The New York City Department of Education is working to implement its implicit bias training program more quickly, compacting the timeline from four years to two.
“For me, it’s a no-brainer,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “This is going to be one of those cornerstone pieces in terms of how are we going to continue to transform this immense system to really, truly serve all students.”
Chancellor Richard Carranza announced the plan at a daylong training session on Wednesday, which was attended by around 100 public school principals, superintendents, and educators. According to the Journal, the multistage training sessions would “address subconscious prejudices, preferences or stereotypes that impact behavior and attitudes” and would “seek to improve outcomes for all students, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status or native tongue,” as explained by the Perception Institute, an organization dedicated to mitigating bias and discrimination, which led the summer training.
The Education Department and its Office of Equity and Access offered 27 such training sessions this summer, and the total cost over the next four years, as announced earlier this year, is $23 million. The department said a total of 1,000 staff members from 13 districts are attending implicit bias and culturally responsive education training this summer, according to the Journal.
Advocates of Carranza’s plan cite different rates of school discipline between black and Hispanic students, as well as schools being accused of teaching racist lessons, according to Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization focused on education.
One white teacher, for example, was accused of telling black students to lie on the floor during a lesson on the Middle Passage so she could step on their backs to demonstrate what bondage felt like, according to the New York Daily News.
