Thanks to a reader for sending this story from the New York Times. It has a graph showing the most racially segregated big-city school districts in the United States.
The winner of this disgraceful award: Chicago.
Second place: Dallas
Third place: New York City
Fourth place: Philadelphia
Fifth place: Houston
Sixth place: Los Angeles
Undoubtedly there are smaller districts that are even more segregated, and some that are nearly 100% black and Hispanic.
In New York City, half of the city’s schools have enrollments that are at least 90% black and Hispanic. New York City’s Department of Education doesn’t care about integration.
New York City’s Chancellor Dennis Walcott was once head of the city’s Urban League. Does he care?
New York City is known for its school choice policies. These policies may have intensified this extraordinary level of segregation in the schools.
This is a scandal.
Our nation has abandoned school integration.
And the result is concentrations of racial segregation and poverty in certain schools and certain districts.
This is a blight on our society.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter/Choice is CREATING this. It also segregates special needs students.
Those of us who have spent years educating minority and high poverty children have a deep understanding of the cyclical nature of poverty and the plethora problems that they carry with them. Ten years ago the conversation focused on the whole child and the resources needed to support students and families in poverty. It was recognized that in order to educate students at risk, we must also work with other agencies to provide them with safety nets that help ameliorate the effects of poverty. Slowly the conversation has been hijacked to remove these safety nets and social programs because they are costly. And at the same time private corporations began moving in to cash in on those same funds that had previously supported social programs.
The political agenda has been hijacked by wealthy corporate raiders who want to raid public schools and public healthcare systems. Their greed has no bounds. They collapsed our economy with their greed once already. It looks like we are ignorant enough to allow them to now take over our public systems of education and healthcare. Who would ever have thought that the American public would accept the word of non educators in government to set guidelines for what is best for education. Economists would never allow someone from education to set their policy, yet school superintendents allow people with no education credentials from the white house on down to tell them what is best for the children of our states.
Segregation IS the agenda. Families in poverty have no voice in government because a voice in government now requires deep pockets. Follow the money! We are quickly undoing the great strides made in civil rights so hard fought for in the past. Why are we willing to allow this to happen? Have we lost our moral compass? Are we willing to abandon those children in poverty? Remember, even though we may choose to ignore them, they still exist. What will become of them? They do not simply disappear just because we choose not to acknowledge their plight.
Where are the Dr. Kings of this century? They are desperately needed. We can not afford to stand silently by while the corporate raiders take over education. We will pay the price for their greed, just as we always have. Are we willing to allow history to repeat itself? How will the next generation judge us when they are left to pick up the pieces of our ignorance.
In the large cities, segregating schools by race is neither intentional govt policy nor a major problem. Rather, it is an incidental by-product of economic forces and govt economic policies that perpetuate SES differences from generation to generation.
High SES families prefer to live near other high SES families. Low SES families usually cannot afford to live near high SES families. Govt policies that insert low SES families into high-SES neighborhoods will be strongly — and rationally — resisted by the high-SES neighborhood residents. Low SES families create social problems/costs that the high SES families want to avoid. The high-SES families will always win this political fight. And, it’s unclear how inserting a few low-SES families in the high-SES neighborhoods will significantly improve the lives of the vast majority of low-SES families left behind in the low-SES areas.
In most of the US, by 2012, the high-SES families do not care what race their neighbors are, so long as they are high-SES. The high-SES areas and low-SES areas are racially segregated, but this is due mostly to the fact that high-SES families are disproportionally white/Asian while low-SES families are disproportionally black/Hispanic. Certainly, past discrimination contributed to these racial SES differences, but discrimination today plays little role in the continuation of the racial SES differences.
The obvious social policy challenge is to figure out how to raise the SES level of the average low-SES family. Moving many of them to the suburbs is not politically or economically feasible and it’s unclear that the low-SES family, upon relocation to the suburbs, would become a high-SES family (at least for several generations).
Rather, we need to focus on social institutions in the low-SES inner-city world, particularly the schools (and perhaps the related institutions such as pre-K, childcare, and healthcare facilities), that offer the most likely paths to higher SES levels for the next generation.
Unfortunately, corporate school reform (high-stakes testing, teacher discharge, charters, and vouchers) have little rational connection to the problems in the inner-city schools. At best, charters/vouchers will allow the children of the most concerned/functional low-SES inner-city parents (probably the low-income but higher-education parents) to escape from the chaos that exists in many inner-city schools. However, charters/vouchers — by siphoning off the children of the more concerned/functional parents — inherently exacerbate the chaos in the neighborhood schools, thereby making it more likely that the low-SES families whose children remain in the neighborhood schools will remain low-SES into the next generation.
“Certainly, past discrimination contributed to these racial SES differences, but discrimination today plays little role in the continuation of the racial SES differences.”
Really? The old “racism is dead” argument? Try telling that to any minority who’s been stopped or arrested for DWB (or just LWB – living while black).
