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go back to neighborhood school districts again. The advantages include reduced financial cost (fuel for buses), less time for students to spend riding the bus, students can sleep a little later, and the community can come together for the school. Kind of hard for a community to come together for a school if their children all go to different schools even though they live on the same block. Another advantage is to the poor families. Locally, they decided to close a school in a poor district and send students elsewhere. The local families in that area said what they missed most was walking to the school to pick up their kid if he/she was sick since they didn't have a car.
Does anyone else work in a school that is 100% segregated? We had two white students during the first semester last year, but they left after Christmas.
Our district is nearly 100% black. Virtually all of the white families have either moved to the suburbs, where the mix is closer to 50-50, or their children attend private schools. In some counties, there are no white children in the public schools whatsoever. As a result, there is very little contact among children of different races in many of the communities.
Where the middle class puts its children in the public schools, the public schools are great. Where the middle class puts its children into private schools, the public schools are nearly completely segregated and achievement is near the bottom in the country.
For those of you in other parts of the country, who sends their children to private schools? Another poster commented that Colorado has a very low private school population. Why is that?
I think you're underestimating the forces of economic self-segregation here. If you rezone a good/pricey school district, over time affluent people will move away from it into a new good/pricey area, or opt out all together into private school. Even if they can't, self-segregation will happen anyway as I'm about to discuss.
I have personal experience here that I mentioned above. I went to a magnet high school where the overall student body was about 60% hispanic. The desirableness of the school due to it's magnet status meant that a district wide lottery was held for the open seats in the incoming freshman class after accounting for the kids for whom this was their home school.
If you were picked in the lottery, you got into this school. If you didn't, you went to your home school. I was entered in the lotto and wasn't picked, but the school district basically cheated the system and made sure I got into that school because I'm white in the name of diversity.
I was given an advantage due to being white, through a program that was started in the name of helping minorities. Go figure. And despite all this effort, the school self-segregated anyway. AP classes were over 90% white.
Now, I know my anecdotal evidence may not be representative of overall data, but I would bet you money that it is. Personally, I don't think economic diversification in order to address educational disparity can be done. There's no way to address economic disparity without resorting to some sort of communist/socialist scheme of redistributing resources, which is worse than the original problem and in the long run doesn't work.
I would say your anecdotes match up with mine. It's not a secret that many IB programs and/or magnet schools are targeted toward lower-class neighborhoods as if their presence will somehow bring up the socioeconomic problems that are really preventing kids from getting ahead there.
I think you're underestimating the forces of economic self-segregation here. If you rezone a good/pricey school district, over time affluent people will move away from it into a new good/pricey area, or opt out all together into private school. Even if they can't, self-segregation will happen anyway as I'm about to discuss.
I have personal experience here that I mentioned above. I went to a magnet high school where the overall student body was about 60% hispanic. The desirableness of the school due to it's magnet status meant that a district wide lottery was held for the open seats in the incoming freshman class after accounting for the kids for whom this was their home school.
If you were picked in the lottery, you got into this school. If you didn't, you went to your home school. I was entered in the lotto and wasn't picked, but the school district basically cheated the system and made sure I got into that school because I'm white in the name of diversity.
I was given an advantage due to being white, through a program that was started in the name of helping minorities. Go figure. And despite all this effort, the school self-segregated anyway. AP classes were over 90% white.
Now, I know my anecdotal evidence may not be representative of overall data, but I would bet you money that it is. Personally, I don't think economic diversification in order to address educational disparity can be done. There's no way to address economic disparity without resorting to some sort of communist/socialist scheme of redistributing resources, which is worse than the original problem and in the long run doesn't work.
Totally agree with you. Also its far much worse on the university level. UT Austin recently got rid of it's program that allowed open admission to Texas high school students who applied and were in the top 25% of their class. The program was to allow minorities in the school so they could have a certain number attending at all times. My friend got in due to the program and became a volunteer and that's how she found out what the problem was really for.
Also during her time at UT Austin she faced discrimination among the classes she was taking. One professor assistant told her she lost her work and she could only get a B- for her grade. Which was totally unfair speaking that she had A+ for all her previous grades in that class but that was a way to get her GPA lowered and not have a minority be the top of the class. The segregation will never end because there's always going to be people in key positions who are for it and will continue to enforce it.
I would say your anecdotes match up with mine. It's not a secret that many IB programs and/or magnet schools are targeted toward lower-class neighborhoods as if their presence will somehow bring up the socioeconomic problems that are really preventing kids from getting ahead there.
I agree that magnet programs often are highly segregated (I, too, went to a district with a high amount of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic segregation at times). Still, they're better than nothing; at least they are there and potentially accessible for the students who are willing and able to pull themselves out of tough circumstances. It's not a solution in itself, but at least the opportunity is there. And there are some success stories out there; Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, for example. Actually, Minneapolis in general is an interesting example; some of the public schools are very, very good, and some are pretty bad. There's also a huge gap between the test scores and graduation rates of kids of different races, most of that probably having more to do with socioeconomic factors than race. But Minneapolis is also a city where most middle and many upper-class families still send their kids to public school. It's depressing in that obviously just having kids of different backgrounds in a school together isn't in itself enough to fix educational disparities, but again, I'd still take that than to have a totally segregated school district. There is no one right answer, but completely segregated districts, whether by race, economics, etc, is not the answer.
