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Do the Right Thing (Thoughts on Middle School Admissions)

brooklynrob Uncategorized

I am a parent of three children, serve on CEC 13, live in weird hybrid of NYC DOE Community School District 13 for elementary and D15 for middle, and serve as Youth Chair for CB6 which overlaps mostly D15 and a bit of D13. I am an aspiring policy wonk (though have a long way to go to reach Brad Lander levels). Of my three kids I have one in middle and two more on the way. I think about middle schools and admissions policy a lot, especially in the D13 and D15 parts of Brooklyn. With this as context…

A couple years ago when I’d say to a friend that this area of Brooklyn has among the very most segregated schools in the nation they’d look at me like I had three heads.

Now, a few years later, and after the contentious PS 8 / 307 rezoning, for which I was one of the votes (and which, I should note, was presented to the CEC by the DOE as about capacity but quickly became a segregation story in the media) the staggering Brooklyn school segregation is no longer new news. Google the topic and there are all sorts of stories. Here’s a few:

Last month Patrick Wall wrote an article for Chalkbeat that appeared in The Atlantic about District 15 middle school admissions – it’s a good and important read.

The one article that I keep coming to though is the one published in Vox last February, perhaps because it comes after the CEC and by extension me personally a bit because of our advocacy for MS One Brooklyn.

I keep coming back to it too mostly though, I think, because the narrative – maybe inadvertently on the author’s part – hits on one of the most troublesome part of this discussion, especially when it comes to middle school admissions in District 13 and 15. Which families, if any, are to blame? And what does it mean, to do the right thing, both for your child and the community at large?

I want you to imagine two families. Let’s for now leave race out of the picture. In both families, both partners work and both partners have masters degrees. In both families one spouse makes $125,000 and the other makes $175,000, so both families have a household income of $300,000. This may sound like a lot but in Brooklyn in 2016, this is really not that rare any more.

Both families have one 4 year old child and decide to move to Clinton Hill from Williamsburg to buy a home. The homes are, in fact, next door to each other and both cost $1.3 million. Even at $300,000 in household income affording a $1.3M home is a stretch, but they pull it off. The mortgage makes private school not an option, and both parents in both sets of families tell each other, perhaps somewhat unconvincingly, that their belief in the importance of public school matters more anyway.

Both families secure a seat for pre-K in an official privately run NYC DOE Pre-K center in Clinton. In the winter of their children’s pre-K year though, with Kindergarten approaching, the stories start to become different.

One family, we’ll call them “Family A”, has made friends with another couple, “Couple C” also in Clinton Hill. Couple C’s 3rd grader attends PS 321 in Park Slope and their oldest is a 6th grader at MS 51, also in the Slope.

Couple C insists to Family A that PS 321 is the best elementary school in Brooklyn, and “really the only option”. Family A responds that they are not zoned for 321 or even in its district (15). How can we get our child in, they ask. “Couple C” insists that “everyone finds a way in … everyone does it. Everyone gets their kids into 321” (including, it must be noted here, the parents of the author of the Vox piece by her own admission – “In 1990, I started kindergarten at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the borough’s best elementary school, because my family lied”).

Couple C further explains that “while you used to be able to just borrow an electric bill from a friend, the DOE has started to get more strict” and explains that the way most people do it is now is by renting an apartment in the PS 321 zone for a few months at the start of the kindergarten year, before moving back to Clinton Hill, as once a child is at a school they can stay there through graduation. While it feels like a financial stretch to Family A to pay for a few months of rent in center slope, figuring all told it’ll cost them about $12,000, it’s far less money than private school would have been for 6 years, which they had given up as an option when they bought their home. They decide to do as Couple C has suggested – they find a small studio in Center Slope, rent out their home in Clinton Hill via Airbnb for a few months, and enroll their child at 321 for the fall. Come the holidays they are back in Clinton Hill and getting used to the walk to 321 each day, which takes just under a half hour.

