Remember when school segregation was considered a terrible thing?
Maybe you are not old enough to remember.
I am. I remember. I attended racially segregated schools in Houston in the 1940s and 1950s.
It was not okay.
The Supreme Court said it was wrong.
No longer.
EduShyster has discovered that racial segregation has become normal in certain schools in Boston.
Using humor, this blogger raises a very important issue.
Why is it we don’t care about racial integration anymore?
Why is it okay to open schools with a citywide pool that ends up almost 100% black?
Ruckus C. Johnson, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, has published studies showing that black students who went to desegregated schools for at least five years had higher graduation rates, high entry rates to college, higher college graduation rates, higher lifetime income, and healthier lives.
Desegregation is good for our society.
It prepares children to live in a diverse society.
Why is it no longer the civil rights issue of our time?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
I know this is off topic but you recently posted about the new blog here in Memphis. Schooling Memphis has a new post on the takeover. There is a petition on Change.org (whom I have been boycotting lately) against the ASD’s takeover of Treadwell Elementary, a great school with caring and dedicated teachers. Please, please, consider signing their petition. It is at
http://www.change.org/petitions/achievement-school-district-stop-efforts-to-gain-treadwell-into-its-district
I don’t know how to do a link.
We need your attention here in Memphis as so many of our schools continue to get taken over by Barbic and his friends!
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I am reading Bronson and Merryman’s book Nurture Shock which has some very interesting and unexpected things to say about desegregation. According to them simply creating an integrated school does little to socially integrate students or improve attitudes either during or post school. The key to successful integration is for adults to address racial issues, to talk about them and work on them. Simply putting races together and treating them equally apparently changes little.
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Thank you for saying this before I did. I did not want my head bit off but….what does it say about America that we cannot provide a quality education “where people already live” What does it say to a minority child that putting you in a “white” school offers you a better education?
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If you put it like putting the Hatfields and the McCoys together, I imagine it can be disaster. The early days of integration certainly were not pretty. The Little Rock Nine come to mind. They were incredibly brave. Attitudes have changed. My children talk about their friends who turn out to be quite a multiracial blend. In my day, race was always part of the way people were identified. No, we are definitely not one big happy family, but we certainly do not want to go backwards.
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If we are concerned about segregation now, wait until all the McCharter schools open up around the country. The last little munchkins left in public schools are children in poverty, ELL and SpEd. The more we split our kids: gifted, AP, sped, ELL, remedial, at-risk, tracking, Title 1, RTI, college prep, etc…the more the $$s are attached to these groups, the more we segregate them. We say we integrate and practice inclusion, in reality, we segregate along $$, racial and disabilities lines. Now, the Big$$ from RT3, Gates, Walmart, Rhee and from foreigners enters the picture. Big scramble. Good luck trying to do the right thing for kids. Can’t un-ring that bell. This is the American Way…totally unchecked. Teachers are the ‘canary in the coal mine’, trying to alert us of the lack of oxygen. Almost too late!
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We have been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to desegregate our nation’s public schools for many years now. Defacto segregation still exists here in the deep south, and elsewhere. Schools around here (south rural Louisiana) typically have about a 70% minority population. Our students are highly transient. It is not usual for about a third of our students to move in and out of our school. Many leave and come back in a vicious cycle perpetuated by a life of living in poverty. These families cant afford to live in zip codes where their middle class peers live. It is not ineffective teachers who fail these children, but a cycle of poverty that destins them to remain in poverty. Anyone who claims that poverty is no longer destiny, probably has little real experience with families in poverty. Poverty prevents them from accessing many of the things available to middle class students. As long as we continue to ignore the effects of poverty on children and refuse to put resources in schools to help give them a hand up, we will continue to have children in public schools who fall behind their middle class peers.
