US school segregation persists 50 years after Supreme Court ruling: report

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&u=/afp/20040509/ts_alt_afp/us_race_poll_040509192812&printer=1

US school segregation persists 50 years after Supreme Court ruling: report

Sun May 9, 3:28 PM ET Add U.S. National - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Fifty years after the US Supreme Court banned school segregation, a majority of blacks say their children will receive unequal education as long as whites and blacks attend separate schools, according to a magazine poll.

A survey for the Rockefeller Foundation and Newsweek found that 59 percent of blacks and 52 percent of Latinos believe children will not receive equal education if people of different races go to separate schools, according to e Newsweek magazine poll.

"A half century later, school segregation is far from dead and the goal of educational equality is as elusive as ever," according to an excerpt from the Rockefeller Foundation report on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

"Since the early 1990s, despite the continued growth of integration in other sectors of society, black and Latino children are increasingly likely to find themselves in classes with few, if any, nonminority faces," the report said.

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Newsweek story, "Brown v. Board of Ed: A Dream Deferred"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4933395/

We need to enforce the laws, promote affirmative action programs in the schools, but we must also realize that there are limitations as to what government can or should do.

If racist white parents just don't want their kids going to school with blacks and they decide to put their children into private schools, there really is nothing we can do. Involuntary school busing proved to be racially polarizing and did little to foster racial harmony.

The wealthiest nation on Earth can't locate the resources to properly educate it's young citizens? Give me a break.

No, you can't force people not to be racist pinheads, but you can take away certain incentives for people to act that way.

boundaries. In the last couple of years there has been two new elementary schools and one new middle school that will be opened in the fall. At the beginning of the school year we received the map that cut up the city and told you whose kids were going to which schools. In the city there is a large immigrant mexican population. You can clearly see the racial division where their cuts were made. And the zigzag lines where they seperated the streets that have a high concentration of apartments. The mostly upper-middle class and middle class white children will be able to attend the new schools. The old schools will have anywhere from between 50-90% of the hispanic children. I will add that there are two high schools, one in the older part of the town where the real estate is far less expensive than on the other newer side of the town.

Of course children can go on waiting lists to get a school change. The lists are long, and I highly doubt that the immigrant parents would understand the procedures and politics involved to get into the better schools.

Now from talking with teachers at an elementary school by me, they gave me the impression that the community meetings that were held by the school district were heated and there was a lot of pressure placed upon the board while this redistricting was taking place.

Segregation by boundaries.

"Thrown money at the public schools"? A popular claim. In reality, the amount of money spent in the last 40 years (I suppose you're dating to the war on poverty) is utterly trivial compared to the size of the problem. The richest school districts in America, and most high-grade private schools, spend close to $20,000 per student per year. The poorest spend $4,000. Try convincing parents in the rich districts that they're throwing away their money.

And "get the feds out of public education"? How are they in it? States, counties and cities set curricula, build schools, set salaries, hire teachers and administrators, and determine virtually all the laws and rules pertaining to how schools are run. DOE is a tiny organization; "No Child Left Behind" was by far the biggest federal interference in public schools in history, leaving aside those pesky constitutionally mandated ones. And it's still a pretty small program (which is not to imply that I'm a fan.)

. . . in my district. 4% of our total funding comes from federal grants such as Title I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VIB (special education). A little more comes through the Dept. of Agriculture for the food service program. We're pretty typical.

So, your solution to "let the schools fail" by "getting the feds out" is incongruous. Frankly, if the feds *did* pull out completely, well, it would hurt, but not by a crippling blow. That alone wouldn't cause us to "fail" certainly.

Your solution is far too simple. Just kick 'em all out and only teach the ones you want - er, who want to be there.

Part of our job as educators is to figure out what's working and what isn't. One thing I've learned is that large systems don't work. The Bostons, the Chicagos and Philadelphias - I believe need to be broken up into completely autonomous entities - no more than 10,000 students each, in the entire district. Their own superintendent, board of ed., the whole thing. Schools in general should never be more than 400 students. No more of these mega-high schools with 6,000 students. Middle school should probably be abolished - move to pre-K-8 schools.