Diane
As I watched bits and pieces of the conventions I was struck by how little education was referenced and when it was, it felt like empty rhetoric. What was especially disturbing to me was the phrase “best and brightest”. This has been a previous discussion on your blog. What got me thinking was… Who exactly are these best and brightest? And more to the point… Who it isn’t ? So, the opposite of best is Worst, and the opposite of brightest is Dullest, right? Then it begs the question, are the others considered the worst and the dullest? And then, what is it we are to do with those who are not the best and the brightest? Am I to assume that those are the students who will be left to traditional public schools to educate after the best and the brightest are siphoned off to charter and private schools? Those who attend the segregated high poverty, minority public schools that accept ALL students and who are bound by laws that require narrow core curriculum and high stakes testing. Will traditional public schools become dumping grounds by political and social design, that perpetuates their cycle of poverty and does nothing to address the causes of generational and situational poverty to which they are sentenced from birth? Will we allow this agenda of segregation to continue, whatever the root cause? Will we continue to allow public education to be sold off to the highest bidder and allow corporate raiders to profit off our children?
40 yrs ago, Jencks argued that depending on education for social equality would produce “glacial” progress(his metaphor). He recommended an incomes policy related to jobs. Obama’s “recovery” is producing mostly low-wage jobs so even the small number of new hires cannot relieve concentrated inner-city poverty. We need an immediate rise in the minimum wage to a living wage of $12/hr. We need to tax the $2 TRILLION cash in hand which major corps. and banks now have and use that money for building light rail mass transit, low-density urban housing, neighborhood primary care clinics, and other labor-intensive infrastructure work like bridges, etc. This is not rocket science and does not require a Nobel economist to figure out. We are not broke, we are being impoverished by the banks and corporations who sit on mountains of cash which they will not invest for new hires and will not pay taxes on. The daily racism of our cities enforced by the brutal police on inner-city youth is another problem which indeed shows that racism is not over as a fact of life for dark-skinned peoples.
Maybe that’s the problem. We are expecting the economists to solve these problems. If that is the case we are screwed. My son is an accountant and finance graduate. Their brain is not wired to understand social problems. Believe me, I have tried to explain it to him. Your proposals make perfect sense to me. As long as those corporations are allowed to function as “citizens” , then the working class, minorities, and the poor will continue to get a raw deal. And as long as the wealthy corporations continue to control our government, our country will continue on its current path. Their bottom line is all they are interested in. What they don’t realize is that eventually the problems of the poor and working class become the problems of the nation. They can be ignored for only so long.
Economists and reform profiteers have already put the screw in. They just keep turning it tighter and tighter.
In my 16 years of teaching, I have seen two amazing innovations occur which, in my opinion, substantially improved the overall school climate and academic achievement. Neither had anything to do with testing or teaching. First, through the championing efforts of a pediatrician and support from the state legislature, school-based medical and dental services were established in our high schools and, to some extent, our middle schools. Second, a new payment plan for school lunch was established in the cafeteria. When I first began teaching, students who were entitled to free or reduced rate lunch were given a weekly ticket in homeroom. The ticket was punched by the cafeteria worker standing by the cash register. Other children paid in cash. This caused embarrassment to kids who did not want to be identified as too poor to buy their own lunch. Often they would skip lunch altogether, claiming they were not hungry. Then a new system was put in place. All students were given pin numbers to pay for lunch. The accounts were funded by either parents or with federal Title 1 school lunch money. Now, there is no way to tell who gets free lunch. Everyone pays by using a pin number…and everyone eats! No more embarrassed children skipping lunch. Here’s my point: These changes were implemented by progressive leaders who — rather than start a witch hunt for “bad teachers” — actually found real ways to improve our schools.
I’m surprised that San Diego Unified did not make the list. Although there is some diversity – especially at the high schools – it is very segregated. In all of the low income neighborhoods, only “neighborhood” kids attend the schools so it is predominately black and Hispanic kids. When we see schools that are truly not segregated, we will see changes.
I certainly agree that zoned public schools reinforce the economic and racial segregation of housing paterns here in the United States. Perhaps a good solution, at least in densely populated areas, would be addmisions by lottery rather than by geographic proximity.
There are two school districts that I know of who have accomplished desegregation in Westchester County, NY – Ossining and White Plains (in different ways). White Plains gives parents a choice of “interest” schools at the elementary level and Ossining has created school buildings which house the entire population of students at their particular grade level.
Click to access cr12d4519.pdf
I live in a suburb of NYC (Westchester County) where the schools just may be more segregated than the urban districts you listed and probably more than the South was in 1960. Compare Mount Vernon and Yonkers to Harrison and Scarsdale. Our nation seem to have given up on integration. This will have negative long lasting effects on all of us – increasing incarceration rates, increasing poverty levels, and increasing levels of violent crime to name just a few.