Throwing money at a problem doesn’t guarantee success. We must make decisions based on need. Put school based health centers on school campuses, put social workers and counselors in elementary schools, connect to community services that are true partners with public schools. The new reforms put out by wealthy individuals who have no connection to our public education system and who never attended public schools, are not the solution. Gates, Broad, Walton, Bush, etc. don’t understand poverty, so they will never understand what reforms are necessary to support our children in poverty. Privatizing will only encourage segregation and pull critical funds from public education that will doom children in poverty to a life of more poverty. Dr. King would be appalled at the state of civil rights today. His dream is slowly fading because big money has taken over and bought the media. Where are our brave civil rights leaders of this century. This is a form of racism and classism that shoud be illegal, and is definitely immoral and unethical. I am ashamed of the political climate that has perpetuated this environment of disrespect and lack of caring for the least of our brothers. I’ll step down from my soap box now, and get back to the business of educating my students. Thanks for nothing America!
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The harms of segregation are as terrible today as they were 50 years ago. The stakes are now higher. As America becomes increasingly diverse and most Black and Latino students attend increasingly racially and socioeconomically segregated schools, how can our nation move forward as one?
Magnet schools that attract a wide range of kids based on their interests and talents (which they ALL have) is still an important and relevant way to end segregation in schools.
Charters typically exacerbate the problem but as a previous writer says, that bell has already rung. We have to find balance between offering outstanding choices for all families even though those choices may further segregate our students.
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Magnet schools also pull the most talented students and their parents out of zoned public schools. While I believe this is acceptable, many who post here, including Dr. Ravitch, be leave this creates an unjustifiable harm to those left behind.
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Bridget – Thanks for your post I agree with almost everything you wrote. There is a disconnect and throwing money at it and using logistics as an excuse gets us nowhere. I know very little about privatization efforts for our schools…but I know business and if schools are run like American Corporations we will have more problems not less. The fact that we, in America, cannot provide a quality education “where they stand” says something about as a Country. I always believed a zip code should not dictate the type of education received. I am also grateful for finding this blog…it is bringing good teachers together and giving them a voice and that is what we need. My child received her secondary education (part of it) in a urban school…the worst teachers ruled (hooked up, politically supported, old family teacher) and that has to stop. Unfortunately the good teachers could not WOULD NOT speak up for fear of a very real retaliation. Thanks for your post!
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Test scores. I can’t believe people dare to discuss a crime against humanity in terms of test scores.
We are one people. I happen to be in a Boston hospital at this moment, and believe me the staff and patients are integrated. It’s a moral wrong to separate our children by color. They have rights, and while it’s very nice if powerful groups can see some self-interest for themselves in justice, that belittles the point.
I’m halfway through James Meredith’s book, “A Mission from God.”. You should read it.
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Jonathan Kozol asks the same question of segregation exhaustively in his book, “Shame of the Nation” in 2005 and earlier in “Savage Inequalities” (’91?) if you connect economics and segregation, which Dr. King and others seemed to do in 1968 during the (first Occupy Movement?) Poor People’s Campaign via 6-week tented occupation (Resurrection City) of the Mall in DC just after King’s assassination.
But he seems to see segregation as an impossibly difficult issue, less so than dealing with funding inequity. The dramatic segregation we see today is ok with the courts because it is “self” selected or defacto. The courts stepped in when segregation is prompted by law or policy.
Somehow, we need to redefine the problem because segregation has been maintained and encouraged by our economic system, I think. We have systematically segregated people instead of legally segregated people – the same result but through legal means. I don’t really know what to do about this, but you’re right, Dr. Ravitch — why isn’t this at the forefront of our agenda as a nation? It may be best to attack funding disparity between districts first, and then move toward reversing the harmful and increasing gap between wealthy and poor.
I don’t know. What do you think? Is there a close enough relationship between economics and segregation that one will change the other? In which order ought we proceed? Which begets which? My money’s on money.
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Hi Diane…
I am not a proponent of segregated schools. I have served for 13 years on the school board of a district with very high-performing schools that are more racially diverse than most in the nation.
But, the fact is, we are a nation of segregated schools. All very well justified and rationalized.
Many have chosen to segregate their schools by gender. Many segregate by religion. Many are segregated by socioeconomics. By geography. And there are those who choose what might be defined as the ultimate segregation…the relative isolation of home-schooling.