Back to “Family B”. They also have friends who have told them about different ways to get a seat at schools like 321 or 29 in District 15, as well as at PS 8. They’ve also visited PS 20, both Family A and Family B’s zoned school (remember, they are next door neighbors), and like what they see. They see a diverse community and like that. While they recognize PS 20 may not have a million dollar PTA budget like PS 321 does, they’re ready to “roll up their sleeves” and work hard to raise money for the school. They like that the school is in the neighborhood and an easy 3 minute walk from home. Off to PS 20 their child goes.

Let’s next fast forward 5 years. Our two families’ children are now ready for middle school.

Because Family A’s child went to a District 15 school, PS 321, Family’s A child is entitled to apply to District 15 middle schools, including and especially the “Big 3″ (447, 51, New Voices) cited in the Chalkbeat / Atlantic article. Family A’s child applies to 447, 51, and MS 88 and gets accepted at 447, the first choice of the family.

Family B’s child is still in District 13 and applies to middle schools there. Family B decides their top choices are MS 8 and Arts & Letters. These two schools have the highest test scores in District 13, and to Family B, who are thinking a lot about academics with high school and then college on the horizon, test scores matter. Moreover, having spent much of their past five years working bake sales nearly every weekend to raise money for PS 20′s PTA, they are ready for a school with a larger PTA budget, as is the case at both PS/MS 8 and Arts & Letters. PS 20 was great, but Family B also put in a lot of work, time, and commitment and don’t know if they can sustain the same pace of volunteering.

Family B recognizes though, that because both MS 8 and A&L give admissions preference to students continuing on from those school’s respective lower schools, Family B’s child’s chances of getting a seat at either MS 8 or A&L are low – perhaps even lower than the odds that the Family A student – still their next door neighbor – faced at 447 and 51. Family B decides to also apply to a citywide admissions district middle school in Manhattan a couple friends have recommended – it’s a stretch but the school has a reputation for solid academics and it’s another option to put in play. It’s a both a reach and backup plan in one.

As it turns out, come May of 5th grade, Family B’s child does not secure a seat at either A&L or MS 8. Instead the Family B child is offered by the DOE a seat at Unisons, AP Piller’s school, as the DOE algorithm will do when it can’t make a match to a preference listed on the application. Somewhat unexpectedly though, Family B’s child does get offered that seat at the Manhattan citywide public school. While they are worried about the commute to Manhattan every day, Family B decides on the Manhattan school over Unisons, largely citing the test scores and even more than the test scores that the Manhattan middle school places many of its graduates at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or Brooklyn Tech. Family B, like Family A, has every expectation their child will go to post-grad and they are starting to think about how to get from here to there.

So, at the end of 5th grade, Family A’s child leaves 321 for MS 447 in Boerum Hill; Family B’s child leaves PS 20 for a school in Manhattan. Come 6th grade, neither student is attending school in the neighborhood or even District 13.

These two scenarios are both very common and ones I drew up to protect anonymity rather than to create a work of fiction.

Let’s now fill in the picture a bit more on Family A and B and assume that in both Family A and B, both partners are white. And, at both of their new middle schools, the children will be in the majority racially.

Through their choices – by ultimately not choosing for their child Unisons or another D13 middle that is majority students of color, both Family A and Family B made more entrenched the segregation of our schools. Both families could have helped integrate Unisons, which AP Piller says in her piece is essential (”…(S)egregation is unacceptable. No amount of curriculum magic, or experienced teachers, or school choice, can overcome the fact that to overcome educational inequality, white students need to be in school with minority students”).

And then I wonder which family, A or B, AP Piller might fault more, if either, for their respective “contribution” to segregation and in turn the impact of their decision to Unison. Family A? Family B?

It’s Family B that was still in District 13 at 5th grade, and who would have seen the Unisons’ presentation at a PTA meeting. It was the child of Family B that was offered a seat at Unisons – a seat Family B turned down.