I have always contended that our nation’s segregated housing patterns need to change in order give impoverished children a road out of poverty. Until that happens, we will be turning our wheels. In NY state, Westchester county was taken to court over this issue and our previous administration decided to settle rather than become involved in a long and costly court battle – which they were probably going to lose. Astorino, our current administrator, is fighting this tooth and nail; much to the cheers of the majority of the populace. Needless to say, many games are being played between Astorino and the court appointed administrator for the settlement. People in Westchester conveniently forget that their road to the middle class and home ownership were helped by programs such as the GI bill and union wages; policies that were denied people of color.
I think that is the game plan now. Parents of middle and upper middle class SES want their children separated from children in extreme poverty and the problems associated with poverty. Parents in the deep south, regardless of race, send their children to parochial schools. It is not just about race, it has to do with parents wanting to protect their child’s access to an education free of the disrupting influences that come with high poverty rates. I think that is why vouchers and charters have been able to work their way into our public school system so easily. It is a way for some parents to try to separate their children from high poverty influences when they can’t afford to pay tuition. Even though we know that not all charter schools are better than the public schools they leave. It still accomplishes the goal of separating certain kinds of students. The problems of high poverty students will still exist, but as long as they exist in someone else’s school, then it is easier to ignore. At some point though, the issue of poverty will have to be addressed. Until then, their new solution seems to be segregation, not integration.
Where did you get the stats for the list of most racially segregated big-city school districts in the United States. The NYTImes article only gave graphs for the school districts in New York City.
All in NY Times graph.
The majority of comments posted under this article are rife with Anti-White rhetoric along with ridiculous accusations of racism against a system. It is impossible to pinpoint a specific cause to the foibles of public education without some historical analysis of demographic trends, empirical scholastic data and the diagnosis of a myriad of other factors contributing to the horrors of inner city schools.
Let’s use common sense. Desegregation happened nearly 50 years ago. Brown vs. Board of Education happened 55 years ago. As a result, the system allowed people of color to be bussed in predominantly White schools. This of course was met with feelings of dread and despair for some White folks, but there were others who accepted this cultural shift in earnest. Hoping for the best in LBJ’s “New Society”. By consequence we saw the advent of the paradigm ‘White Flight’ in which White families left in the droves once their schools were being infiltrated by Black and Hispanic students. Desegregation became more like ‘Forced integration”. The results of such a swift and inclement change proved distressing to families who chose to relocate their children in schools where they felt more comfortable. This is natural since homogenous groups tend to Balkanize themselves according to race and ethnicity.
We also witnessed, over time that the performance measures of aptitude and academics dropped considerably once the White student enrollment dropped. The magnatude of crime, poor achievement, lack of discipline, disobedience, class disruption, lack of respect for authority seem to commensurate with the Racial breakdown of a school. I know there are the 1 in 1000 exceptions, but these are not representative of the standard.
Why do White families typically like to have their children in White schools? Because they prefer it that way. They feel more comfortable having their kids associate with other children who share a commonality. They are also concerned about their safety and learning environment as well. It is extremely rare that you hear about White schools living in danger and urban blight. The answer is plainly simple. These children are rarely involved in behavior or activity that is dangerous. Why is it that inner city schools filled with Hispanics and Blacks are constantly suspect? The answer is simple again, these people commit more violence and are a product of their own grounds of anti-social and destructive behavior. You cannot blame White people for the crimes and violence of other races. That is a fallacy that has been perpetrated by liberals and minority leaders for decades. This mantra of blaming White people for minorities’ failures, lives and shortcomings is a mantra too often dispelled by liberals. These same people assign blame to groups who haven’t had any contact with them physically or indirectly. It’s a farce. These people have the mindset that whenever a Black kid attacks another child or teacher in class, they somehow find a reason to blame the Racist system for this kid’s ignonimious behavior. By that note, if a White kid slaps a girl in class, shouldn’t we balme the system as well? It’s so absurd. That concept of White Privilege has become an asinine mantra, so derelict and so irrational by design that it begs to be quelled instantly.
Why is it that you never hear about White children wanting to attend all Black schools? But by the same token you see this surge of leftists wanting to integrate schools at the behest of some liberal legislation?
I taught in a public school district that consistently ranks in the lower 10 percentile in the state. The district enrollment is about 70% Hispanic, 14% Black, 4% White, 6% Asian. The remainder falls under the ‘other’ category. Since 1976 when crosstown bussing of minorities was enforced due to city mandates, the schools of the district have fallen into decay. The White students and families had an exodus en masse mirroring the Bible. Where are the White kids when you need them the most? Do minorities hate themselves so much that they yearn to be placed in predominantly White schools? When we see these demographic shifts and trends, a critical mind only needs to analyze the data and ascertain that people of color are needy and vie for the support of White presence. The pupose of Forced integration was to elevate the Black people to a higher standard wherby they could glean the skills and qualities of the White. Unfortunately, it lowered the grading curve. The environment caused distress and an overall decline in overall academic performance along with all the other social ills that accompany a Multicultural environment inconducive to learning.