Selim Algar, New York Post, July 23, 2019

City kids are struggling with basic math and English — but a new Department of Education curricular initiative focuses instead on racial privilege and activism, The Post has learned.

Pushed by Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, the “Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education” program will require schools to “identify and interrupt policies and practices that center historically advantaged social/cultural groups and lead to predictable outcomes of success or failure for historically marginalized students.”

“The simplistic narrative that is being peddled is white privilege,” said Maud Maron, president of Community Education Council 2.

“What’s confounding about this proposal is that it doesn’t acknowledge the successes of students doing well in New York City public schools and instead identifies it as problematic white privilege,” she added,

Maron, who is running for the City Council in lower Manhattan, added, “They also have to deal with the inconvenient fact that somehow, low-income Asian students are outperforming all other groups in a system they argue historically and currently centers whiteness.”

The DOE directive further states that classroom activities should “foster critical consciousness about historical and contemporary forms of bias oppression” and that schools should now “promote student agency to end societal inequities.”

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The controversial initiative is part of an overall policy by Carranza that also includes a widespread desegregation plan to combat what education officials have referred to as “implicit bias’’ in the system. {snip}

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DOE spokeswoman Danielle Filson denied the CR-SE was a push against “white privilege,” and said, “New York City’s diversity is its greatest strength, and it should be reflected in our lessons and textbooks.”

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The measure will be voted on by the Panel for Educational Policy next week. Of its 13 members, eight are appointed by the mayor and the others by borough presidents.

The DOE has invited public comment on CR-SE but has received only six varied e-mailed replies.

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