To accomplish all of this will take money. Not so much for operating expenses (though creating smaller entities will always result in lessening the economies of scale that exist with the large districts - but you have to factor in the quality. Is a factory that produces incomplete widgets half the time truly financially sound?) . . .

not so much for operating expenses as for capital expenses. Schools. New schools and lots of 'em. Small schools. With their own principal who can actually get to talk to parents directly, because she isn't having to deal with 6,000 of them.

Anyway, enough ranting. I just react when people suggest we throw in the towel. No way. We just need to be doing the right things.

If city/county planners would allow affordable housing to be built in the same school districts as million-dollar mansions, our schools wouldn't be so segregated by class and race.

I teach at a high school that in bulk, reflects the community. However, the Advanced Placement classes are 98% white, with total enrollment 38% white.

How about the placement of Latino sophomores with coaches who teach only one or two sections while the full time teachers have disproportionate numbers of whites?

And please! on the budget...in 1997, each teacher got $2500 to buy supplies for the year for 150 kids. This year, it was $100.

What an idea huh?

To fund all schools equally would mean we would have to have an educational system, which we do not have and will not have. Can't have everybody having a right to an equal education could we? That would be too democratic, clearly not an objective of our democracy.

The most segregated states for black students are New York and Illinois; the most integrated are Kentucky and Washington. For Latinos, the most segregated states are New York and California; the most integrated states are Wyoming and Ohio.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26073-2004Jan17.html

The Scripps Howard study found that students of color were most likely to be enrolled in one-color schools in the states of Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York and North Dakota. They were least likely to be racially isolated in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia, all states with small minority populations.

http://www.detnews.com/2004/schools/0403/21/a06-98156.htm

The worst segregation of blacks and Hispanics occurs in the Northeast, where the practice was not established by statute and far less enforcement of civil-rights laws has occurred....

About half of black and Hispanic public school students in the Northeast attend intensely segregated schools, with enrollments that are at least 90 percent minority, the study notes....

Small cities and towns, the suburbs of mid-sized cities, and rural areas tend to be more integrated, the report says.

Largely because of these factors, New York State was found to have the highest segregation of Hispanic students and was among the most segregated states for blacks.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-13/16deseg.h13

According to the U.S. Census, Michigan is the most segregated state in the nation. Five of the 25 most racially segregated metropolitan regions in America — Detroit, Saginaw, Flint, Benton Harbor, and Muskegon — are in Michigan. The next closest state is New York, with four. Two more Michigan metropolitan regions — Grand Rapids and Jackson — almost made the top 25.

Census figures also show that Michigan has the most segregated public school systems in the nation....

Almost all of the state’s black residents — 96 percent of 1.4 million people — live in just 11 metropolitan regions in Michigan. That means that roughly 70 of the state’s 83 counties are overwhelmingly white, many with minority populations of less than 3 percent. Not even Mississippi in the depths of the Jim Crow era was as segregated as Michigan is today.

http://www.mlui.org/reportarticle.asp?fileid=16480

New York, North Dakota; Michigan the most segregated state in the Union?

I thought it was all us rebel-flag waving, tobacco chewing, gun toting southern bigots that had segregated schools. The "enlightened" states like Michigan and Illinois could evidently take a few lessons from the much maligned south.

BTW, my partner teaches 10-12th grade in a fully integrated school in Mississippi.

As my dear ole granny used to say.

People who could afford to move to areas where most "dark skinned" people could not afford to live, practiced geographical/cultural segregation..

Nothing really changed. Where the poorer people live, the schools are crappy and underfunded. Where the Mc Mansions rule, the schools are good.. Move on..nothing to see here..

Poor people are always disenfranchised..no matter their color.

That's why the civil rights issue is still with us.. It was framed incorrectly... It should have gone one step further and been PART of the war on poverty...not in addition to it..