As far as I understand it, the problem basically breaks down like this:
People with money (more likely to be white), move off to an area that is pricey because it is a "good" area. These affluent people demand good schools, send their children to college, and do other things that ensure their children are successful. Those children go on to make a decent income, and continue to live in "good" areas. This is a self-reinforcing cycle.
People without money (more likely to be black), can't afford the "good" area (or maybe even choose not to because they feel out of place) so they make do with a mediocre or even downright "bad" area. Children of low income people do worse in school, the schools display poor performance, drop out rates are high, rates of continuing on to college are low. These children don't have as high a rate of success and more of them go on to make a lousy income and continue to live in "bad" areas. This is a self-reinforcing cycle.
So over time, people segregate themselves (this happens whether the divide fell along racial lines or not, we just notice it more because it currently does). Unless you're going to re-zone school districts such that they pluck children from the "good" area and take to the "bad" schools and pluck children from the "bad" area and take them to "good" schools, this isn't going to improve. It won't even stop if you do this, people will throw a fit and move some place where this isn't happening and continue the cycles. Even beyond that, if people can't get away from the racial/economic diversification, the cycles simply continue inside the schools. For example, I went to a high school that was majority hispanic (about 60% hispanic), but the AP classes were obviously majority white (heavily so, like over 90% white). You can guess how the honor roll, top 5% based on GPA at graduation, etc. broke down in terms of race/economics.
So no, I don't think you can hold schools responsible for the above economic issues. No, racial diversity can't be solved while ignoring the economic issues. And even if you somehow achieve a perfect racial mix in the good areas and bad areas eventually, economic segregation of this sort will still happen, we just won't see it breaking down along racial lines. There will always be some people that do better than other people for a variety of reasons.
Well said. Most schools draw their students from the surrounding population so, until we live in integrated neighborhoods, we will have segregated schools.
Well, as I read in an earlier post, magnet schools aren't the perfect answer, but they are a start. They provide chidren from poor neighborhoods a chance to drastically improve their circumstances, and they can make a difference in a poor neighborhood. As for the self-segregated school districts problem, I also agree that it won't change until we have more racially integrated communities, and perhaps that's not likely to happen until we have a culture of total acceptance for people of all racial and economic backgrounds. Really, though, when is that going to happen? Turn on the television or radio and you will see and hear woeful perpetuations of racial and socio-economic stereotypes.
Our friend did not get her son into a magnet school. She decided to stick it out with public school anyway and send hime where the boundries would take him. He is in a high school that is 98% black and he is white. She dropped him off the first day and thought: "Where are all of the white kids?" A teacher, who is black, later told her that the city (she is within the city limits) schools now are almost all black. The suburban schools are mostly white. If you want integrataion on any level, you need to find private school that pushed for it...or move to one of the suburbs that was a bit integrated. The magnet schools, after 8th grade, are again fairly segregated also.
In the end, her son had a great year. He said his only issue was that at some point he would like to date and see what it is like to not be in an inter-racial relationship!
I still believe that the segregation is economical. Peope flee that city schools if they can afford it...regardless of race.
There is no one right answer, but completely segregated districts, whether by race, economics, etc, is not the answer.
No one is arguing that segregated districts are "the answer". My argument is there is no answer to this problem, it's not something we can fix. If you try to manipulate the system to fix it, people will find a way around it. Making it so that people can't find a way around it would be an unacceptable tresspass against our freedoms (and wouldn't produce good results anyway). Even when the races are all merged into a more or less even brown color decades from now, people will still segregate based on socioeconomics.
No one is arguing that segregated districts are "the answer". My argument is there is no answer to this problem, it's not something we can fix. If you try to manipulate the system to fix it, people will find a way around it. Making it so that people can't find a way around it would be an unacceptable tresspass against our freedoms (and wouldn't produce good results anyway). Even when the races are all merged into a more or less even brown color decades from now, people will still segregate based on socioeconomics.
Are you suggesting that magnet programs or, perhaps, redrawing districts are manipulating the system?
I've seen economically and racially desegregated school districts. It CAN happen. True, like others have said, often the educational outcomes for students is not the same, but I still think that society as a whole needs to actively promote districts that do not break down along purely economic lines. Incentives like magnets are one component. I think it's a greater danger to our freedom to have districts and schools that vary so drastically in terms of quality, funding, etc. There is no one easy solution, but I do think there's at least some chance of improving things. And allowing districts to slip back into segregation, with socioeconomic segregation being the biggest issue today, is bad for kids and bad for the country.
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And despite all this effort, the school self-segregated anyway. AP classes were over 90% white. 