And Family A? They left D13 years ago. Do they get a pass? What culpability do they own? When they opted out of their zone school, PS 20, to pursue PS 321 at Kindergarten, they were effectively opting out of District 13 as well. Perhaps going into Kindergarten, middle school was the furthest thing from their mind. Or, just maybe, they were very aware (perhaps because Couple C told them) that not only would they get the benefits of 321 but also the privilege to apply to the “Big 3″. Remember too – because Family A still lived in D13 they’d have retained the option apply to Unisons. Do you think the Clinton Hill family with a 5th grader at 321, Family A, applied to Unisons? In my fictitious example, do you think they even visited or even thought about the school? What of MS 266, a District 13 in Park Slope they might have walked by every day on the way to 321. Was that ever on Family A’s list?

While Family A was enjoying the dividends accrued at 321 from privilege, money, and power, Family B was building up their local neighborhood school. Do Family B’s sweat equity and financial contributions, in the “calculus” of political correctness and “doing the right thing”, somehow balance out their not choosing Unisons for their child? Or should we nonetheless indict Family B for “selling out” on some idealized progressive vision for our schools and the choices that we think parents should unilaterally make in the name of the greater good? And if so, what then of Family A? What is their “culpability”? Should they have returned to D13 after PS 321 in order to “do the right thing” an help integrate Unisons?

Of course, this all isn’t really about AP Piller, a dedicated educator here in our district, or her thoughtful piece in Vox. This isn’t about our “fictional” families or the families you and I might know that are a lot like them.

What this is all really about is living our publicly espoused values in our own lives and with our own children’s futures. It’s one thing for a white parent to stand up at a “town hall” and decry the segregation and demand changes. It’s quite another for that same parent to send her child to a majority-minority school.

This is also about this constant “calculus”, as I call it above, that permeates how Brooklyn parents size up each other, day by day, interaction to interaction. Here in Brooklyn, we like judging others and their choices almost almost as much as we do fresh cheese from the co-op and sledding the hills of Prospect Park in the winter. The progressive purity test of our neighbors is one we never opt-out of.

I hope we can get a discussion going about how the different scenarios and dynamics are playing out in our schools, especially in district 13 and 15 middle schools, and crucially between the districts instead of looking at them as islands. Ultimately the patterns of school choice we see are the aggregate of lots of individual choices which after time form well-trodden paths. I think many of us want the same thing – schools with strong academics that foster character growth and social-emotional welfare within the context of diverse, integrated settings that draw on the melting pot of Brooklyn.

But how do we get there? Can we maintain a full choice model and integrate our schools at the same time? Should we focus on “quality” first? What does quality even mean? What does it mean to implement controlled choice models that purportedly will not constrain choice? How do we implement policies that encourage more students to stick around in districts like 13 for middle rather than policies that end up only driving more families away?

Have the districts outlived their usefulness and appropriateness as constraints of middle school choice, especially considering the arbitrary nature of many district lines in the context of Brooklyn in 2016?

Much of the DOE integration policy seems to assume voluntary integration by families like “A” and “B” above – is that realistic? Can integration happen without removing some form of choice?

How do we do the right thing, for both our own kids and the community at large?

Dock Street, IS 611, MS 313, and the #D13 Rezoning

brooklynrob Education, Uncategorized

The following post is co-authored by fellow cec13brooklyn council member Maggie Spillane and myself. (Please note these statements solely reflect those of Maggie and me and do not reflect the thoughts of the entire CEC.)
​
The CEC13 Brooklyn​ calendar meeting is this Wednesday, September 30th – 6:30pm (we suggest you arrive by 6pm to get a seat) at PS 307.

At this meeting we expect the CEC will get a formal proposal from the NYC Department of Education​ regarding the #D13rezoning of PS 307 and PS 8.

Assuming the proposal is the same as the draft proposed scenario shared on September 1, and while we will continue to solicit and consider any additional information and viewpoints, we believe the current proposal merits our support with respect to the two elementary schools involved.  

