Spring Woods High School

[dosto]

jerbear30, I understand what you are trying to say. I have the same mindset, but, unfortunately, very often theory is quite different from practice. I used to work at a middle school where there were no white kids at all and only 5 white teachers (me being one of them). I can tell you that even at that school kids would segregate. Even among Hispanics there were cliques based on what Spanish-speaking country they came from. Even among Mexican kids there were cliques based on what part of Mexico they came from, and so on... I think by transferring your kid based on the sole reason of escaping segregation, you may end up getting into the same thing, just under a different angle.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by key2thecity

I like this post. I wonder as well if other major cities are educationally segregated. I can't answer that but I can say that in the Houston area they definitely are. I applaud you for wanting to surround your child with a variety of people and demographics. However, I agree with another poster who stated that kids will self segregate based on a number of things, race not necessarily being the first thing to come to mind. I think you may have a difficult search ahead but most likely, you're probably already zoned to the better schools academically when compared to the ones that have been mentioned.

While education and sociology aren't necessarily my area of expertise, I do have to have a sense of them because they affect real estate, which is the area I deal with more directly (though I'm not a realtor or broker). My opinion is that the geographical segregation, oriented around public schools, that we have in Houston (and at this point, most other major metropolitan areas in the U.S.) is a result of society itself becoming more segregated between the college-educated or highly-skill-trained and those with different or just less education. What I think may be especially driving it is that, with women now comprising a majority of college graduates these days, educated people expect to marry other educated people. They expect to work at jobs where their colleagues at the same professional level will have as much or greater education than they do. They socialize with people with similar education levels. Basically, your entire life is lived amongst people who are similarly educated; the lesser-educated become "other."

Parents, at least educated parents, seem somewhat suspicious of these "others" - in fact, they may outright lack trust in the "others'" approaches to behavior, life goals, cultural tastes, morals, etc. This translates to a desire for their children, whom they expect to pursue higher levels of education too, to be ensconced in a school world where they know their fellow students will be coming from similar households with similar education levels and all that they think goes with that. This ultimately leads to a very strong desire to educationally segregate at the primary / secondary school level, which of course is tied to residential location.

Couple that with educated parents' horror at the rumors and stories about ill-behaved, non-academically-oriented children who are stereotyped to come from households with lower education levels and lower income levels, you get the educational segregation which we have today, and the tight relationship with differential housing values in the suburbs (not so much closer to the core of the city).

All just speculative theory on my part; I would be curious as to what others think.

[ToyYot]

Originally Posted by LocalPlanner

While education and sociology aren't necessarily my area of expertise, I do have to have a sense of them because they affect real estate, which is the area I deal with more directly (though I'm not a realtor or broker). My opinion is that the geographical segregation, oriented around public schools, that we have in Houston (and at this point, most other major metropolitan areas in the U.S.) is a result of society itself becoming more segregated between the college-educated or highly-skill-trained and those with different or just less education. What I think may be especially driving it is that, with women now comprising a majority of college graduates these days, educated people expect to marry other educated people. They expect to work at jobs where their colleagues at the same professional level will have as much or greater education than they do. They socialize with people with similar education levels. Basically, your entire life is lived amongst people who are similarly educated; the lesser-educated become "other."

Parents, at least educated parents, seem somewhat suspicious of these "others" - in fact, they may outright lack trust in the "others'" approaches to behavior, life goals, cultural tastes, morals, etc. This translates to a desire for their children, whom they expect to pursue higher levels of education too, to be ensconced in a school world where they know their fellow students will be coming from similar households with similar education levels and all that they think goes with that. This ultimately leads to a very strong desire to educationally segregate at the primary / secondary school level, which of course is tied to residential location.

Couple that with educated parents' horror at the rumors and stories about ill-behaved, non-academically-oriented children who are stereotyped to come from households with lower education levels and lower income levels, you get the educational segregation which we have today, and the tight relationship with differential housing values in the suburbs (not so much closer to the core of the city).

All just speculative theory on my part; I would be curious as to what others think.

Can't say I disagree:

Tribalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Mandres]

Originally Posted by jerbear30

I don't really have a problem with majority hispanic demographics because my own household is majority hispanic, lol. I recognize that lack of education and poverty sometimes go hand in hand, but I can't also justify just being like "oh, well." I mean, do those kids not deserve an education? Moreover, if more of the middle-class people in certain school districts actually started sending their kids to public school in those districts, everyone would gain because there would be more diversity that the middle class kids would benefit from and there would be the academic resources that tend to follow those middle class kids. Are all major cities this educationally segregated?

You're right, that came across as very insensitive, my bad. I really meant majority low-income. Hispanic doesn't have anything to do with it.

[jerbear30]

I do understand that there is going to be a lot of "self-segregation" on a number of levels. I went to high school too. But I also think that there are degrees of alarm. That segregation that happens at my son's school to me is more alarming than say, the separation of the "jocks" from the "nerds" or whatever because I think that the whole school system itself is racially and economically segregated. The main exceptions are perhaps Reagan and Westside but I'm not sure. If anything, the kids self-segregating at my son's school are just mirroring the logic of their parents--I don't really blame the kids at all, but it isn't a mutual logic either. We're not talking about something that happens "across all races equally." It happens most with wealthy white people because they have most of the resources. So to me the issue is that this segregation really does mirror a part of American life that was supposed to be "in the past." Whether we call it class or race, or whether we honestly look at the two as intersecting, the problem remains. I honestly don't know that there is any ethical solution other than to try to resist the tendency within education to separate the haves from the have-nots in whatever way is possible.