Study: American Schools Still Largely Segregated On Racial, Economic Lines

[pampango]

Nearly 60 years after American schools were desegregated by a landmark Supreme Court decision, they are still largely segregated along racial and socio-economic lines, an analysis of Department of Education found.

American schools have a larger share of African American and Latino students than ever before, but students from those groups are likely to attend schools with few white students, the study from the University of California, Los Angeles found ... .

The segregation isn’t limited to race: across the country, schools with high minority populations often have high low-income populations as well, and “typical black or Latino student attends a school where almost two out of every three classmates come from low-income families,” the Times reports.

The segregation of American schools has perpetuated and exacerbated the education gap that exists between black and Latino students and their white and Asian counterparts. American students from less-educated, lower-income backgrounds are less likely to go to college than they are in other countries, and even high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds are far less likely to complete college than similar students from upper-income backgrounds. That has suppressed economic mobility for blacks and Latinos, two groups already disadvantaged in the American economy.

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/09/20/879011/american-schools-segregation/

Sad that 6 decades after the demise of legal school segregation, it back and worse than ever.

[MadHound]

1. So what is the solution to this?

The segregation exists due to where people live, not due to school policies. We tried bussing, and that was a disaster.

I would suggest that rather than getting hung up on the demographics of a school, that we revamp our funding formula for all schools in order to insure that students in low income neighborhoods have access to schools that are just as well funded and well equipped as those in high income neighborhoods.

[pampango]

2. Some of the school segregation is due to "where people live", but not all.

If you are talking about suburban vs urban, then you are right.

But in many cities, even small towns like mine, many families that live in a public school district will choose to sent their children to a private school or home school them. It is not geographical segregation. For some it is the 'secular' nature of the public school and its curriculum. For some it is the educational reputation the local public schools have - rankings, test scores, etc. For some it is the fact that there are 'too many' minorities in the public school. For some is is all three of these.

We cannot go back to the days when the culture was that practically everyone, except for some very religious famiies and the very, very rich, sent their children to the local public school. The government did not have to force them to do that, it just was the way things happened. I am sure my parents never gave a second thought to where I would go to school. We moved a lot but my brothers and I always went to the nearest public school.

Now the decision on where your children go to school is not cut-and-dried. Middle class families have options if there are doubts about the local public school. Even working class families have some options with the proliferation of vouchers. And of course the rich are less and less likely to send their children to a public school.

I think having the vast majority of children educated together is beneficial to any society. But how do you balance that social good with the individual freedom to chose where you live and where your children go to school. I don't know.

Of course, we should increase funding our urban, and sometimes neglected rural, schools. That may be all that we can accomplish in today's culture, but it won't necessarily lead to re-integration of the schools, though. My lament is that better funding for neglected schools will at best create equal education opportunities for minorities, but even that is not likely to change the separate nature of their education. Ironic in light of the Supreme Court ruling that "separate" is inherently "unequal".

I understand what you mean by not "getting hung up on the demographics of a school" as long as students have access to well-funded schools but that is kind of what Brown vs Board of Education was about.

[MadHound]

3. So the question remains, what can be done about it?

You can't dictate where people live, nor can you dictate where parents send their kids, be it to a public school, a private school, or homeschool.

Thus, the only option remaining is to fully fund each and every single school so that each and every student receives the best possibly education. That is going to take a major reworking of how we fund schools. The property tax model simply doesn't work outside suburban school districts, because both urban and rural school districts pull in insufficient property tax revenue to adequately fund their schools. What is needed is where all revenue for schools is thrown into one big pot that is doled out according to each districts need. This is also going to mean that we need to increase overall school funding as well.