HOWEVER, we are very concerned by the continuing uncertainly surrounding the new middle school, IS 611, previously committed to the CEC and scheduled to open at Dock St. next year (September 2016).

The long-term viability of the rezoning is premised in part on re-siting M.S. 313, which is presently co-located with P.S. 307, in an allocated footprint of hundreds of seats. Conversations with the DOE over the summer indicated they planned to propose re-siting MS 313 to Dock St.  We raised concerns about both the vagueness and the timing of this concept and asked that any rezoning proposal contain specifics about the re-siting.  

Further discussions with the District Superintendent clarified that the plan would be to open IS 611 as a new middle school into which MS 313 would subsequently merge. The Superintendent stated that the DOE would conduct meetings with the MS 313 community to ensure a merger plan that was welcoming and viable to the ongoing families at that school. Additional meetings would be held across the district to solicit input about what current elementary school families wanted in their new middle school at Dock Street.

Last week, DOE officials represented, in verbal responses to the public, that M.S. 313 would be re-sited into the Dock Street building, be re-named, and possibly receive new programming and a new admissions policy.  Neither the CEC nor the public has been provided with any information about these contemplated changes and we are not aware of any efforts the DOE has made to involve families in these decisions.  

There is no information in the Middle School Directory that would indicate these type of changes to prospective families.

In informal further discussion with the DOE, we received no additional detail about these changes, but the DOE indicated that, in contrast with prior representations, it no longer expects Dock Street to house a new middle school but simply to house only MS 313 (along with the 100-seat pre-k space also to be sited in the Dock St building).

While we understand re-siting is important to the rezoning proposal, we also believe that the middle school quality crisis is the the biggest problem in District 13 right now, more important and more urgent than even the PS 8 waitlist. Accordingly we cannot support a rezoning plan that does not come along with specific commitments with respect to IS 611 and MS 313 that are more in-line with prior representations about the Dock Street middle school. We request:

  • A commitment that IS 611 will be a choice middle school open to all of District 13;
  • An explicit admissions plan for IS 611 that will promote diversity;
  • An academic plan that will serve the academic needs of a diverse student body, including and especially students who are lagging in their academic performance AND students who are accelerated and need advanced academics;
  • A concrete, specific plan for how MS 313 students, staff, administration, and families will be transitioned into IS 611;
  • A communications and change management strategy to make prospective D13 middle school parents (i.e., 5th grade parents) aware of the changes coming to MS 313 and of the IS 611 option and how to apply, including by making IS 611 an option on the New Schools Application expected in March 2016 for September 2016 enrollment;
  • 100% Fair Student Funding, as is uniformly provided to new schools;
  • Clarity that neither MS 8 nor Arts & Letters are being moved to Dock St.

Additionally, we know that with additional pressure for middle school capacity, IS 611 alone will not fully remedy the middle school crisis in District 13.  We also call on the NYC DOE to clearly and publicly endorse the M.S. OneBrooklyn​ vision for a dedicated middle school at the new school facility recently approved by the City Council at Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park in Prospect Heights.

We believe the lack of clarity around the use of Dock Street has fueled much speculation and political maneuvering that is needlessly and destructively adding to the tensions concerning rezoning PS 8 and PS 307. This must end.  

Simultaneously, the DOE’s delay in engaging the community and creating and announcing a viable plan for IS 611, and the merging of MS 313 into 611, is inexcusably contributing to the challenges of our D13 middle schools.  It is adding to the already considerable uncertainty for families across the entire district who are in the middle school choice process.  In so doing, it is creating barriers to diverse recruitment into the new school that it may struggle to overcome.

It is not acceptable that the very important opportunity of Dock St, and especially IS 611, be treated as an afterthought to any PS 8 and PS 307 rezoning. District 13 was committed a new middle school at Dock Street open to all D13 students and that’s exactly what we expect delivered for next year.