Today, with a for-profit stampede towards charters and vouchers, we stand poised to take giant steps back in time to where socioeconomic segregation…with racially separate and unequal schools…are not only legal, but bouht and paid for by your tax dollars and mine.
Charters, widely shown to be no solution for delivering better education, are draining money from public schools. In an educational equivalent of the self-fulfilling prophecy, the “charter philosophy” says “we can do it better than the public schools.” Then they bleed money from already fund-strapped public schools, further depleting the public schools ability to educate. And vouchers simply accelerate this process.
Who actually populates these charters? Where are the comparable oversights and academic demands that state and federal governments place on public schools? Who gets these vouchers?
Many in the nation are kidding themselves. Or are they?
Charters and vouchers, as presently operating in most states, do a great job of institutionalizing separate but unequal schools…often segregated by race and religion. It’s no secret that one of the biggest proponents and beneficiaries of public tax-backed vouchers, and their first cousin, the Constitution-end-run EITC statutes, is the Catholic Church. As independent studies have shown, a majority of voucher money seems to have wound up in the hands of those already paying tuition to parochial schools…many who could afford to send their kids to these religious schools without financial help…as opposed to being some wonderful lifeline to kids in failing inner city public schools.
And charters? Given their direction, you would have to be deaf, dumb and blind…or, more likely to have a financial stake in one of these businesses…not to recognize that as presently constituted, charters are making investors very rich while moving public education towards racially, socioeconomically, separate and unequal schools and school systems.
Worse yet is that, as opposed to back in the 1950s…when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered his National Guard troops to enforce public school segregation, this latest move towards segregated school…variously segregated by race and by religion…will be all wrapped up in legalese and paid for by all of us to the detriment of most of us.
And you’re right. How do we expect our children to learn to live in an increasingly pluralistic, diverse society when this is where we lead them…and what we teach them?
David M. Rackow
School Director
School District of Cheltenham Township
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Segregation does not matter if separate were equal. Desegregation is not integration and desegregation does not necessarily provide equality for children of color even in the same school with Whites. Our nation’s segregated schools in the south and the north are not equal: unequal funding; unequal facilities; unequal competence of teachers (TFAs are not in many white schools); unequal expectations by the bureaucrats in charge. The fact that our schools are mostly segregated does not ipso facto cause underperformance on flawed measures, but allows us to continue to perpetuate an industry that profits from a flawed measure to sort and assess colored children’s performances (nee achievement gap, opportunity gap) or what ever euphemism we want to use to keep society, corporate reformers and even benign educators from having to deal with the “cumulative mico-inequities” (attribution omitted) faced by children and schools of color. No, segregation does not matter! Whatever the one economist study shows about the relative comparisons of Black students who went to desegregated schools and performed less well than their White counterparts while there, educational research points to far less simple solutions than desegregation,”read” put a black child next to a White child and everything else becomes equal. We who care about equality of educational opportunity can not accept so called desegregation (in the school, by the way, not necessarily in the classroom or playground) as the solution to the problem of educational apartheid..
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Fortunately, the courts ruled in Brown vs Topeka that separate is not equal, period. That’s true in housing as well as education, of course, but we have no constitutional remedy for economic inequality.
We can call down, from our constitution, the equal protection of the law for our children on the basis of their color, but not their unequal economic class.
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Diane:
I just read something in Common Dreams about unions that may apply here. Why don’t unions start up their (our) own schools? They could function like “public” charters and get all that taxpayer money, they could be open to any and all students, they would not “fire” students back to the public schools, they would use best practices gleaned from valid research, and they would not be subject to state laws on performance. AFT Charter Schools anyone? MCEA Charter Schools?
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I don’t believe improved test scores even means much except that the kids were drilled and got better at taking a test under timed conditions, which equates to nothing valuable when it comes to independent thought and creativity.
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I still don’t buy into the idea that children of color need to be placed into schools occupied by white children. It is not the color of their skin, but the fact of their socioeconomic situation that is the root of the issue. It is the family to which they go home, the ability of the parent to earn a living wage, the access to health care, the stability of their housing situation, the availability of support systems, the mental health of their parent, the availability of prenatal care, etc. etc. Children who grow up in homes with a supportive parent, with access to books, who understands how to support their child to be successful in school, who have stable housing, regardless of the color of their skin, will have a better chance at success. The stability of the family is the key. It is where we need to first focus our attention.
