In a keynote speech weaving his own family history in the civil rights movement with current policy analysis, Dr. Stefan Redding Lallinger illuminated persistent inequities that plague public education systems in New York City and across the nation.
Lallinger, executive director of the think tank Next100, senior fellow at the Century Foundation,and a longtime educator and school administrator, spoke at “Two Decades of NYC High School Admissions: Effects, Equity, and Experiences,” a day-long conference presented by Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice and New York Appleseed. The event brought together educators, advocates, service providers, policy makers, legal experts, and academics to explore New York City’s high school admissions process, examining policy, current research, and how they could be redesigned to be more responsive and equitable.
Drawing on the legacy of his grandfather, Louis Redding, a pioneering civil rights lawyer who helped lay the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, Lallinger underscored the staying power of segregation in public education decades after the landmark Supreme Court decision. “Segregation is not a relic of the past,” he asserted. “It remains a significant and persistent issue, with impacts on students across socioeconomic and racial lines.”
In his keynote, Lallinger highlighted the disparities inherent in selective admissions schools—institutions with criteria for student entry that can perpetuate racial and socioeconomic divides. These inequities have been a focus of the Feerick Center, which in 2021 released “The Next Step: Prioritizing Equity and Recovery in NYC High School Admissions,” a report urging New York City to implement reforms for middle and high school admissions.
Presenting case studies from school systems in Boston, San Francisco, and Fairfax County, Virginia, Lallinger outlined both the challenges and potential solutions for addressing racial gaps in selective admissions. According to Lallinger, Boston revamped its admissions criteria during the pandemic to create a tiered system, which led to a notable increase in offers to Black and Latino students. Meanwhile, Fairfax County adopted policies to ensure a more representative admissions process at its prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School.
However, not all reforms have succeeded. San Francisco’s attempt to replace merit-based admissions with a lottery system faced intense backlash, resulting in the recall of school board members and a reversion to the original policy. These examples, Lallinger explained, illustrate the delicate balance between implementing meaningful change and navigating public sentiment.
Ultimately, Lallinger argued that rethinking selective public schools—and enacting reforms to target entrenched inequities—hinges on one’s fundamental vision of public education. Whether the goal is to cultivate good citizens, prepare students for economic participation, or promote social mobility, these objectives can align but often conflict. “Our failure to resolve that tension is what has led us to a very muddled reform agenda,” he said. “If we can’t decide what schools are for, then we certainly can’t decide how we want to change schools to get there, right?”
Following the keynote, Lallinger was joined by Dr. Sean Corcoran, associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, and Dr. Chantal Hailey, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, for a roundtable discussion. Together, they delved deeper into the issues surrounding segregation, selective public school admissions, and the broader implications for equity in education.
By connecting historical context with actionable policy insights, Lallinger’s keynote and the subsequent discussion with Corcoran and Hailey offered conference attendees a nuanced framework for addressing one of the more complex and pressing challenges in education today.