I think I was the lone Baptist in the bunch. Map P.S. 91 Queens from Ralph Ave. Bklyn, and see how far I traveled daily.

Your mom made the right choice for you because your local educators didn't believe your neighbors were worthy of a 1st class education. The very fact you needed to have white classmates is an indictment against ed system's systemic racism.

Now, I agree with this. It wasn't that I needed to have white classmates, as much as it was about schools not being equal in terms of resources. I think my Mom realized that I would be much better served there as opposed to my neighborhood schools.

My Mom also worked for the Bd. of Ed., so she had some inside knowledge as to how well the neighborhood schools were doing.

Really appreciate you highlighting this. What's so important in this video is the exchange about test scores not being a measure for students' ability. It's a measure of which families can pay for excessive test prep. We need to take power out of these tests...or eliminate them.

There was a longer clip of this video that showed a parent saying that she had spent thousands of dollars in tutoring so that her child would do well on the state test. That is what the principal is responding to in this video.

This shows that even parents know that test scores are now about how gifted their child is. It’s about which parents can invest the most to win a rigged game and their expectation to be rewarded for playing.

There is a psychologist in my area where it is known if you take your child and pay her fee she will give them a test and it always says they are gifted. And the parents use that to get their child into the gifted programs at school. So it’s all about who can pay.

Lots of wealthy parents pay psychologists for diagnoses so they can take the SAT, PSAT, and other critical standardized tests untimed.

Yep. And it’s not all about money either. It’s about time too. If parents are working full time, they don’t have time off of work to shuttle their kids around to doctor appointment unless they are really ill. Too much time off could = you’re fired.

Shout out to the principal for advocating.

Exactly. Racism is prejudice built on CONTROL and this is the epitome of that.