Signed,
CEC13 Elected Members Maggie Spillane (PS 9 parent) & Rob Underwood (PS/MS 282 parent)

Thoughts on the PS 8 and PS 307 #D13Rezoning

brooklynrob Education, Uncategorized , , , , ,

The proposed #D13Rezoning of PS 8 and PS 307 is now garnering national attention. Both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal have done stories about the rezoning topic in the last day.

Given the attention being paid to this potential rezoning, I wanted to post some of my comments I’ve made about the many issues each of us as cec13brooklyn members, including myself, need to weigh once we have a formal proposal presented (expected September 30th) and we prepare to vote.

As I’ve written about before, I’m dismayed by Brooklyn’s educational parallel universes (i.e., the Mayor’s “two cities”) so evident in this discussion, as well as the contradictions and conundrum inherent in advocating for the opt-out movement and yet citing test scores as a reason to not send your child to a particular school. Some of the most difficult issues core to this discussion – segregation and racism – were the initial impetus for my interest in district planning and the CEC (especially in 2009 as the new 133 plan was being developed) and have been a critical factor at my children’s school, psms282 (itself the subject of several NY Daily News opinion pieces on the topic of NYC school segregation here and here.)

Here first is a comment I posted originally to Facebook last week.

I applaud Mayor Bill de Blasio for speaking up on the Brian Lehrer Show about the need to demand developers build schools in and around new residential construction. (Also – Both CEC13 Brooklyn and myself are big fans of the ‪#‎CS4All‬ initiative and applaud that announcement).

This in mind, and as we discuss collectively and respectfully the PS 307 / PS 8 rezoning with each other, we should keep in mind my great friend and fellow CEC member Ed Brown’s point towards the end of the PS 307 town hall about the under utilized schools in and around Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Fort Greene, and Downtown Brooklyn. We all see the high rises going up, and the potential is clearly there for a need for more middle and elementary seats. But while downtown schools like PS 46, PS 67, and PS 287 – even D13 schools further afield such as Park Slope School PS/MS 282 (my kids’ school) – go under-used by the community and their surrounding neighborhoods, the SCA is unlikely to make new elementary school buildings in D13 a priority, as planning happens at a district, not zone, level. When demanding new elementary schools be built, and thinking from a district planning perspective, we need to be mindful of the schools nearby that have unused seats. And as Ed challenged us, we should ask why are these schools struggling to fill their roster.

We also need to keep in mind that all elementary school students become middle schools students. When we’re asking about more elementary capacity, we must think ahead to middle school capacity. This is why initiatives such as M.S. OneBrooklyn are so important. All our kids in D13 deserve to have great middle school choices after they complete their elementary school education.

Today I reiterated some points above, expanded upon others, and made some points anew, in a Facebook comment:

(A)s CEC member who will be voting on this, I hope we use this as an opportunity to call attention to a few other issues, especially school funding, the billions owed by the state to the city in school funding (the state owes PS 307 $880K, PS 8 $2.1M), and the implicit expectation that PTAs must pick up much of, among other things, the cost of core enrichments important to attracting new parents and growing young lives. Many D13 schools are in a “doughnut hole” where they no longer have Title I status but still can’t produce the hundreds of thousands of dollars in PTA funds that some celebrated Brooklyn district public elementary schools can and do.

I hope too we look at testing and how test scores are used to evaluate schools. I struggle to get my head around white parents who are active in the opt-out movement and then use test scores as their rationale to avoid a school that is majority students of color. I also urge us to stop using phrases like “good school” and “bad school”.

I hope we also keep mindful of district wide needs and planning including that (and why) we have under-utilized elementary schools nearby. I also hope we can stay mindful of middle schools and the need to plan for strong middle school communities throughout the district. It’s great to advocate for more and stronger elementary schools – we also need strong middles for all those kids too.