I have no control over which types of children enter my school. I don’t care what color their skin is or how poor they are. We are a 70% minority, 93% poverty, rural school of 600 elementary school students. We are lucky enough to have a school based health center on our campus, we have a good relationship with community health, mental health, police, district attorney, and a myriad of resources with which we work very hard to support our students. We have hard working, caring teachers. Yet we still struggle to “make the grade” by accountability standards. This is not just about segregation by skin color, but more so, segregation by socioeconomic status. It is time to rethink how we judge success for these students. Provide high poverty schools with resources and support systems, remove unrealistic testing accountability practices, and allow us to teach our students. That would be a giant step in the right direction.
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Charter schools are a scam and I too do not want McWalmart schools to dominate our educational system. I am very saddened that my state (Washington) recently passed an initiative allowing charter schools. Up until now we have been happily charterless. Bill and Melinda Gates saw to it that this is no longer so. Wow a college drop out who has never taught now has the power to change education. As an educator this is really exciting news! The saddest thing about charter schools is the many children they leave behind. The issue here is almost exclusively money. There is limited federal funding and business wants to make money by taking over the education system. Eventually we will have the little McWalmart schools for our kids whose philosophy is like Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times who said,
‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else,
and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
Are we sliding back to the very traditional schooling of a century ago? Have we learned nothing? It amazes me that anyone can think that you can turn education over to a business. It seems that any and everyone knows just what is needed in education. I am stunned at how many business men think that they know better than a veteran teacher who has been in the classroom for 25-30 years how to engage and motivate students. It is startling and frightening that we are slowly moving into an era that appears to foster the privatization of education. I am very disillusioned that politicians are so willing to sell our young people down the river. For that is what is happening.
I think that how students in a well integrated school are treated is another issue. All too frequently testing dictates the classes a student will take. Most schools in my state have 4 categories of students 1) Successful or passing with a high score; 2) Benchmark or able to pass the test; 3) Nearing benchmark or almost able to pass the test; 4) Struggling or need significant help to pass the exam. Schools often use these groupings to determine which English or Math class a student is in. In addition they particularly focus on group number 3 as these are the students most likely to improve their AYP (adequate yearly progress) score and give these students additional help. This means the most needy students are overlooked. It also means that the classroom climate is static and not dynamic. Students in the struggling classes are often discouraged and teachers find it tough to motivate or engage students who have been placed in a class because they failed to pass a high stakes exam. This becomes de-facto segregation in the school.
I don’t pretend to know what the answer is, but to castigate a group of individuals who have dedicated hours and hours of time and often much of their hard earned low paying salaries to do their best to educate our young people is insidious. These are the professionals that the system needs to turn to for guidance. These are the experts who are in the trenches everyday. Ignoring their input and sound experience is misguided and costly. We need to reconsider who we should turn to in this time of reform and who really has the students’ best interests at heart, the teachers who spend all day with them day after day in the classroom or the businessmen who sit in an office considering how they can please their stockholders this year.
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All charter schools?
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desegregated schools harm white children. physically and in academic performance.
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the reason black children perform better when there are white children is the obvious fact that it also means there are less black children. the percentage of blacks in an area are the best predictor of violent crime, low school performance and test scores, cleanliness of the area, happiness, low home prices, higher insurance rates, slower service in restaurants and stores, theft of packages delivered……
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Thanks! You just made the case for racial integration.
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and this has nothing to do with hundreds of years of institutionalized racism.
You are a moron. You cannot figure out this simplest of things, that if you raise the pauper as a prince, he is a prince.
Idiot.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that those who consider themselves so superior are such idiots.
From the Greek, idios, meaning “ones own,” that is, unable to see beyong one’s own nose.
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access to white people is not a human right.
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I am an older person. If not for this fact, I would leave this backward country in a heartbeat.
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