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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0"></a>
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<div class="">January 30, 2013</div>
<h1>Meet the Champs</h1>
<h6 class="">By
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<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF"><span>NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
You see America and its education system in all their glorious,
exhilarating, crushing, infuriating contradictions in our national high
school chess champion team. </p>
<p>
Chess tends to be the domain of privileged schools whose star players
have had their own personal chess coaches since elementary school. Yet
the national champion team comes from a high-poverty, inner-city school,
and four-fifths of its members are black or Hispanic. </p>
<p>
More astounding, these aren’t even high school kids yet. In April, New York’s <a href="http://www.is318.com/">Intermediate School 318</a> in Brooklyn, where 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, <a title="A Times article from April 2012" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/nyregion/at-brooklyns-is-318-the-cool-kids-are-the-chess-champs.html">became the first middle school team ever</a> to defeat kids about four years older and win the national high school championship. </p>
<p>
The champs are kids like Carlos Tapia, a Mexican-American in the eighth
grade, whose dad is a house painter and mom a maid. The parents can’t
play chess and can’t afford to give Carlos his own room, but they
proudly make space for his 18 chess trophies. </p>
<p>
“Chess teaches me self-control” that spills over into other schoolwork,
Carlos said in the I.S. 318 chess room, as a rainbow of students hunched
over their boards, brows furrowed. </p>
<p>
This will be my last column for a number of months, as I’m taking a leave to work on a new book with my wife. So I asked <a href="https://twitter.com/NickKristof">my Twitter</a> followers what they’d like me to write about in this column, and one suggested I address: <em>How do you do your job without getting incredibly depressed?</em> </p>
<p>
I promise, I’m not the Eeyore of journalists. The truth is that covering
inequality, injustice and poverty can actually be inspiring and
uplifting because of kids like Carlos. Just sprinkle opportunity around,
and dazzling talents turn up. </p>
<p>
This isn’t about chess. It’s about investing in kids in ways that
transform their trajectories forever. The returns on capital would make
Wall Street jealous. </p>
<p>
Take Rochelle Ballantyne, who was raised by a single mom from Trinidad
and soared on the I.S. 318 chess team. Rochelle, now 17 and aiming to
become the first African-American woman to become a chess master, has
won a full scholarship to Stanford University. She’s planning to attend
even though she has never visited the campus. </p>
<p>
“We were meant to break stereotypes,” Rochelle told me. “Chess isn’t
something people are good at because of the color of their skin. We just
really work very hard at it.” </p>
<p>
That seems to be the secret. A part-time chess tutor named Elizabeth
Spiegel arrived at I.S. 318 in 1999 and parlayed a tiny budget into a
team that drills tirelessly. A dynamic, passionate teacher who
volunteered much of her time, she nurtured a team that since 2000 has
won more middle school championships than any other in the country.
</p>
<p>
One way of assessing what she has accomplished: Based on estimated chess
ratings, Albert Einstein would rank third on the I.S. 318 team. </p>
<p>
I wish the column could end on this triumphant note. But if these
extraordinary kids are a reminder of what can happen when we invest in
creating opportunity, they are also a reminder that budget cuts fall
disproportionately on the needy. </p>
<p>
“Funding for extracurricular activities has dried up,” said John Galvin,
an assistant principal who oversees the 95-member chess team. The kids
run bake sales, candy sales and walkathons to raise the $50,000 needed
to attend tournaments each year, but on trips they sometimes survive on
peanut butter. </p>
<p>
Galvin has tried approaching corporations and hedge funds for donations
but has had little luck. Budget cuts have already trimmed the
after-school chess club to three days a week from five. </p>
<p>
A moving documentary about the team, “<a href="http://www.brooklyncastle.com/">Brooklyn Castle</a>,” is scheduled to air on PBS later this year, and that may help with fund-raising. </p>
<p>
But similar cutbacks are playing out all across America. In 35 states,
inflation-adjusted school financing is below 2008 levels, <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3825">according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities</a>.
As of July, school districts have slashed 328,000 jobs since 2008, and
budget cuts have devastated early childhood education that lays the
foundation for children’s lives. </p>
<p>
Affluent kids continue to enjoy nursery school and chess tutors, even as
programs for poor kids are eliminated. Education is the best escalator
out of poverty, but for too many kids it’s creaking to a standstill.
</p>
<p>
As we make historic fiscal decisions in the coming months, let’s not
balance budgets by slashing investments in our future. That would be
like economizing on heating bills by feeding the front door into the
fire. </p>
<p>
While on leave, I’ll be rooting for kids like Carlos to soar to another
national championship — and far beyond. Given the returns, the question
isn’t whether we can afford to invest in opportunities for kids but how
we can possibly afford not to. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br>
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