I challenge all of of us – not just Black and White but our Asian and Hispanic sisters and brothers too – to think hard about diversity and segregation and what it means to live our values in our own lives and with our own children.

Finally I hope we can look more at how developers have come into communities like downtown and Prospect Heights getting huge tax breaks, public funding, and the power of eminent domain to tear down existing housing and offices to be replaced with gleaming towers. The developers much be held to account to the existing community, not just the one to which they market and is yet to come to Brooklyn.

Two closing points:

  • While I write this primarily in my CEC 13 capacity, I’m also a board member of Community Board 6, which mostly overlaps with District 15. As we think about middle and elementary school planning for Downtown Brooklyn, I urge everyone – including and especially the Downtown Brooklyn Schools Planning Working Group (DBSPWG) – to consider the District 15 portion of Downtown Brooklyn (primarily the PS 261 and PS 38 zones) as well as more broadly the impacts of new residential growth in developments such as Fortis/LICH. A coordinated, rationalized plan considering both District 13 and District 15 is crucial.
  • I really hope folks use this rezoning to reflect on educational equity. ALL kids deserve a great education at a safe school. I generally disagree with the negative characterizations of PS 307 – this is a school I know pretty well and there are amazing things happening there. But I find it troubling that only now that DUMBO children might be zoned for 307 that some DUMBO parents are taking an interest in a school in their own neighborhood, just blocks from their home. Did not the educational prospects of those children matter before the rezoning? If a school is not good enough for your child, is it good enough for any child? Again, I think PS 307 is a strong school community so I’m not asking these questions to imply I agree with the negative characterizations. I just am bothered that apparently few to any of these concerns with the school (307) were brought up by the DUMBO community when it was “other people’s children” going there. Do the educational opportunities we create for brown and black children from NYCHA houses – our neighbors – matter less? Do young #BlackLivesMatter?

The Parallel Universes of Education in Brooklyn

brooklynrob Education, Uncategorized

Take a look at this article today in DNAInfo. This article illustrates a primary reason for the urgent need for improved middle schools in Brooklyn District 13. 10% of the “persistently dangerous” middle schools in all of New York State are in D13.

Our Brooklyn schools are not just segregated – they existing in separate educational worlds within common neighborhoods. These are parallel universes on shared blocks. One of these 3 “persistently dangerous” middle schools is in Park Slope (MS 266), just blocks away from MS 447, widely considered one of the best middle schools in all of Brooklyn. Another is in DUMBO (Satellite West). Park Slope and DUMBO are two of the most affluent neighborhoods in Brooklyn and New York City as a whole.

One universe is that of majority white schools, with well funded arts programs and other enrichments, strong parental involvement, active opt-out movements, and the other many benefits that accrue with privilege and power. These are schools where principals can be vocal, highly visible spokespeople against the testing regime and teacher evaluation process.

The other universe is that of majority student of color schools, nearly always Title 1, struggling to get both sufficient DOE and PTA funding for even the most basic of supplies. These schools often have significant percentages of ELL, IEP, and other extra need students. These are schools that frequently poorly perform on the same tests the majority white school students no longer even take (since their parents are opting-out). In some cases these schools are unsafe as this report illustrates. At these schools principals live in fear they’ll lose their job if they can’t raise test scores – for them it’s unimaginable to speak out against the DOE or NYS tests, even in private.

Especially if you label yourself “progressive”, but even if you’re just a human, you should care about this. You should be outraged. I am.

I have every intention of making addressing these inequities my top priority in my continued work on CEC13.

(8/16 Update: I’d be remiss in not pointing out the amazing bit of reporting by fellow District 13 parent Nikole Hannah-Jones on “This American Life” about the topic of school segregation. It’s also worth your time to check out 3 pieces about school segregation in NYC, and in particular in Brooklyn, today on the Daily News – “Mix Match and Learn”, “Separate. Unequal. Still.”, and “Lander and Torres: Breaking the Cycle of School Segregation.”)

