White Flight From Louisville/Jefferson County Public Schools (Lexington, Dayton: low income, 2015)

[JefferyT]

Jefferson County has one large countywide school system incorporating the city and suburban areas into one district. And as we know they bus for socioeconomic integration.
One of the consequences of this might be white flight from the system, or, perhaps, white avoidance, if families can afford to pay for private schools.

The source for these numbers are the 2000 census SF3 file available at American Factfinder. I think these numbers are projections based on a sample, so these are not exact but one hopes reasonably close.

First, K-12 racial percentages. For these numbers I aggregate a few categories (mixed race, asian, etc) into an other category, leaving white non-hispanic, black, Hispanic, and other.

For K-12 public school students:



Whites made up 62.2% followed by blacks around 31%, then the smaller percentages

For K-12 private school students:



Whites make up a whopping 92.9% of attendees.

Those were the totals for public and private schools in Jefferson County. For the racial categories the breakouts are instructive, as to who’s going private and public.

For blacks and whites:



(blacks are pretty committed to the public school system, it seems)

For Hispanics and others (Asians, mixed, race, misc.)



But these are snapshots from ten years ago. What are the current numbers? The census doesn’t have this, but here is a guess based on using the 2000 census numbers and Kentucky Department of Education figures, which (as far as I can tell) go back four years.



Subtracting 2000 from 2008 one sees a 7% decrease in white attendance, which is an iffy way of calculating this (two different data sources). But even using the consistent KY BoE series there is a consistent downward trend. Seems the increases are in the Black, Hispanic and Other categories, depending on where you start counting. Black increases are pretty minimal if one just uses the BoE seires.

The heavy attendance of white students in private schools might be just a white thing, so I compared Jefferson County private K-12 numbers with three surrounding counties that have been seeing a lot of growth during the 2000s; Bullitt, Oldham, and Spencer.

If whites have a tendency to send their kids to private schools no matter what they percentages should be the same. Instead, for the 2000 census, JCPS has a considerably higher percentage of whites going private, compared to the surrounding counties:



Oldham, since it is a fairly affluent county, has the highest % of its white kids going to K-12 private schools, over 15%. JCPS is double that at nearly 30%

What’s interesting is that the private school percentages for these surrounding districts are actually comparable, or in the same range, for Hispanics and “Other” attending private schools in Jefferson County.

[ThePoint502]

n/m

[missymomof3]

Originally Posted by ThePoint502

n/m

?????

[johnsonkk]

Acronym Definition:
N/M = Not Meaningful
N/M = Nevermind

N/M - What does N/M stand for? Acronyms and abbreviations by the Free Online Dictionary.

[missymomof3]

Thank you.. why is it being used here I wonder?

[LoveKentucky]

Jeff, nice work. That was a lot of work to state the obvious. I would never let my daughter attend public school in Jeff. Co. This trend will continue until they give up this pathetic socialist distribution program.

[wmac62]

Like I said time and time again, This county is out of control and does not want to deal with reality. Of course white kids are going to private schools if the parents can afford it. The public schools have re-distributed the non-contributors of society all across the county school system to place everyone on an even playing field. What happens when we do this? We now teach at the lowest or slowest level to accommodate the non-contributors of our society, so you child who may have potential to excel is stuck in the slow lane as life passes by. Parent who send their children to private schools are playing right into the hands of the government because now your tax money you pay for the school system is a benefit you pay for but do not receive any benefit, guess who benefits? the non-contributors. I don't blame them one bit because family takes priority over politics and the resistance does not out weigh the benefit of fighting. Socialism at it best. "The problem with socialism is at some time and point we run out of other peoples money" "M. Thatcher"

[jclaude]

Oh, it looks like the Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity parroters are out in force. Just a little reminder...the Randian mindset of capitalism...you know, that unchecked greed is good for the system because we will all ultimately then benefit from it...and that the greedy will never go too far and lose their cash cows...uh, how did that end up playing out? Don't be worried about socialism or whatever strawman, be worried about unlimited capitalism. And, by the way, tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends.

[JefferyT]

Jeff, nice work. That was a lot of work to state the obvious.

Well, it wasn’g obvious to me, but given the occasional school discussions here and what I was observing when I went to pick my nephew up at Myzeek a few times I decided to run some numbers to see what was going on.

Here are some more numbers from the 2000 census. I was wondering if there was more white flight to private schools in Louiville/Jefferson County vs other places that have countywide systems that have inner city areas with a lot of minorities. The examples I choose are:

Lexington. The second largest city in Kentucky. It has a countywide system like Louisville.

Charlotte NC: They merged their county and city systems and integrated in the 1970s like Louisville did.

Raleigh NC: Same as Charlotte, but they moved away from race and started to integrated schools based on socioeconomics in 2000 (to keep the low income students at a certain % per school)

Oldham County: This is a “control” number, just to compare an affluent suburban school district.


C

Comparing these one can see the Louisville and Charlotte numbers are close for the white students who are going private (but not too close, nearly 10% difference). But Raleigh/Wake County is way low, lower than even Oldham County. And this is a populous area, population 300,000 to 400,000, being between Lexington and Louisville in size.

The Wake County system has a policy of “no bad schools” so they really try to bring everyone up to meet the NC state proficiency levels, the poor kids as well as the middle class ones, so this commitment to excellence might be why there wasn’t that much white flight to private schools, in an area that was seeing a lot of Mexican immigration as well as having a lot of blacks.

And Louisville is on its way to re-segregation. Using the KY DoE numbers, the few that are available, shows that JCPS will be majority/minority by 2015, unless things plateau out in the next few years.



In this way Louisville may experience, at a countywide level, what Dayton, Sycracuse, and other northern cities experienced at the city level, a majority/minority school district surrounded by mostly white suburban districts, and whites sending their kids private when they can afford it.

[LoveKentucky]

Originally Posted by jclaude

Oh, it looks like the Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity parroters are out in force. Just a little reminder...the Randian mindset of capitalism...you know, that unchecked greed is good for the system because we will all ultimately then benefit from it...and that the greedy will never go too far and lose their cash cows...uh, how did that end up playing out? Don't be worried about socialism or whatever strawman, be worried about unlimited capitalism. And, by the way, tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends.

Just like a true liberal jclaude attacks on the emotional level instead of using facts and figures (nice work Jeff). I really feel sorry for the libs. It must be a frustrating life to sit around and expect everyone to do something for you while shoving twinkies in your pie hole!! There is not one socialist busing program that works in this country. I previously lived in another state that was run by wacko liberals that had managed to completely destroy the public education system because of their misguided socialist busing program.

When I was a teenager I worked at one of the three companies that my father owned. He was directly responsible for maintaining a profitable and strong company so his employees could provide a very comfortable living for their families. What part of personal responsibility is so hard for you to understand?

Jclaude or should i call you Nancy!?!? The only people that despise capitalism are the few untalented misfits that cant grasp the concept of leaving the cave, killing something and dragging it home for the family. If you despise capitalism then why do you even own a computer or pay for internet service. News flash for you, both of those items would not exist if capitalism was gone.

It really is funny listening to libs spout this cancer spewing from every orifice.