An Essay of Mine from May 2012: “On Meritocracy and Occupy”

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An Essay of Mine from May 2012: “On Meritocracy and Occupy”

From http://brooklynrob.blogspot.com/2012/05/on-meritocracy-and-occupy.html, May 2, 2012:

I tweeted this earlier today:

@brooklynrob: “Sign in #OWS march past my office: ‘We want to live up to our potential’ @chrislhayes:(Real) meritocracy is what they want, not hate.”
Chris Hayes (a fellow Park Sloper – Go Strollers!) RTed my note and replied with “fascinating.” I’ve wanted to write on this topic for a while. I think now is the time…

I have mixed feelings about Occupy, especially its anti-corporate message. I work for a large professional services firm and serve lots of corporate clients. From the “inside,” I know that most people with corporate jobs are like everyone else. They (We) are worried about families and friends. They worry about their jobs and worry about paying bills. They think a lot about fulfilling dreams and preparing for the future while simultaneously dealing with the mundane that can be day-to-day life. They also represent a huge share of our work force.

I also do not believe in any grand conspiracy about “overlords” trying to control our life. Maybe that comes from having spent a childhood waiting tables in Kennebunkport and an adulthood in New York periodically attending lectures at places like the Council on Foreign Relations. The rich and powerful people I’ve met strike me as more humane than Occupy makes them out to be.

That said I do recognize that both large corporations and political institutions can aggregate and magnify the small choices – good and bad, ethical and unethical – people within them make every day. Being a “good corporate citizen” requires not just strong, ethical leadership from the top, but also thousands of smaller similarly aligned ethical decisions to be made by each individual day in day out. When incentives are misaligned, goals unclear, benefits to the community and shareholders out-of-synch, institutions can end up on “bad” vectors. It can be compelling to write a conspiratorial narrative about these vectors since strategy and intent are easy viewing in the rear-view mirror. These vectors of our large institutions have great impact on people’s daily lives and it’s these institutions that have caused the American people – the Occupiers in particular though not exclusively – great angst.

One common grievance I’ve heard from Occupy is the charge of “crony capitalism.” The essential idea as I understand it is that institutions make deals with each other not based on merit, transparency, and fair competition. Instead business gets done in the figurative “smoky back room.” Relationships created at private schools, Ivy League and elite liberal arts colleges, and in early career internships solidify class distinctions and calcify organizations’ abilities to buy and sell based on objective measures. “Crony capitalism” additionally implies that deals are made almost exclusively for the benefit of the people directly at the table, often at expense of the country at large, the environment, the local community, and even taxpayers or shareholders whose interest the dealmakers purport to represent.

A common portrait of the people protesting “crony capitalism” – i.e., the Occupiers, is that that a lot of them are recent college graduates who can’t find jobs, many burdened with large tuition debt. From a couple visits I made to Zuccotti in the fall – as well as my own observation watching the march go by my office yesterday, I’m guessing that is fairly accurate. The message of many – and I paraphrase – is “I did the right thing. I played by the rules. I went to school and studied hard. Now I can’t get a job.”

I’m Gen X and when I came out of school in the early 90s getting a job was a challenge. I remember a friend of mine from Colby, who graduated Magna Cum Laude, being ecstatic about getting a job waiting tables. But the Millennials (“Gen Y”) have had it harder than we did. I think there are two reasons. The first reason many have suffered is the same reason why we have such a large structural unemployment problem in this country – a mismatch of skills and positions. Cynical observers of Occupy exploit this with the “Well, why did you major in Art History, then?” criticism. That stings, especially since our economy arguably will need more flexibility than specificity in its work force in the next few decades, but there is some truth in there as well.

The second reason I think recent graduates have trouble finding a job brings me back to those key enablers of crony capitalism I alluded to earlier: pedigree, schooling, network. Some call this “white privilege” though I think it’s more about class than race (which of course are not always mutually exclusive). And it’s this classism that is a problem. It’s class that is a major obstacle to meritocracy.  Just like with race and gender, when class blocks the best opportunities from going to the best qualified, capitalism fails.

My biggest surprise in the 12 years I have lived in New York City is how totally wrong the guidance that “where you went to undergraduate school doesn’t matter” is. It can matter tremendously, especially in finance. Not only is undergraduate school a filter by which companies select who to interview, it also is a graduate’s entry point to the networks required to get a shot at an interview in the first place. While I think “who you know” has probably always mattered as much as “what you know,” especially early in your career, I think this trend has greatly accelerated in the last 10-15 years. Frankly, I suspect it’s a motivating factor for some of the SAT cheating scandals that have occurred recently in greater New York City – clever kids, watching parents work the corporate world, recognize that the right undergraduate school is a critical asset for them to have in 6-7 years when they look for their first jobs, since it is the a penultimate marker of class. The kids make bad decisions and take short-cuts now to achieve the goal of a good job in the future.

Let me digress for a moment.  A bit older friend of mine has attended a number of Occupy events. Sometimes he just listens and watches, other times he offers his musical skills to the crowd. My friend told me a couple weeks ago that “After being to all these Occupy events, I know now what I am. I am a rapid capitalist.” Myself, I am very passionate about start-ups, venture capital, and the no-longer nascent digital media and technology scene in New York City, especially in my adopted home borough of Brooklyn. To me the idea of a 20-something amassing a bit of money from friends and getting a small business together in her garage, then getting a bit more from an “Angel,” and in turn – hopefully – getting their “Series A” round from a venture capitalist is capitalism at its best. I think it is America at its best. That is how things should work: Hard work coupled with great ideas competes for capital with which to grow. “Rabid capitalist” is a moniker I’d like to take on myself. And as a “rabid capitalist” I must repudiate obstacles to the free flow of capital whether that capital is financial or human. If the best human capital can’t get connected to the best (or any) jobs because of class and its associate markers, that’s a big problem.

Back to the sign in the OWS march yesterday. It read “We want to live up to our potential” and was held by a woman who was, I’d estimate, in her mid-20s. I don’t know her and can’t tell you why she made that sign. But thinking about conversations I’ve had with Occupiers in their 20s, as well as colleagues and friends also in that generation, I can tell you that there is a lot of disgust at what many of them see as a rigged system where the fundamental basis of competition is off-kilter. To them, and to me as well, it is incredibly frustrating that despite the tremendous progress we have made in the last 50 years in areas of gender, racial, and sexual orientation rights, we can’t seem to make the same sort of progress on class, and its typical markers like alma mater. We wring our hands at the decline in social mobility in our country but look away at the culprit: class. Some in Occupy are now turning their heads to the source of our malaise. We all may know that “life is unfair” but when you’ve “played by the rules” all your life and then find yourself unemployed at 24 – and can create a compelling narrative that a key reason why is because you went to the “wrong” school – that phrase, that “life is unfair”, provides precious little solace. How do young people respond? Some move back in with parents. Some go create start-ups. Some re-train. Some occupy and march.

And this takes us back to meritocracy and what I think people are seeing as its main impediment – class. While not the only message for sure, I do hear a primal scream for “real meritocracy” – by which I mean “meritocracy unconstrained by class” (or race, gender, etc.) Others may hear this primal scream as a call to be judged (only) by, to quote Martin Luther King, Jr., the “content of their character” but the taproot is the same. It’s a taproot that is fundamental to capitalism. It is a taproot that is fundamental to America. It is a taproot upon which both Occupy and the Tea Party can agree. It’s the taproot that says: “Put me in coach. Give me a chance, a shot. If I never have a chance to fail, how will I ever know to what degree I might succeed?”  It’s what I saw in that sign yesterday, and what I see in Occupy. It’s the want of opportunity to live up to one’s potential. It’s the yearning for the unfettered freedom of youth.